Hoo ya! I did
it! I really actually ran more than 17
miles without getting injured!
Weather was crummy.
It was 82F, almost 20mph wind at first before the rain hit, humid at
first and raining at the end. Average
pace was 8:22/m. ‎
I felt great the first 12 mile loop that we did. First mile was 8:45. The next 11 were 8:00/m average with only
miles 8 and 9 being faster (7:50 and 7:43).
I was the one driving the pace mostly.
I can't seem to help myself.
Britt (who has much faster PR's than me) was reminding me to slow down
if I'm going to make it 20 miles today.
Tim also told me that on marathon training I have to be patient. Maybe that is my problem here. I do not have patience (or time) to train for
a full marathon at this point in my life.
Then we stopped at the running store before embarking on the
next loop of 8 miles. The next four
miles were getting harder and slower (about 8:20's), but I was still holding on
although I fell behind Britt and Tim. They were holding steady at the 8:00/m
pace. There were still some other people
behind me from our group though.
By the 15-mile water stop, the rest of the group decided to
go further up the trail before turning around so their total would be an even
20. I just wanted this experience to be
over as quickly as possible... I resisted peer pressure from Tim to tough it
out and I turned around early to head straight to my car.
"THE WALL": Last 4 miles were of the 9:00/m
variety by myself in the rain and were excruciating to the point that I found
it impossible to run without making a really scrunched up mean face. I was
laughing (on the inside while still making scrunched up mean face) about what
passing cars might have been thinking.
Yeah, you know, I guess I might have gone too fast in the beginning when
I was feeling "great"! Ha, ha! Marathon training is tricky! I'm not
sure I have the patience for it. I much prefer half-marathons, for which there
are no 20 mile training runs!
Reality check: I'm going to need to run 8:00/m for 26.2 if
I'm going to reach my goal at NYC. I couldn't imagine doing that today.
Hopefully, the next two months of training and cooler, less humid weather will
get me there.
One great thing is
that my legs were great the whole way.
No injuries. Not even a
blister. Of course it was hard to move
them in the final miles, but that's different than injury, plus they are fine
now after I have stopped running. I am
very happy about that. This is the
farthest I've run in a long, long time.
Because of this fact, I am considering this run a success.
I'm just
trying to figure out when my next training run should be. The running store owner, James, suggested
that I try to force myself to run 9:00 pace in the first miles of the next 20
miler just as an experiment... I know
what he is saying is right. It's so hard
for me to hold myself back when I'm running with faster people because I guess
I have this mental thing where I want to be in the lead pack. However, if I run by myself, it's hard for me
to force myself to speed up if I started out at a 9:00 pace. Tricky, tricky. What to do, what to do.
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