Preface: I somehow have lost my ability to do simple math, because my goal was to run 80 to 85 miles this week; most importantly running 15, 30, 20 on the weekend as my final hard weekend. I cut Friday a little short, but realized on Saturday during the run that with the 20 on Sunday I’d be at 95. I recounted many many times in my head during those 5.5hours, to make sure I was right about that.
After yesterday’s 30 miles, the plan was to run 20 miles on tired legs to continue strengthening them. (At least that’s my theory for my training. And since I'm my own coach, it's a correct theory. Ha!) The plan was to run 2 miles with Karma, then 5.5ish over to meet Damon who wanted 10, then 2.5 back to my car for 20 miles. 20 painful miles.
I ran the 2 miles with Karma and my legs were absolutely dead. Amy and Mark were finishing up their run and first thing Amy said was: “You look so tired”, and boy was I. I had already decided to just send a text message to Damon telling him I was calling it a day. When I told them I had no idea how I was going to get my run in, she said: “It will pay off later”. And that was all I needed. Amy’s awesome and super inspiring to me and always has great words of wisdom. This time, all it took was 5 little words to irritate me... to cause an itch... A good irritating itch!
I left Karma in the car, and took off figuring I’d at least run over to Damon’s gym and then tell him in person that I was not going to run with him. That would get me 10 miles, half of what I intended, but better than 2! And since I was already 10 miles over my weekly plan, it was fine.
“No one cares if you skip a run. No one cares if you cut a run short. No one cares if you hit your weekly mileage. No one cares if you hit your time splits on workouts.But what you are doing is cheating yourself, and you are only betraying the commitment you made to yourself when you started your journey and chose your goal.” MW 12/20/09That’s the newest quote I came up with for myself in the first mile after leaving Karma and Amy. You got in my head, Amy... damn you! ; )
So as I’m running a turtle pace listening to mellow U2 songs, I ran into Muz who was going the other direction. His plan was to run 12-15 miles or so, meeting Damon for 10 as well. He joined me in my direction, an we both quickly realized that even by snailing along, we’d be very early to meet Damon, so we added 2 miles to our run. I told him repeatedly I would be cutting things short because my legs were dead and I was exhausted. He acknodleged his legs were dead from yesterday too.
We met Damon, and I informed him I was going short, and slow. I then told them that even cutting my run short would have me reach my intended goal of 80-85.
About 5 miles into our little run and a long water break at Rogue, I finally started to feel a little better. I told Muz and Damon a little more about my inability to do math and how I was flirting with 100. “Can I really end my week so close to 100?” was one of the many things I said! Long story short, next thing you know, Damon’s intended 10 miles turned into 12, and Muz’s intended 12-15 or so, turned into 20!
And my 2miles, turned into possibly 10, then into 12, then into 20, then into 25! It was painful, but I kind of had to do it!
I got home, mapped out my mileage (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/
So, an hour after finishing my painfully long, unplanned “25” mile run, I had to go out for 0.8. I mapped out a silly 0.8 around my house and hobbled on dead, cold, and sore as hell legs to get to 100! One of the most painful but necessary 7 minutes of running ever!
But hey, not only did I prove to myself that it was possible to run the distance and more. (and actually even feel better for the middle miles, cranking out several 7:20min/mile paced miles, and even 1 under 7 mins!)
Now it’s time to celebrate the end of hard training and welcome the arrival of my taper for 3 weeks!
Did someone say Sunday night Beer and Homeslice Pizza?! Oh yeah!
Overall I had a ton of fun, even tho many of these things sound
negative:
- maybe a few too many beers on Friday learning how to ride a unicycle
along with the tall bike, office olympics, Jewish Christmas games and
slowbike 2009 world championships.
- 6.5 hours of trail running in Bandera on Saturday.
- very sticky mud, made shoes feel very heavy, and running quite tough
for 1/2 the time.
- nice fall slipping of a mud ledge and scraping up my arms, and legs
landing in a thorny vine bush.
- got confused on direction of trail.
- great hill time.
- ran two inside loops for good measure after getting lost the first
time for over 2 miles.
- ran through plenty of cactus garden and got torn up legs again.
Incidentally, I love how the teeth feel
When they cut into your legs!
- didn't nutritionate correctly for the low temps and extra effort
required with all the sticky, heavy mud.
- ate plenty after the run.
- drank plenty of beer after the run.
- slept like a champ in John and Julia's RV!! Luv you guys!
- ran another 2.5 hours on Sunday.
- got lost yet again.
- found my way again.
- ran repeats up sky island to make up for yesterday's inability to
get the distance I hoped for.
- was last one back to the lodge running my miles of picking up
markers so I walked around in my boxers outside after my hot shower!
Ha!
Official details: Google Wave is an online communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions more seamless -- in one place, you can communicate and collaborate using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is a conversation with multiple participants -- participants are people added to a wave to discuss and collaborate on its content. Participants can reply any time and anywhere within a wave, and they can edit content and add more participants as a wave develops. It's also possible to rewind waves with the playback functionality, to see what happened, and when.
My version: If you have any need ever of sharing a map, a photo, editing a document, chatting with multiple people about a project, etc. Google wave is a pretty cool tool that will allow you to do that.
I have 16 invites left.
On the other hand, looks like even covering my basil didn't help it
survive the freeze. Oh well. Got a good yield from it for the whole
summer.
For instance, here's my weekly mileage for each week of 2009, along with the races I've run. (Austin wasn't really a race, but it was a hard effort run) 
The day went fine until 20 miles in where i got really light headed and felt like i was going to faint if in continued on. We had been running at a pretty fast rate all day, but that was not the problem. We had just finished a loop, and I had reloaded with calories and fluids. 
