Thank God! After being up and down all night with Bubbles, I ran 18 and it went ok. Today's run was about determination. I was determined to run the entire run, even though I was tired and ran into a few problems. It was a bit cooler today than my 17 mile run last week, but still very hot and very humid. I started earlier for one thing. This caused my camelpak to stay frozen longer so I ran out of available water at mile 7 (I still had a frozen brick in the pack). Thank God for the golf course and our local running store. I refilled my pack twice during the run. Even if it had melted properly, I would have run out of water.
When I started running at 5am it didn't look like I was going to even make it a mile. Like I said, this run was about determination. I started running down my street and could feel that my lower back was very tight and hurt. It felt like it was about to go into spasm. My socks that I wear all the time were sliding off my heels (I have very small feet and the socks usually hang out the backs of my shoes, they are so big). They just didn't feel right. I took the time to try to reposition them and took that opportunity to stretch my back. It began to feel better after about 2 miles but hurt the entire run. At the end, it really seemed on the verge of a spasm. I ran very, very carefully the last few miles. The last few miles were strong, but the last miles those stupid socks were wrinkling at my heel. After so many miles I could hardly bend over to fix them. I am going to have to go back to the other socks I wore before, as these are not working right now.
I did 18! Now I have a recovery week and a long run of 20 the next week. Hopefully, it will continue to cool down. I am pleased that I hit over 40 miles again this week (Monday to Sunday so the blog calendar won't show the total). |