Yesterday morning was the morning I’ve been fearing (a little). It was the morning I had to run 20 miles as part of my marathon training plan. Brad and I were in bed by 10 pm the night before, like good little grannies. I slept until 7:30 am, which means I got 9 1/2 hours of sleep. Man, it’s been forever since I could sleep that long. It’s like my body just knows I have something in store for it.
For breakfast I had two pieces of cinnamon and raisin Ezekiel bread with TJ’s sunflower seed butter and bananas. I also put some sweet potato butter on one of my pieces of toast for extra deliciousness.
Before I left, I had a cup of coffee and two glasses of water. I’m so serious about hydrating properly. I’ve had enough dehydrated runs to know better.
Could I BE wearing anymore purple? I left the purple sports bra and purple gloves at home. That would be overkill, right?
Brad and I grabbed all of our water and electronic running contraptions. We took so much water with us, we looked like camels going out into the desert. I also grabbed the last of my apple pie nuggets and a Z bar. I only had seven nuggets left (3 for Brad and 4 for me) and knew that wouldn’t be enough to get me through 20 miles.
Lastly, we tucked in little man with his bone and his scruffy squirrel. He’s never happy to see us leave but seams to take it better if he’s tucked into bed first.
The plan was for Brad to run the first 10 miles with me. Then Nicole would join me for the next five miles and I would finish the last five miles by myself. Brad and I got off to a late start running because I had to stop one last time for the bathroom. There’s a thin line between under-hydrating and over-hydrating. I think I over-hydrated just a bit.
We finally reached the trail and started out on our run. I’ve learned over the past few weeks of long runs that I really need to pace myself, else I will have no steam left at the end of my run. We were shooting for 10 minute miles. For the first five or so miles, it’s difficult to maintain this when you’re used to pumping our nine minute miles with ease. I constantly checked my Garmin and told Brad if we needed to slow down. This happens about every five minutes. It’s a little annoying on this particular trail because Garmin gets a little confused when you go under an underpass or when the tree line gets heavy. I’ll look down one second and see that we’re running 11 minute miles. Then a second later we’ll be running eight minute miles. Go figure.
Around mile 2.5 I realized that silly me had never pressed start on my Garmin. Thank goodness this trail is marked every quarter mile so you don’t really need a watch to see how far you’ve gone. I was curious about how long it would take me to run 20 miles, but this was really irrelevant when the most important part for me was to finish. I started my Garmin at mile 2.75 and knew I would have to add this to my watches’ mileage to get a better sense of how far I had gone.
Brad and I were feeling good, but around mile five, I had to go to the bathroom again! Using the port-a-john where we park is not an option. I refuse. Luckily, there is third entrance to the trail that has adequate facilities. We took a 2/10 of a mile detour to stop by the bathrooms for the last time on this run. I felt bad because I knew Nicole would be waiting, but I knew I didn’t have a choice.
This 2/10 of a mile in and out added a bit to our 10 miler, so I assumed I could take this into account on the last leg of my run.
When we arrived at the end, Nicole was waiting for us. Brad snapped a quick photo of us in our matching running shorts, I downed a good bit of water, and then we were on our way.
This was my first time running with Nicole, since our last attempt was thwarted by bad traffic. She was so fun to run with! By mile 10 I go from Chatty Kathy to not very talkative. It was so nice to run with someone who would talk to me and keep me entertained the whole time. Nicole switched from regular running shoes to Vibram Five Fingers at mile 2.5 where we turned around and headed back to the parking lot. I’ve never ran with anyone before who wore Vibrams and I was impressed. She said that because you use different muscles running in the Vibrams, it feels like you have new legs. I know around mile 15 I could have used some new legs. Maybe I need Vibrams too. 😉
We returned to the parking lot, I bid goodbye to Nicole, downed some more water, grabbed a Z bar, and headed out on my way. I ate half of my Z bar upon starting and saved the other half for the 2.5 marker. I looked down at my Garmin and found out that I had forgotten to start it again after Nicole and I stopped to let her change her shoes. I am so forgetful once I start to get tired! Again, not a big deal because the trail is well marked and since I didn’t really care about my time and just wanted to get the 20 miles in, everything was still good. At this point, I decided that I didn’t have enough brain power left to add in the extra 4/10 of a mile so I would just go by the trail mileage markers to determine when I reached 20 miles. This ultimately means I ran over 20 but I just wanted to be sure I really truly ran 20 miles and didn’t cut any corners (anal retentive, I know.)
I’m not going to lie, my legs were sore at this point. But my energy level hadn’t really wained. I was surprised by how energetic I still felt. Even though by this point, I was running between a 10:15 and 10:30 mile, I still felt like I could totally finish. And this became my mantra. Every time I passed a mile marker (every quarter of a mile) I said to myself, you can totally do this.
The last mile was the longest mile of my life. I swear it took my three hours to run it. Not really, but it did feel that way. I was sooo glad to see the parking lot through the trees as I rounded the last curve. It felt amazingly good to have done 20 whole miles.
I love running and I love how it makes me feel. Running five miles makes me feel energized for the rest of the day. However, running 20 miles does not energize you. It zaps all of your energy and makes you feel exhausted. Training for a marathon is a different kind of running. The “feel good” part is all in the glory of getting your body to run that long. It has nothing to do with your body actually feeling good, because it doesn’t. I’m really proud of myself for getting through this.
Someone asked me the other day if buying my plane tickets to Orlando made it seem more real. Honestly, it didn’t. This makes it seem more real. Knowing that I can push my body to this limit and not needing someone to carry me home makes the marathon seem like it’s just within reach. I didn’t sign up for the marathon thinking “I hope I can do this”. But with anything I have never done, there is a bit of self doubt and wondering in the back of my mind. Lately, I’ve read about several people who couldn’t complete their marathon training or their marathon, so I know not finishing is a potential reality.
Even knowing that, this 20 miler made that small voice of self doubt and wondering that much smaller. Twenty times smaller.