Another day Another mile

Well the final long run of my marathon training plan has come to an end, it actually came to an end a couple of days ago but a little thing called life got in the way. I must say, I might actually miss running 20-21 miles a time. There's just something very therapeutic about being outside for 2 1/2 hours and the only thing you hear is the pounding of your feet on the pavement or the shuffling of rocks under every step along a gravel path; and how can I forget the sounds of the Broad Ripple homeless people yelling at one another or 2 Butler girls speed-walking with their Chanel sunglasses and talking about the upcoming Sigma Chi party. I finally got my Chicago Marathon Confirmation Ticket in the mail yesterday and thats when it all kinda hit me, my race is less than 3 weeks away! I'm feeling damn good about it though. While I didn't follow the plan to a "T" nor did I get in the number of long runs that I should've, after Sundays run, I'm more confident than ever that I will hit my goal in Chicago.

Lauren and I were both supposed to get 20 miles in so we figured we'd do it together and get it over with. The first 10 miles felt great for both of us, we were doing 7:30 splits and were feeling good. Although at the halfway point Lauren said she still hadn't found her "groove". For the 2nd half of the run we slowed the pace to about an 8:15 mile. Althought I would prefer to do the oppsite, go slow then pick up the pace, I wanted to simply get in the miles and feel great afterwards. It certainly did work though, around mile 18 I realized I felt as good as I did at mile 5. Although we did take several quick walking breaks, I feel like I would've felt great regardless, especially after what I was feeling the past few days. The days leading up to the race, my legs were completely shot. Between running a 6:40 split for 9 miles on Friday afternoon, followed by the Jason Mraz concert, standing up at work all day on Saturday then going to the Indy Jazz Fest afterwards, my feet were killing me. I thought the run would've been brutal. But for whatever reason it wasn't. After my 20 mile run last week, I was shot. I got home and wanted to do nothing more than lay my sweaty, salty ass on the floor. This time, I had no problem hopping in the shower to head to my friends for the Colts game.

Although I could probably say that I do love running now, I'm still not 100% convinced that the marathon is for me. I'm obviously still going to do Chicago and most likely other marathons in the future, but every ounce of me missed juggling swimming, biking and running. True, getting up at 4:45 to go swim is one of the worst thing in the world but getting to work at 8 am and knowing that you're already done with your morning workout is an awesome feeling. I like to look at it as squeezing 25 hours into a day because it's so frecking early that once you're done swimming, THEN you can start your day. It probably doesn't make sense but training for triathlons doesn't make sense either. I won't get into why I do triathlon too much though, I'll save that for another day.

Until now, I'm hanging up the hat on this entry...running 20 miles was easier than writing this damn thing. Maybe I'll come back and write some more...probably not though.