Friday morning, Abby and I were meeting to get our long run for the weekend out of the way. Abby had a wedding on Saturday, and I had Beer Sprocket.
I had heard talk of it being cold on Friday morning, but I think I was a little in denial. I got up, even though I could hear the wind howling, and put on my running capri's, a short sleeve shirt, with a long sleeve pull over, and grabbed my gloves and headed to the Y. Man, what was I thinking? The whole way there I was trying to figure out how we could run 20 miles outside and not be affected by the wind. I was contemplating how we could change our route, and still be able to hit our water stops.
I got to the Y and went inside for a bathroom break, Abby got there not long after, and she said "Tell me if I'm crazy, but do you want to run inside?" Oh thank god! We planned to run five miles on the track, five on the treadmill, and then repeat. We grabbed a clicker from the front desk, because who can keep track of all those laps?
We headed up and got started, it was 6:15 am at that time. So this track is relatively small. You have to run 11 laps to equal one mile. Our plan was to run two miles and then walk a lap, and we did that for the first ten miles. Yep, the first ten. By that point, we were comfortable on the track, it wasn't very crowded and we decided to stay put, or to stay as put as we could while shooting for 220 laps around the Y track.
After ten miles, we decided to walk a lap every mile, and we even went against the grain a bit. When it wasn't too crowded, we'd reverse our direction and just dodge the few walkers/runners that were there. We only got comments from the grumpy old men a couple of times, and for the most part when we explained that we were up there for 20 miles they were okay with it. We reached a breaking point at 16 miles. We decided to head to the workout room and finish up on the dreadmill. We walked all the way over there, yes, it's far after you've already ran 16 miles. Unfortunately, when we got there all the treadmills were full, so we had to turn around and go back to the track to finish up the insanity.
Did I mention that the track is upstairs? So we added an extra trip up the stairs with four miles to go. But we did it, we did 220 miles, with a couple of extra. We are convinced that we set some sort of Y record for that. Who else would be insane enough to do that? We did get to see the people coming and going in the parking lot, and we were very thankful to not be out in the cold and wind.
My toes took quite a beating. The middle toe on my left foot, which is the foot that took the most inside turns on the track, had a horrible blood blister under the nail. I considered taking pictures, but decided it was better not to. I did get it popped and without all the pressure under the nail, it feels much better. Other than that, I was not near as sore as I thought I would be. Don't get me wrong, I was tired as I baked cupcakes the rest of the day, but overall I felt pretty darn good.
That's the longest run I will do before the marathon, which is less than two weeks away now, and I am confident now that I can handle it. It may not be pretty, but I am sure I can get it done now.
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