Attitude and Intervals

That's what it takes to finish 21 miles! It also helps to have some awesome folks to run with. Thanks Jeannie, Jen, Julius, Anne and Chris for an exciting 12+ mile adventure. And special shout out to Kristie who did 18 with the faster folks then waited around and came out to run me in the last 3/4 mile! You rock!!

I am now a fully on board disciple of intervals from the beginning of a long run. If you've read some of my posts already you know I've been kind of up and down, wishy washy and inconsistent about it. In recent weeks I've started to realize the benefits and decided that for my 21 miler (which I did today so I can cheer everyone on next weekend) I wanted to do intervals from the beginning. It worked! I am sold! So much so that I think i'll finally get an interval counter for myself this winter. I have a birthday AND Christmas coming up afterall.

Attitude helps a lot too! I started thinking about today's run last Sunday. It was looming in front of me then. I knew I had to be upbeat and positive about it to be successful. I worked hard this week to stay upbeat and postive about it. I am proud of my ability to to do it, too. I'll spare you all the details but for a variety of reasons including weather, work and illness I did not do any weekday running this week. Yet I was strangley calm about it. There wasn't anything I could do that would make a difference for Saturday anyway (I reasoned) and I decided that getting sick was maybe a signal that I needed a break. In the past, I might have (no definitely would have) driven myself crazy worrying about missing it. In a way, it really did help. By Friday night I was itching to run. I was actually looking forward to 21 miles. Who'd've thunk it!!

So at a little after 7 off we went. We all started off (about 15 of us I think) in one large chunk. After the first mile we separated as everyone did their own thing. I stayed with Jeannie, Jen, Julius, Chris and Anne as we did 2.5 and 1 intervals. How sane it was. I finished the loop feeling energized! Even after a very graceful (?) demonstration of drop and roll about 2/3 of the way through. I turned around to see what happened when Jeannie turned back to see if she could find her sunglasses (she didn't). I should have stopped running and turned around but no I had to do it the hard way and ended up tripping over my feet. I didn't want to faceplant on the macadam so I leaned right and rolled over on the grass. I told the group I was "demonstrating" stop drop and roll in honor of fire prevention week. :)

At this point we got separated. Jen and Anne waited for Jeannie and Chris, Julius and I continued on. Unfortunately for Julius he was the only one with a running watch and so that left him to do the math of 2.5 and 1. As Chris said later "You could see the smoke coming out of his ears". As we finsihed the loop we headed back to our cars to remove some layers and I topped off my water bottles. This worked out well because as we came back out we were met by the other three and off we all went together over the "creepy" bridge.

Today was a very windy day. It was very noticeable going over the bridge. Once on the other side we opted for the river trail instead of the planned six miles on the SRT. We all love the River Trail so it seemed like a good choice. Well the emphasis today was on TRAIL. The route was ravaged from all the rains recently and flooding a few weeks ago. There were downed trees (big ones) and lots and lots of debris and puddles. Julius demonstrated his ablity to drop and roll after trying to run over one downed tree. His demo was challenged by two things. First he's a LOT taller than me so he had much farther to drop and there was no grassy spot to soften the fall. I'd give it a 7.3 out of 10 though. :)

We survived the River Trail obstacle course. It really was kinda fun! We made a pit stop at the Betzwood restrooms where we met up briefly with John, Pete, Renee and Kristie (faster folks). At this point we had finished 12.4 miles. The day's mileage called for 12. Chris, Jeannie and Anne wanted to do a bit more so we said good bye to Jen and Julius and headed out toward Norristown. I had 8.5 more to do so I  planned to go out and back 2 miles in each direction. They went with me for one and then turned around.

It was strange when they turned around. I kind of felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I have no idea where I come up with these images but we were talking about scary movies earlier so maybe that was it. Yes I was afraid of the Wizard of Oz when I was a kid. I mean, flying monkeys cmon! Anyway, I had this image of Dorothy heading off on the yellow brick road toward the emarald city by herself as I said good by to the others I'm definitely a first degree dork! (and proud of it)

The remaining 7.5 miles were ok. Without benefit of Jeannie calling out run walk intervals I was on my own. I decided to try 1/2 mile at a time. Almost twice or more than 2.5 running but I had no other benchmark. Besdies running 1/2 mile at a time might make it go faster?? I ended up walking more than planned (there's a lot to be said for peer pressure!) but i'm ok with it. The hardest part was the between 31 and 31.5. The wind (which was stronger now) just whipped through that open space. I was running into the wind and being tired already it was very slow going. I finally gave up and walked it. On the way back with the wind at my back it was much better. I also stopped to stretch a lot in the final 4 miles. Each time helped a lot.

Two items of note. I saw a fox run across the trail. Neat! And in that space between 31 and 31.5 there was a group (a large group) planting trees! So in a couple of years that stretch will be much nicer!

As I approached the 29.5, there was Kristie. I was so glad to see her. I was really really tired and feeling the run in my hips and feet. But with someone else to talk to I found enough energy to run the rest of the way in. Thanks Kristie!

Earlier this week I discovered the Gettysburg North South Marathon. I'll tell you more about it another time. For now, you only need to know that I really want to do it. I decided to wait until after my 21 mile run to be sure. And now I just have to wait until noon tomorrow because I decided a long time ago never to make any big decisions (positive or negative) within 24 hours of a long run or race. But if I stil feel this good tomorrow - I'm signing up!!