Days 102 - 106: Oh. My. Gosh.

Ok, boys and girls, party time is over. Now the REAL training begins.

But first, I clearly haven't written in forever, so I have a little catching up to do.

Wednesday I didn't work out, like I predicted. But between the yoga class Tuesday and walking to campus and back on Thursday, I think I made up for it. Thursday, I also ran 6.5 miles with Chris as scheduled. Our time was pretty good... about 1:10. Better than my run Tuesday, but still room for improvement. Friday was a rest day, so nothing exciting. Saturday was... well... interesting. I went to Savannah, so I had to get creative with my cross training. I did 3 sets of 3 sun salutations in the morning to get myself up and awake and ready for the car ride. The afternoon was spent battling hurricane rip tides at Tybee beach... either I'm out of swimming shape already from earlier this summer, or I'm not quite as strong of a swimmer as I thought. I was really tired. Need to work on that for the triathalon. But it was the beach, so I really can't complain... salt water, sand, sea shells... lovely. We wandered all over downtown Savannah in the evening, taking in River Street and attending a haunted pub crawl. Yeah, so we drank beer... but we had to walk between all those pubs! Beer = carbs, walking = cross training. Totally counts. We did lots of extra walking this morning too, so I consider myself cross trained.

And now for today's adventure: 14 miles. Farthest I've ever run in my life. Going to be saying that a lot, I guess. But this was the first time over the 13.1 hurdle, and I was pretty nervous, especially since I had to run it by myself because Chris is out of town. Thankfully, my gluttony over the weekend paid off (hamburgers, gelato, pizza, beer, shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, etc etc etc). I had lots of energy and ran a really great first half... kept my pace steady between 10:30 - 11:30, felt strong and pain free, and actually enjoyed myself. The weather was a big help too: under 30% humidity, temperature under 85 when I started and continued to cool, ran a nice shady route. I made it through the first 10 miles still feeling ok. But the last 4 were like torture. I started hurting in my knees and ankles, my quads and calves started cramping, and I was just generally tired. And that last mile... I seriously thought I was going to have to quit. Most people think 14 shouldn't be that big of a deal, since I've "already run 13." But the thing is... 13 is still a big deal. 13 isn't easy. So 14 is not any less of a big deal. It was a struggle, and I'm a little scared for the upcoming continuous increase in mileage. In the end, though, I finished in 2:45:07... key words being "I finished."

From here on out, long runs are going to be rough. Every single one. But hopefully having Chris around will help. And I have hope that if I have reached the point that I can run a strong 10 miles feeling good (remember how miserable that first 10 miler was?), at some point the miles above 10 will start to feel easier too.