Middle-of-the-Pack Girl

I am so happy, and I could not have done it today without Melissa, my running partner. She’s recovering from shin splints, but she still met me at 7 this morning (I was of course the second one to arrive, she is always so punctual). She kept track of my times between water stops, and said after a while she could time my arrival within 30 seconds to a minute. Now that’s scary! But she’s a CPA, so that does not surprise me.

Overall, she said my time was about 3:20 – that didn’t include the time I took at stops. Until those last 3 miles, I think I was doing between 10-11 minute miles. She was happy to see I was back to my usual sweaty mess at the end, and so was I. No more potassium pills for me, thanks!! I did the teams 5.6 mile loop in Beverly three times – my third lap around was actually shaping up to be the fastest of the three, I think, even when I walked after about mile 14.6. It’s not hard to figure out why – at that point, I just wanted to finish!

The day started out sort of rainy – so you could say 100% humidity, I guess. At this point, I’m used to that. Changed shirts at about the 11.2 mile point (like I said, I sweat a lot, so I’ve even ordered 2 TNT shirts for the marathon.) Luckily it stopped by the time I’d done the first 3 or so miles. It stayed overcast for most of my run, until around the 14.5 or 15 mile point.

At the 13.1 mile water stop, an elderly gentleman was walking past Melissa, and I think he asked how far I’d run and he couldn’t believe I’d already run 13 miles, with 5 more to go, so he asked if we were doing this for a cause. We told him we were both going to be doing a marathon in October, and he was very nice with his remarks and wished us luck. It’s amazing how something like that can buoy you when you need it most.

I am happy to say that I didn’t walk between water stops until I hit the 14.7 mile point. That’s when Melissa told me I was actually running faster that loop than the other two. I have to admit, at that point, I really did feel like a 70 year old woman, or at least like I must have been running like one. But who cares? I felt much better this time, especially at the end, than I did last week. I took 2 ibuprofen around mile 9, anticipating that “tired pain” I got over the last 2 miles last week. That definitely helped – preemptive pain relief!

Oh, and as I was literally about .3 from the end, that’s when the commuter rail decided it needed to come through. “Are you [expletive deleted] kidding me?” is what I yelled out – you can enter your favorite swear word in there – mine began with an F Melissa got coffee and I got chocolate milk with a bagel at the Dunkin Donuts afterward. Chocolate milk has never tasted so good!

When I got home, after showering, just like last week, I sat in ice in the bathtub. Sounds painful, but really it feels so much better afterward. Tonight, my husband and I are going out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary of a few days ago, and tomorrow we’ll do something else, hopefully on the water. Tonight, I’ll just be too beat to do much walking around, big surprise right?!

I do have a question though – when you hit that 15 or 16 mile point, what kinds of things can you do to keep up the mental edge to keep going? That’s when the “tiredness” hits me – I need distraction techniques!!

I downloaded new tunes last night on the iPod – what a difference! While this song is not really fast enough to run to for long, it kind of sums up how I felt today:

Melissa, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. This run today was for both of us – you’ll be back to running with me and kicking my butt soon enough.

Maybe it was because it was run mainly in the dark. Mainly it’s because today there was basically no humidity for a change. Maybe because it’s my anniversary. Maybe because the planets are all aligned or in retrograde. I don’t know the reason why, and I don’t care. All I do know is tonight felt great, and now I have ice on my legs so that they feel great again on Saturday for the 18 miler!

By all accounts, tonight should not have been a great run – didn’t eat as much all day as I normally do. Got home and unwrapped the roses my husband had left behind (two different bouquets since he was not sure which I’d like more – all red, or a bunch of pink, white and yellow.) (Yes, ladies, he has learned after all the years we’ve been together – when in doubt, get both!) Anyway, I only left at about 7:30 and planned on running about 6 miles. This is my rolling hill loop that I do when at home on Thursday nights. Tonight, where I normally feel the hills, I could hardly remember running up them.

Normally I don’t mention work on this blog, because I want to keep my work and my running life separate. But today I think part of my great run was due to a very positive experience at work. My boss and I made a presentation to a large number of students who act as mentors and advisors to first year law students. We showed them a project we’ve been working on steadily for over a year, and it was pretty great to hear some of the students say loudly enough for everyone to hear “that’s cool” and to hear how amazed they all were to know all of the services that we offer. I work in such a large school that it is very hard to know if you’re succeeding or not, whether you are “getting to them” (meaning the students, and everyone else). Today, I felt like we did get to them, and we heard some very favorable comments from the students who arranged for our talk afterward. I cannot tell you how good that felt. The last time I felt like I had such a great run was after I talked to the Law Review students as a group and felt like the meeting went well. These two meetings were, I hope, just the beginning of our opening the lines of communications with many students. Never overvalue the strength of word of mouth in getting your message across. Anyway, the positive feelings from both meetings crossed over into my run and I’m glad for it.

Now let’s just hope I can keep those positive feelings going on Saturday!!!

Happy Running Everyone!