Three 20 miler's down... a vacation and one to go

The name of my run this morning was poor preparation. I woke up at 5:15AM so that I would have a good 45 minutes to prepare myself to head out on my 20 miler. I was not looking forward to running at all, but the warmish air last night when I went to bed made me think the run would not be as bad as some runs over this season that have been in freezing cold temperatures.

My Internet was not working so I did not check the temperature before heading out. I assumed it would be just as nice as yesterday. I put on my running skirt, a long sleeve shirt, gloves, a hat and my camel back. I had my Garmin all set up and charged and I headed out the door by 6:15.

Everything started to go down hill after about 1.5 miles into my run. I felt tired, which of course had me convinced that I have low iron and that it had nothing to do with the fact that it was dark out and 6:30 in the morning. My legs were also FREEZING. When I stepped outside of my apartment I recognized it was cold, although I was not sure how cold it really was and I assumed I would quickly warm up. That was definitely not the case. With no sun, and bare legs, I felt as if my legs were slowly becoming ice cubes. By the time I made it up to Cleveland Circle (1.5 miles into my run), I was debating as to whether or not I should run home to change! I decided against that, in hopes that when the sun finally came out I may warm up.

The next problem I encountered was that my Garmin stopped working at about 1.9 miles. In some ways this was a blessing because I was feeling a bit lethargic and it was nice to not be able to see the pace that I was running. On the other hand, I was depending on my little electronic device to let me know when I could turn around - when ten miles had passed. Now all I had was the time, no record of distance. At that point I decided I would run out for about 1 hour and a half and then turn around. I was feeling fairly tired so I figured I couldn't have been running all that fast but that I should still be able to make it to 10 miles within 1.5 hours.

I ran out on Beacon Street into Wellesley and a little bit past a turn around point for one of the Dana Farber group run 20 milers. I decided to turn around at 1 hour 28 minutes because I assumed at that point I had to have run the initial 10 miles. My route back was directly down the marathon course, over heartbreak hill and into Coolidge corner.

The name of the game for me for the past couple of weeks has been that running has been a bit tougher than usual. I am not feeling the normal bounce in my feet. Today made me feel a bit better though. My energy level ebbed and flowed throughout the run but overall I felt pretty good. And, I thought I had only done 20, only to find out that I actually did 21.8!

At work now I am definitely feeling a bit exhausted and extremely excited by the prospect of warm weather and vacation. I'll be back in 10 days to fill you in on my last four weeks of training before the 2009 Boston Marathon!!!!!!!!!!!!