Countdown to 26.2

Last Saturday was my final “long” run of my 18-week marathon training.  Friday night, I was feeling surprisingly blasé about it.  I mean, it’s not like 8 miles is short, right?  And yet, I realized as I was getting ready for bed that night that, during the height of my training, I was routinely knocking out eight miles at 5am on a Monday morning before I even had my contacts in. 😉  That kind of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

I allowed myself the opportunity to sleep in, since I had nowhere to be on Saturday (What?! How is that possible?!).  By the time I got myself out of the house, it was 9am.  I could’ve easily done my 8 miles around my neighborhood, but I decided that I’d make my last long run a scenic route.  I took a chance in heading out to the Metropark in hopes that the connector trail was finally open (I’d tried it so many times this past winter, only to find it closed and covered in snow). When I arrived, I was thrilled to find that it was—and there was no snow!  Okay, there a little snow.

I swear, we just can’t get away from it. 😛 But I’ll take a light dusting on the grass over 2 foot drifts any day. 😉

It was a beautiful day, sunny and somewhat warm.

Unfortunately, along with the sun and warmth came the wind. 🙁  It was coming from the northeast, sustained at 15-20 and gusting over 25.  Awesome. :/  Honestly, I don’t think I ever had a long run in all 18 weeks where there wasn’t some weather issue.  Cold, snow, wind…I honestly was kind of numb to it all by that point, so I just put on my stuff, including Jamie’s lined hockey jacket and his Under Armour hood, and off I went.

I stopped to take a few pictures on my first mile, so that one was kind of slow, but I did pretty well the final three, despite the fact that that whole first four was right into the wind.  It was nice to run along the connector again…I missed it!  That connector was always a bit of a mystery to me when I used to drive over it every day on the freeway (before I was a runner), and I decided to conquer it one day when I did my first two-mile run.  I’ll always remember that first time I ran two miles…I went home afterwards and promptly took a nap.  Now I run twelve miles and go grocery shopping. 😉

I did a simple out-and-back.  I was originally going to start at the north end and go south, but the benefit to having a weather station is that I knew the direction of the wind and could plan accordingly.  Thus, I started at the bottom, went north east for four miles, then turned around to enjoy a four-mile tailwind. 🙂  It had warmed up to the 40s by that time, and all of a sudden, all those warm clothes were too much! I stopped and took off my coat, which required readjusting my hydration belt and my phone, and then I had to take off the hood, of course, which required more readjusting.  Dude, I lost a full minute to that mess!  But I didn’t care, because I was just happy to actually be warm enough to run without my coat for the first time since November.

The run back was actually quite enjoyable, and I ended up with a good pace overall, despite my mid-run wardrobe malfunction. 😉

My splits weren’t too bad, if you don’t count that fifth mile, and my average moving pace was a 10:49, so I’ll take that.

It was a good run, and I felt quite energized afterwards.

In fact, the only downside to the run was the fact that I lost Jamie’s Under Armour hood. 🙁  I didn’t even realize it was missing until Sunday night, long after I would have had any chance to go back and look for it.  Obviously, I will have to buy him another one, but he looked online last night, and they don’t seem to make it in the same color scheme.  I feel so bad. Maybe we’ll be able to find him one he likes better if we try!

Today is Monday, and therefore my normal weigh-in day.  I haven’t posted my weight in a while, mostly because I’ve been running like crazy and my weight has stayed steady in the 113-115 range.  For whatever reason, though, the scale hasn’t been quite so kind the last three weeks.

I’ve been running in the 117 range ever since the Monday after my 20-miler.  Dude.  You’d think after running 20 miles, I would’ve lost a ton, but instead, I gained 2.5 pounds, and I haven’t been able to shake it since then.  I’m not going to dwell on it, though, because I’ve been under a lot of stress with the hockey tryouts, the work issues, and of course, getting ready for a marathon, but mostly, I’m not going to worry about it because I’ve got a bigger worry coming up on Saturday. 😛  And after I run 26.2 miles on Saturday, you can bet I’m not going to be counting the points of what I eat that night. 😉

I’ll try to post once more before Saturday, but if I don’t, please don’t be upset—my goal this week is to get 8 hours of sleep every night, and that’s going to have to take priority.  After that, I’ll have all the time in the world to write and read blog posts—I can’t wait!!

Thanks for reading!