21 Miles Later...

Seriously... can you believe it? Twenty One freakin' miles!!!

I sit here tonight amazed. I was so nervous for the past two weeks knowing it was coming up... 21. I have tried to be so focused this week - monitoring my "intake" and "training." This past week, Coach (a.k.a Becky) told me we had to run certain miles on certain days. I was close to keeping that schedule. I ran 5 on Tuesday, 10 on Wednesday, and then 3 on Friday. Saturday was my "rest" day... although, I did work in the yard. Besides that, I spent the day drinking a lot of fluids and eating foods that would hopefully help me on the 21. I stretched a lot, too.

Seriously... 21! (Do you even fathom what it takes to run that amount of miles?)

So... I went to bed around 10 on Saturday night, and got up at 4:00 AM. I left the house and met Becky at 5:30. To say I was scared would be an understatement. I remember how bad the 18 miles was (read below), and I didn't have the greatest 14-mile run the previous week. Plus, I was yawning a lot. That was unusual.

We took off around the lake. I was shocked around mile 2 when I realized that my calves weren't screaming... normally they were pretty dang sore at that point. We ran at a pretty good clip... again, surprising. But, given the temperature was 68 degrees and the humidity was less than 50%, maybe that was to be expected.

One thing that caught us by surprise were the lack of runners. You'd have to witness this to understand it, but usually we see dozens of runners around 6:30 AM. However, we really didn't see a lot. Maybe the groups were doing their long runs on Saturday?

I felt pretty good running, and we kept our conversations up for the first 9 miles. At that point, we were back at the parking lot. After a quick change of my sweat band/head band, we headed around the lake again. Normally we haven't done this, but we really wanted to lap the lake twice.

I don't have many memories of the west side of the lake other than a water fountain that used to be broken but is now working. I walked the spillway again (Becky always runs it), but at the top I met her and we continued onward.

After the water fountain, I turned on my iPod. A few songs into it, "Too Legit to Quit" came on. Well, my pace increased dramatically. I played it twice, and I think I was surprising Becky at how I increased my pace. Ever the competitor, she increased hers.

Well, the talking stopped around that time as well. We were getting tired. My knees had been hurting since mile 6, but for the first time she mentioned hers were hurting. That's just a lot of pounding on the bones...

At 18 we were back at the parking lot again. So, we lapped the lake twice. I can't imagine how many people can say they have done that on foot. But, knock on wood, I wasn't feeling too bad. I was tired, but I wasn't dead. So, we had 3 miles left...

Now we had to dig deep. We decided to stay in the shade as much as we could. Remember this: If you ever run early in the morning and don't want to be exposed to a lot of the heat, park on the east side of the lake... Big Thicket! There are so many trees that block the sun... so that was the plan. We ran and ran and ran in the shade.

We realized that Becky's GPS was about 1/4 mile further along than mine. I thought, "Great! We'll finish earlier!" Well, as we were running I kept thinking, "It's about to end! Woo Hoo!" As I was thinking about that, a guy ran alongside us. Somehow he heard Becky say something like we were almost finished. He asked how far we had to run, and where we were. When Becky told him 21 miles and we were 20.75, he looked at us and said, "That's fanstatic! Ya'll look great." Of course, I'm lagging behind... he looks at me and I think he wanted to take that sentence back! Hahahahaha

Anyway, back to the run. We made a turn and I started asking Becky, "How much further?" She was quiet. I said it louder, "Hey... how much further?" She then said that we were over 21 on hers but she wanted to stick with mine.

GRRRRRR....

I said, "Ok... it's official. I hate you." I then told her the audience has spoken, and she's been voted off. Geez Louise! I wanted that to be over, and she's over their laughing... and running along. To Becky, she was enjoying it. To me, I was thinking, "Where is my water???"

Well, we ran a little further and finally made 21 on my GPS. On hers, it was 21.26. We finished at 3 hours 52 minutes. If you're doing the math, our "average" pace was 11 minutes 3 seconds. Now, that's adding in walks and stops drinking water. Becky said there was one time we were sub-9 minutes at running, and a lot of times we were right around the 10 minute mark. So, that's awesome!

Anyway, 21 miles later and I spent a great day rejuvenating the body. I only dropped 8 lbs. during the run (normally it's closer to 15 lbs.), but I spent the day eating and drinking a lot of fluids. I slept for over 2 hours, too. I'm sore... but I feel awesome!

I ran 21 miles today! Chicago, here we come!