Little Miss Runner Pants

ow.ow. ow ow ow ow ow OU-CHA.

::more laughter::

heh. WHEW. yeah.

so 14 miles huh? goooood times.

this run was not fun, easy or enjoyable.... and that pretty much sums it up. but who am i to not give my usual mile-by-mile re-cap right? so here goes...

before our run, Coach K gathers us together for our usual pre-run "hey have fun out there" little pep-talk that he always does.... except this time, it was different..

"alrighty folks. it's gunna be hot out there. i want you guys to take it easy today. make this a nice and easy 14 miles"...(what the? nice? easy? fourteen miles? those three words dont belong in the same sentence together, fyi....but anyway, moving on...).."you all need to be taking in your waters, your gu's, your gatorade. walk when you need to. i dont want anyone getting hurt out there...if you normally run a 10 minute mile.." (obviously he wasnt talking to the likes of me at this point).."you need to bring it down to an 11-11:30 minute mile. be careful out there..."

those were the words coming out of his mouth. but to me, what he was actually saying was...

"you all are about to embark on one of the most grueling runs of your marathon training career. it's going to suck, and you'll probably want to cry. see if you can manage not to die. and by the way, its hot"...

obviously this didnt bode well, and the enthusiam for the run i had somehow mustered up in the last 12 hours quickly dissipated, to be replaced by fear, nerves and basic dread. but what was i to do? i had 14 miles facing me.... so i gave myself a hardly little "you can do this" pep talk, and ya know... game on.

the first three miles were cheese. i kept pace with the girls who just a few weeks ago left me in their dust, and i was going slooo-oow. i said to myself, "self... you got 'dis in 'da BAG!!!"... i was unstoppable. i was a machine. i was.... delusional, but more on that later...

as the water-stops came and went i ended up passing teammates left and right...
Texas Boy and i had a little talk this past week, and we(he) decided that since i wont be running any faster, i need to work on shaving off time at my water-stops. (he decided... he's a bit of a bully. i think he's rooting for me, in his own little way.... but one can never be sure!)... anyway, by doing so i found myself keeping pace with Stripe Shirt Girl. as most of you by now know, i'm not big on running partners..... but running with Stripe Shirt Girl was different. as we ran, our pace matched...our feet were in synch... our breathing was in synch, hell, the bobbing of our pony-tails was in synch, and for the first time in the history of.... me.... i actually enjoyed the act of running WITH a partner!!!
hoorah!!
i'm NOT anti-social!!!
i CAN run and talk at the same time!!!

so that kinda rocked. miles 4-8 Stripe Shirt and i pretty much ran together. we talked about watches and heart rate monitors... we talked about running, training.... we quietly cursed the elite runners that kept passing us by.... we shamelessly oohed and ahhed at the amazingly gorgeous out of control beautiful two male shirtless specimens that passed us (running the opposite direction) and together contemplated turning around ourselves and following them (which we didnt... but we really REALLY wanted to. heh!)... it was good times.

but by mile 8, it was well into the 7:00 hour...approaching 8:00, and the sun was just relentless. after our mile 8 water-stop things kinda went downhill, like whoa. Stripe Shirt and i found ourselves playing cat and mouse because we were both taking walk breaks and then getting a second wind at different times, and when we did find ourselves running side by side, neither of us had much energy for conversation. even when we did feel like conversing, our minds (or mine, rather) werent quite up to the task....

somewhere around mile 11 a woman passed us, running in the opposite direction... as soon as she was out of ear-shot i asked Stripe Shirt, "did you see the drip sweating off her of?"... huh? i started laughing, gathered my thoughts and righted myself, but quickly realized i was in no shape to think/run and talk at the same time... so i took a walk break, drank some water and suddenly just hit a wall.

it was something like 91 degrees out, with an index nearing 100. we had been running for well over 2 hours. my body was done, my toes were goners, i felt like i was running on sandpaper.... every step became a struggle. for the first time i really felt the weight of my legs as i ran, and Stripe Shirt and i had a talk... we had 3 miles left. it was 2:17 something and we knew there was no way we were going to make it in by 2:45 (my goal time for the day)... so we kinda said screw it. we took it easy. we ran, we walked, we encouraged each other to just keep going yet also enjoyed the fact that someone else was walking when it just got too hard to keep running...

when we had just a mile left we both agreed we HAD to finish strong. it was quite possibly the longest mile i have ever run, but at about half a mile out i dug deep, kicked it up, and finished my 14 miles in 2:55:48. (=average pace of 12:33.)

::sigh::
tomorrow i'm buying a wheelchair.