Early in the week last week, I started freaking out about the distance. The most I had run was 10 miles. So each day, I'd have to try to calm myself down and just run what was on the schedule. I think the other part was that even though the Easter Egg Hunt was over, I still had a final exam and final paper due during the week, adding to the stress.
This was actually the first week in awhile that I ran all my scheduled miles. This was my heaviest training week at 25 miles total. And I did it all while in the last week of classes for the semester.
Starting Thursday, I began to carb up with Thai food. On Friday, I had lots of pasta and went to bed fairly early, but not as early as I would have liked. My run began at 8am, so I wanted to make sure I got enough sleep.
I had decided to get up at 6:30 on Saturday morning, and when my alarm went off, I snoozed it until 6:45, then got up and got dressed. I stressed about what to wear, because for you practice run you're supposed to wear the same thing you'll wear in the race. But, the temperature here that day was very different than it's supposed to be in D.C. So, I went with tights and a couple layers on top.
When I got there, I asked our coach, Bruce, where exactly I was going and mentioned that I just had to remind myself that I was only adding an additional 5K to my longest run. He looked at me and said "you've only run 10 as your longest run?". And then I freaked out again. I said that was what the training schedule had me doing. Apparently, that was a big jump between 10 and 13 miles, but he said he understood the logic. Ok....
Because only one of our coaches was there, I got to run most of the 13 miles on my own. I actually started a little differently on the route than everyone else, doing a mile loop before going out on the normal route. I've gotten pretty used to the route, which is basically a square loop, adding in a jut out into a neighborhood from about mile 2 to 4, and then coming back to an approximate 2 mile loop around the lake. For 13 miles, it was the 1 mile loop then the normal route, with 3 times around the lake. Eek, 3 times?!
All week, I had been running a faster average pace than I had been. My average pace for the entire week was 11:08/mile. I felt crappy the first mile or so, then started to hit my stride. Though, in the neighborhood, it's fairly hilly, so I walked a bit, but not as much as I usually do. As I was coming back to get closer to the lake, Bruce met me there.
He was surprised I had already gotten that far. I'm fairly slow, but I was running faster than I had a month ago. So we got to the lake, and I kept fairly true to my 7 minutes running, 1 minute walking pattern. After the first time around the lake, which we passed two of the 10 mile runners in the group, he went back off to find the 20 mile runner, and I began my second loop around the lake. I ended up taking some sport beans at the aid station, got some water and kept going.
By the time I got close to the end of the second loop, I was around 9 miles. And that is when my phone crashed. And this isn't the first time. It just locked up, and I had to restart it. This caused what I thought was losing the entire progress of the run on Runkeeper. I was so angry, and ended up walking while I was trying to deal with it. I finally got it working again, and then had to restart Runkeeper at zero.
At that point, I had one more time around the lake, then I could get out of the neighborhood and it was straightaways from there on out. I ran those last four miles at a slower pace than the first nine miles. As I got to the end of the last loop around the lake, I started crying. I had been on pace to do really well in my time and beat what I had estimated I would finish at. And then I just lost it when my phone crashed and the wind sort of got sucked out of me. And, I had now reached the further I had ever gone in a run.
But I ended up getting out of the neighborhood, and walked a little more. I probably could have run a little more, but the frustration had caught up with me. So I started looking for small goals along the way, knowing I had less than two miles to go. I stopped at the last aid station, which was about a mile from the end. At that point, I just had to go straight, take a quick right and quick left back to the Memorial Center. So when I got to my turn, I didn't care how far I had run exactly, because I was almost there. Except I looked at my phone and I still needed a couple tenths of a mile more. So I ran in the parking lot to get it and then hit STOP.
I went inside, stretched out and then went home, knowing that I just needed to take a shower, then I could get food and then go get a massage that I so smartly scheduled weeks ago (thanks Jamie, Carrie and Mary Jo!).
And on my way home, I had already resolved I was getting a new phone ASAP and that I was happy that the rest of the weekend had been scheduled for me to do whatever I wanted (i.e. sleep). In some ways, I don't feel like I actually did 13 miles. It seems a bit surreal. But even though it doesn't show 13 miles on Runkeeper (it shows 8.99 miles and 4 miles in two separate activities), it was 13 miles.
I did it once, so that means I can do it again, right?
I guess we'll find out in 19 days!
I guess we'll find out in 19 days!
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