Saturday, 11/8/08

Today I ran a total of 13.2 miles (that's just over half a marathon!), broken up into two separate runs. See what happened below.

Today was ridiculous. I had to abort my planned long run about halfway through for two reasons. The first was one of the crazier things I've experienced running. There is a police academy right next to my house, and quite often, the cadets run around our neighborhood. When they do this, it's an event, with cop cars trailing them and stopping traffic and the cadets yelling at the top of their lungs and so on.

Well, I randomly got caught in the middle of their "run" (I'm putting that in quotes because about 75% of them were barely running, more like traipsing) and was forced to sprint up a big hill in order to get out of their way. This was during the first mile of my run, which had up to that point been going great. Once I sprinted up the hill, however, everything went wrong.

My calves tightened up from the effort, and to top it all off, the day became sweltering. I ran about three more miles, but realized that I was doing myself more harm than good. This is the first time in a long time that I've become legitimately overheated; when I walked in the house, I almost threw up! It was awful.

So I've come to a conclusion about how I'm going to do these long runs. The runs that are longer than I've gone before, such as this one and the next, which will be ten miles, I will do at night. It's much more important to cover the distance and get my body used to running the distance than it is to practice in heat. In terms of heat, I will do my long runs during my stepback weeks, which feature longish runs, in the morning. This will let me be in my element during the most challenging runs, and still let me practice in the heat.

EDIT: I ended up doing my 9 mile run tonight, as in Saturday night, as in about 12 hours after my terrible run this morning. I felt fine, the weather was perfect, and I really wanted to get the run done. So I just gritted my teeth and did it, and to my complete and utter shock it went brilliantly. I felt very strong, and actually held down a consistent 8 minute/mile pace for the first 4 miles of it. I then stopped to practice drinking water during a long run, and when I started up again, things went a little slower. But I felt very strong throughout the whole run; I was able to maintain a steady, solid pace throughout and never once felt overexerted.

There was nothing eventful about the 9-miler; everything running-wise went very smoothly. Oh, there were the oddities such as the truck that just stopped in the middle of an intersection I was approaching and didn't move (I ended up running behind him, at which point he sped off) or the guy who just seemed to be standing in his driveway for no reason at 11:45 on a Saturday night. He warned me about a car coming towards me that was very far away, and that I never came close to having any conflict with. Thanks, random guy. Thanks.

The thing I gained from today was a reminder/rediscovery of a mental toughness that I've always had but that I rarely exercise. Today, I just got the work I needed to do done, and did it without much thought or with any complaint. I listened to my body well, ran a great 9-miler tonight, and ended up running more miles in one day than I've ever done before.

So even though I had a lousy starting run, it ended up contributing to a very powerful and triumphant running day. If I can handle doing 13.2 miles in one day only four weeks into my training, I'm extremely confident that I can handle a marathon in 14 weeks. Amazing day!