23 Miles!

Have you ever watched Disney’s version of Aladdin? When he frees the Genie for the first time, he shouts “10000 years! It gives you such a crick in the neck!”. Well, when I finished today’s long run, I felt like shouting “23 miles! It gives you such a pain in the hamstring!”

Let’s start with yesterday, though. The schedule called for 8 miles with 10x100 strides thrown in for good measure. As soon as I left the house, I wished I had run the 15 miles from the day before a bit slower, because my legs felt rather dead. I was immediately worried about my long run, but was hopeful that I would have fully recovered by Friday. The first stride outs felt rather awkward; it’s very difficult to get a fast turnover if you’re feeling stiff. But after the second or third, the legs started responding in a positive way, and I ended the run feeling much better than at the beginning.

This left me with today’s 23 miles. As you all know by now, I was rather nervous about this. I’ve never run 23 miles in training before, and even though I was confident that I would be able to handle it, I still felt apprehensive.
I went to bed at around 10 o’clock – I had been busy until then and couldn’t get finished any earlier. Luckily, I fell asleep very quickly, which meant I got a bit over 6 hours of sleep before the alarm went off at 4:15 am. When I ate my breakfast cereal, all of a sudden it started raining heavily. Oh please, no. I don’t want 23 miles on soggy feet! It was like Mother Nature telling me “what you’re about to do is stupid. Go back to bed.” I didn’t heed the advice, and went out of the door. I left 2 water bottles, one singlet wrapped in a plastic bag and one gel at the driveway and headed off. The rain had nearly stopped already, and the running conditions were ok – I could have done without the blustery wind, though. The first 9-mile loop went ok, the weather was fine apart from one or two showers along the way. On the way out I used my headlamp (for the first time since the winter), and that took some time to get used to. I turned it off after 5 miles, because it was getting bright enough to make out the road without help. When I neared our driveway, my intestines woke up, and I had to do an unscheduled pit stop back home. I desperately hoped the kids wouldn’t wake up, because then I would have to give them breakfast, and the break would be much longer. Luckily, nobody stirred.
I set out for a second 9-mile loop, still feeling ok. I grabbed a water bottle and carried it around with me for about 1.5 miles, where I left it at the roadside to pick it up on my way back. When I came close to the turn-around point of that loop, I started to feel tired. After all, I was already past the half-marathon distance at that stage. It did rain more on this loop than on the first one, and the wind was stronger as well. I just concentrated on running, one step at the time. With one mile of the loop left, I realised that I had run past my water bottle, and completely forgotten to pick it up. Damn. I wondered briefly if I should head back and pick it up, but decided against it. It’s still there for all I know, I’ll pick it up this evening.

The end of the second 9-mile loop was a kind of test. I knew that I might be tempted to bag the rest of the workout if I was tired, but actually I felt very well. I changed my shirt, picked up the second water bottle, and triumphantly looked at the gel. “I don’t need you!”. The third loop was only 5 miles, my old trusty route to Ard-na-Sidhe, which I must have run about 100 times in the last 12 months. I knew I would make it. It’s just 2.5 miles out, 2.5 miles back, and then I’m done. I enjoyed the first 5 minutes running in a dry top, and then the heavens opened, and I was drenched again. The downpour lasted for over 2 miles, so much for a dry top. I did wait for fatigue to strike, but it never really came. Andrew said we do those long runs for the last mile, and eventually I got that far. At that stage my left hamstring, which had sent out the odd twinge, started hurting a lot more, and I sure was glad to be close to home. I’m confident that I would have been able to continue on for 3 more miles, had this been a marathon, but might have aggravated something in the process. As it was, I reached our driveway still in decent shape, in a time of 3:12.

The first 9 mile loop had taken 1:16, 8:26 pace. The second loop 1:15, 8:20 pace, and the third loop, 5 miles, 41 minutes, 8:12 pace. Wow, I actually managed to accelerate all the way to the end. That’s encouraging. And while you should never predict your race time from one training run, those 23 miles would most likely have set me up for a sub 3:40 finish in a marathon. I’ll certainly take plenty of encouragement from that.

Monthly mileage for August: 284 miles. That’s one lousy mile less than for July. Damn.

31 Aug: 8 miles, 1:08, 8:30 pace, with 10x100 strides
1 Sep: 23 miles, 3:12, 8:20 pace