11 Down

Julie and I ran 11 miles on Thursday morning and man it was tough from the get go.  We had skipped a long run the week before due to illness but had run several shorter runs.  Still I was nervous about 11 ~ more nervous than I had been about 10 for some reason.  We were scheduled to meet at 8 a.m. and when I woke up it was pitch black outside, pouring rain and the wind was blowing.  So not good.  I whipped off a text that went something like "Are we seriously going to do this?!?"  After a bit of back and forth discussion about our options for rescheduling, we decided just to go for it. 

We had decided to mix up the route of our usual long runs, so we met at Julie's instead of the The Pill Box. I have a 6 mile loop mapped out through town from Julie's which turns around and heads back at one of the elementary schools, out past The Pill Box.  Our plan for mixing up the 11 miles was to run the 6 mile town loop, but at the turn around keep running out and then back another 2.5, giving us the 5 extra miles. 

I think the run was going pretty well until we got the the normal turn around spot.  Having to run another 5 miles there was mentally a kicker and suddenly things got harder.  The extra 5 also heads out into open farm land, where the wind was getting intense.  The last half mile before we turned around felt like we were laying forward into a headwind and pushing through.  Not fun!  The turn around was a relief, as was having that killer wind at our backs, but still the run felt tough.  We both popped a Shot Blok hoping for a little relief, but I'm not sure how much it offered.  Do stale Shot Bloks leftover from Portland to Coast last August still work?  lol

We pushed through, both believing things would get better once we had passed The Pill Box.  Getting past that was definitely tough as it's our normal ending point on long runs.  We made it past, though, and finally started to get a bit of a second wind in the last 3 miles.  We finished strong, both of us immensely relieved we had done the run and not put it off, and immensely relieved it was over.  I was fighting a bit of a panicky feeling about how much farther our long runs will take us in the near future, but tried hard to squash that down.

I am so thankful for Julie, who is crazy enough to be out there running these nutso runs with me, with no immediate training goals of her own.  I want a marathon plan for you, Julie!  You're so strong, you need to do one.

So, 11 behind me.  On to 12.