Very thankful for Matt Poulsen today, who may have saved my upcoming marathon. I was getting pretty worried about my hip, but then remembered the night-and-day difference made by methylprednisolone prescribed by Matt back in the summer, which allowed me to start training again, finally, after a summer of hip pain. I emailed Matt, he got back to me right away, and I had my prescription a couple hours later. I took the first dose and then started watching Lost, which is quite addictive, so I didn't get out the door to run until an admittedly absurd 12:45 am.
In any case, I decided to do an easy run on some iteration of 9th East just to feel things out and go as much as 12 miles if I felt great. After the first mile, which is very hilly (my place to 9th and south temple, nearly 100' up and 100' down, with a slight net up), I looked at my watch expecting near 8:00 and saw 7:02. At that point, I realized that my body just felt awesome tonight, so I decided that if my hip was still feeling it by 21st south, I'd do the long run, and maybe even put some fast miles near the end like I had wanted to do a few days ago.
At 21st, I was feeling great and averaging 6:46s very easily, so I turned up towards Highland and then took that all the way to 45th, where I still felt good, other than having to make a 5 minute pit stop at 711 to use their bathroom. I had been debating the merits of going hard from 10 to 15, but by 9.5, I still felt good and decided to give it a go. I turned on to 5th south and hit 10 miles shortly thereafter, and picked it up. I decided I would go a little harder than marathon effort (6:05 at sea level would 6:23-ish here, so I decided to push nearly sea level marathon pace into a minor-to-moderate headwind). 11, 12, 13, and 14 were 6:08, 6:13, 6:12, 6:09, and then I got tired of running so easy, so I pushed mile 15 in 5:47.
I ran the last 2.1 miles at 7:40-ish pace, uphill, which felt really slow after the faster miles, and now I better get to bed since it's after 3 am. Average pace 6:40.
In any case, I'm extremely grateful today just to be able to run and I felt exhilirated for that entire 17 miles, which probably kept from falling asleep on my feet before I finished at 2:30 or 2:40 am. Thanks to Matt Poulsen for his help and generous giving of his time, and thanks to modern medicine for keeping me off the sidelines. :)
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