It Wasn't Pretty But I Finished It

After a long week of working at 4:00 AM and only getting 5 hours of sleep most nights, I had to babysit last night. Like I've said before, it's nice because it's easy money but I know I'm always going to be there until at least midnight. Needless to say, I was struggling to get up this morning at 6:00 AM to squeeze in my 20 mi run before being at a wedding shower at 11:00 AM. In other words, I needed to bust it on my run to give me some time to cool down and get ready for the shower.

Apparently I was thinking I'm a lot faster than I really am when I started my run because I ran the first 10 mi in just under 8:00 min pace. Um right, I don't think I should be doing my 20 mi long run at goal marathon pace. I think my legs also knew this because by the time I came back by Todd's apartment to grab some gatorade and sports beans at 10 mi, I knew the second 10 mi would be a struggle. Todd hopped on his bike and rode with me for the rest of my run and thank god he did, because I needed any motivation I could get to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Luckily I got stuck at several intersections so I could take 30 sec to stretch and drink some water before crossing the street. I think I told Todd at least 3 times I didn't think I'd be able to finish but somehow I did and despite my legs feeling so tired, I still managed to run the second 10 mi in just under 8:30 pace. I ended up running 20 mi in 2:44:41 (8:14 pace). I think I felt like I needed to run a really good 20 mi today since I'll be on the cruise soon and won't be able to run as much and all my running will be done on the treadmill. I wasn't thinking though that I hadn't run 20 mi since my Boston training in February and the longest run I'd done so far in this training cycle is 17 mi. Add to that my lack of sleep and that's why I felt so bad. Surprisingly though, this is the fastest I've ever done a 20 mi training run...but it sure wasn't pretty.