I woke up to go to North Park at 8am to start my run with the running group. I get there and the parking lot is full. I don't see the people I'm trying to meet. Then I see one guy. I put down the window to talk to him. He hadn't seen the ladies I normally run with but gave me a pointer on where to try to park. When I parked, I saw the one group leaving so I thought I missed them. I already wanted to quit. I knew 4 times around North Park would be awful alone. I started doing math early on. I remember starting to figure out what percent complete I was at .5 miles into the run. I thought for sure I'd quit at mile 5. The weather was just so miserable. The snow was annoying coming down on my eyes. My breathing was tough. It was also hard to get proper footing. I think my stride was half what it normally is. At 7.5% complete I just wanted to tweet how there was no way I was going to finish the run.
2 miles into it, I couldn't cut through the boathouse because they had it blocked off. They were setting up for some race. I couldn't believe I had to run the big hill so early on.
I took my first walk break at 3.25 miles into it. I sent a few texts at that time to try to get some motivating. All the texting caused me to end up walking for over a minute.
I completed loop 1 and my Garmin only said 4.87. I was shocked at this. It should have at least be 4.95 based on past experience. Later I learned the watch didn't start at the spot that I started on so I ran probably .1 more and don't have the data. I just figured that was bonus distance.
Then I stopped at my car to get my water belt so I wouldn't get dehydrated. I started back up again and then I forgot to start my timer back up. I'm the worst at stopping and starting my timer I guess. I lost a little bit of distance there. I think between .08 and .1.
The second loop through I thought for sure would be my last. Cutting through the boat house this time (middle of 7th mile) I ran into the people I was trying to run with at 8am. We ran together for almost 3 miles until they were done. I went much faster with them. We were doing 2:24 splits most of the time. I was doing 2:36 or worse on my own. It was a struggle to keep up with them. They were giving me some marathon pointers too. Then they were done. I decided I would add my 2nd coat because I was feeling chilled and also feeling soaked. It took about a minute to add the coat because I had to take off my outer coat to put the new coat under it. I was sad I left my waterproof coat at home. I wasn't sure if the pink coat I had was waterproof and it is not. I think I need a light weight water proof jacket because the one I have was really warm when I ran with it the last time.
In between mile 11 and 12, the 10k race met up with the loop I was running. I ran with them for 2 miles or so. It was a little awkward since I wasn't part of the race but people cheered me on like I was. I was going the same pace as the runners I was near but they were on mile 3 and I was on mile 12. Some were in costume. My favorite were Mario and Luigi. The best part was when one of the people cheering told them to hurry because Peach needed their help. After the boathouse I continued on my path and they turned right to head toward the ice skating rink. The one continuous mile I ran with the runners was faster than the ones around it.Then I was done with the third loop and I ran past my car looking longingly at it. I could easily stop. If I stopped I wouldn't get 20 in this weekend and I wouldn't get to blog about it, so I figured I suffered through 15 miles that I didn't want to do so what is 5 more.
Right around mile 16 I saw cars lined up at the light and then at the stop sign leading up to that road. I wanted to walk. I didn't want to walk with all those cars seeing me. Especially since all the cars were in some way related to the race. I decided I'd wait until after the cars for my walk break and I'd keep going. Well .25 mile down the chain of chairs I hear someone shout "Colleen" and it was Adrienne. I stopped my timer to talk to her for less than a minute. She got a trophy for winning (I think) and told me I was doing so well with my training. Her son was in the car and she introduced me to him but my mind was in a blur with everything that I can't remember his name. 2 ft from the car I realized I already forgot his name.
Finally I was getting close to 18 miles. That was my old maximum and I didn't feel as crappy as I did the last time I ran 18 miles. Granted I was slow and awful feeling the entire time but I didn't hit a wall. I just wanted to keep going.
When I hit 19 miles I decided I would try to go for my last mile being under 10 minutes. I thought that would be impossible because I hadn't done that yet except for when I ran with the 2 other ladies.Well I did it. It was my fastest mile of the thing. I even had to run past the car and double back due to Garmin mistakes. I even had to run past the car again even though I thought I paid attention to how far past the car I was and subtracted and doubled it and thought it would be at 20 miles. Turning around always causes me to lose time and I still beat 10 minutes. Once I hit 20, I walked a little to catch my breath.
I did go further than 20 because of the walking at the end, the time I forgot to start my timer, and the Garmin mistake at the beginning. Today I didn't get any bonus seconds. I didn't even play a game with myself with that, but I did get some bonus distance.
I thought it would take me 4 hours to complete it. I can't remember why I thought that but then I thought I'd do 5 miles in an hour so I'd do 20 miles in 4 hours. Then later I realized that was slow and if I was at my peak for long runs, I'd do 6 miles in an hour so then I would complete it at a best time ever of 3:20. After 15 miles, I thought if I really pushed I could be done in 3:45. I was pretty close to 3:45 but beat that. If you extrapolate my time from today, I will finish a marathon in 4:48:14. What are the chances the extrapolation will be pretty accurate?
 |
| My layers |
No comments:
Post a Comment