Saturday, 11/29/08

Today I ran 12 miles in 1:54:15.

Well, I have achieved my first major goal of this whole training process, which was to run farther in a single run than I ever had before. As you can see from the time, I ran this slow and methodically; there was no attempt to do anything but cover the distance. However, I can now safely say that the most I've ever run at once is twelve miles; before, it was ten.

I did have to do this run in less than ideal conditions. The Thanksgiving party I was at last night went way later than I thought it would, and I only ended up getting about five hours of sleep, which typically means for me that a part of my body is tighter than normal early on in the day. When I woke up, the area of my body that was tight was my hips, for some strange reason. My calves felt great all throughout the run, which is a first, but my hips were hurting constantly, making it hard to get a solid rhythm and consistent running form.

So, after a couple of miles I tried adjusting my shoes by tying them a little looser, and that actually ended up working, but at the expense of my feet being sore from the lack of support; my left foot in particular is in a lot of pain right now. Also, it was very cold at 6:30 in the morning (this is where my uncle recoils in horror at how early I ran), and it took a long time for my body to warm up.

I did get randomly fatigued around mile eight, but I used that as an opportunity to stop for a while and drink and stretch a bit. I'm assuming I got fatigued because of lack of sleep more than anything. Also, once I got past mile ten, I could definitely feel my body get physically drained. I know my brain was partially to blame for making it happen; I was thinking about how it was uncharted territory for me in terms of total mileage. When I finished, I was exhausted.

But despite all that, in general I felt very strong throughout the run, and enjoyed myself quite a bit. It was a nice change of pace running so early in the morning, and I felt very alone and peaceful for long stretches. I'm also extremely happy that I was able to discipline myself to not overeat for two nights straight; that actually gives me a lot of confidence in the future in terms of being able to follow a strict diet if necessary.

It's a great feeling to have accomplished something like this, and it hasn't really sunk in yet. I know that in the upcoming weeks, I'll be running longer distances than this, but this one, breaking my PR that has existed for something like seven or eight years, was the biggest mental hurdle of them all, at least until I get to twenty miles. I've now proven that I can push my body past its previous limits, and therefore am supremely confident in my chances of completing the marathon. Now, I get to pig out with all the leftover Thanksgiving food! Excellent!