As usual, I didn't sleep very well the night before. For whatever reason, every long run we've had since we've surpassed the 14 mile mark has had me stupid nervous the night before. I can't even think about how I'm going to be the night before the actual marathon...
Jaime had mapped out a route that she and Tracy did when they trained for their first marathon. It was similar to last weeks, so I anticipated hills, but she said it was pretty flat after the halfway point. Regardless of the hills, I was happy to be running anywhere but in town. I am seriously over the streets of Murphysboro.
We all met up at Leah's house and headed out. A little bit in (and by little bit, I mean, like, 10 seconds or so) Jaime realized her watch wasn't working. We stopped to take a look at it, but couldn't figure it out. About a quarter mile in, I had to stop because the ends of my shoelaces were tapping on my foot pod. No one else could hear it, but all I could hear was "tap, tap, tap." It was driving me nuts. Then, about 2.5 miles in, Leah's hair tie decided to break. We managed to fix her hair tie enough that she could at least get her hair off of her neck. AND then at mile 4ish, I realized at some point I managed to lose satellite on my watch, so it was over a mile behind Leah's. Now, none of this really got to any of us, but it just seemed a bit silly to have so many issues less than a few miles into our longest run to date!
Jaime's awesome husband, Jack, was kind enough to meet us at our midway point with some water and Gatorade. He even brought Steve the biscuits & gravy and coffee he requested-- and Steve ate it! There is no way I could have eaten something so heavy and kept on running. It didn't impact him one bit. Tim said Steve felt pretty darn good while running and even commented that he felt he could go the whole 26.2 miles that day. Maybe instead of gels I should be pack packets of gravy! :)
I typically don't drink Gatorade on training runs, but when that bottle hit my lips, I just chugged it down. It tasted SOOOO good. I knew pretty much instantly that I would regret it. My belly felt so FULL after. Yeah, biscuits and gravy definitely wouldn't work for me!
Shout out to Jack for being our personal Waterboy-- he's a keeper, Jaime!
We headed back out and yeah, I could totally feel all that Gatorade sloshing in my belly. We had a few more hills to get up before we turned down a road that would be a bit flatter, so I just told myself to suck it up and keep running. We were almost to the turn when we saw Tim and Steve standing there. When we made it up the hill, they told us that a big, black dog was about a mile and half down the (flat) road. Sigh. I had my mace and Jaime remembered the dog and thought that it would leave us alone, but with the full bellies, we erred on the side of caution-- ain't nobody got time to run faster than a dog!
So, this meant hills and coming up with a route on the fly. Just another goofy obstacle for us. Seriously, kookiest morning ever.
Despite the disappointment of not having a patch of flat to look forward to, we soldiered on. At this point, I was feeling okay. My stomach still felt a bit full, but it wasn't causing me any issues. We improvised the best we could as we headed back towards the lake. Once we made it to the concessions there, we had about 4 more miles left. We stopped there to use the restroom, stretch and do a gel. This is pretty much when I started to fall apart.
I sweat a lot when I run. I mean, A LOT. Pretty much every inch of clothing on me was drenched. Now, by some miracle, I wasn't chaffing (for once!) but my clothes just felt heavy and stuck to my skin. I was uncomfortable. Despite my body working overtime to cool me off, I was hot. The sun was fully out and I knew that once we left the lake, there would be little shade. Also, the bottoms of my feet were hurting. When we stopped, it was uncomfortable to just stand on them. I caught myself getting a little whiny and tried my best to push all the annoyances to the back of my brain. We only had a little bit more to go. I could do this. We set a goal to just have about a mile left when we hit Cemetery Hill, and headed out.
I lagged behind Leah and Jaime those last 4 miles. We walked when we needed to. Sometimes all that kept me running was just so I could walk again. Since we were using Leah's watch as our guide, I made sure I didn't fall too behind-- I wanted to be done as soon as that darn watch beeped.Thankfully, we ended up finishing a bit earlier than expected. Sweet relief! Despite all the silly obstacles, we finished. Seventeen miles- DONE!
Could not have ran 17 miles without these awesome ladies!
For whatever reason the last miles of our training runs have been unfairly hard on me. Even when we ran 13 last week, I melted down a bit at the end. Tim assures me that it's just mental and that the day of the marathon I'll be too amped to have a meltdown, but I don't know. Maybe it's all mental, but I really do feel like I can't run any further. I physically hurt. It's very frustrating because it makes it hard to feel confident about actually signing up for something so big.
Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not proud of myself. The very fact that I got out of bed at 4am and pounded the pavement for over 3 hours is enough to make me feel like a rockstar! Of course this rockstar's idea of "partying" afterwards was napping all day on the couch! Oh, and getting a foot massage from the hubs!
He's the best.
Next week, we have 18 miles and then I think we fall back before we do (gulp) 20 miles. I got this. As long as I have my running buds with me, I'll be fine.
Sixty-three days until the marathon!
