Day Thirty Six - The Nine
Woke up in the guest room of our friends' beautiful new home in Pasadena, Maryland on Saturday morning.
**Auntie Anne - I'M SORRY I didn't call, but we were only there for about a couple of days and it took a near act of God for the six of us to find a weekend that worked for everyone and we spent most of the time drunk and I don't have my own car and I love you guys and promise to see you all soon.**
Adam, our host, and I had talked the night before about going for a run in the AM. He's training for the Baltimore Marathon in October and was planning on running 15 or so miles. I felt bad slowing him down, but told him I would be up for 8 or 9. He decided to do 12 and I decided to start nursing my drink if I wanted a prayer of making this happen. Those that know me are aware of the fact that I am...shall we say...a total freaking light weight when it comes to booze. In fact, I think this was the first Friday that I had anything since we started training seeing as I already fear Saturday - but a Saturday with a hangover? No thanks.
Adam and I got up at around 9:00 and started talking about our run. We had both taken it easy the night before and were mildly surprised that one by one the rest of the group got up and told us that they'd join us on our run. Adam's wife is into running as well and just completed a 10 mile race a few weeks back. Bridge and Dan run together pretty much every weekend and Becky has been running solidly for a couple months now. So here we were, the Brady's in sneakers, piling into two cars at 9:45 and headed over to the Baltimore/Annapolis Trail.
The Trail is a really nice, flat, paved walkway that runs about 15 miles from Annapolis to Baltimore. We hopped on at mile 7 and headed...I dunno...North? It doesn't really matter. Adam told us that the trail was usually populated by lots of cyclists, but on Saturday there was a charity walk for MS coming the other direction, which cut down on bike traffic. Two by two our group started turning back (thus the reason for 2 cars) and at about 2 and a half miles it was just Adam and myself. I was feeling surprisingly good and got a little lift when Adam mentioned that we were keeping a 9:30 pace per mile.
Quick note - Adam is a few weeks away from his race and he is light years ahead of me in preparation. Bill, do you have a running watch? No. Bill, do you have gel packs? No. Bill, do you have vaseline for your nipples? Not yet. Bill, do you have cool looking running clothes and badass socks? OK, I added that one. But yeah, I need some stuff. It was actually great running with Adam because he kind of pointed me in the right direction in regards to what works for him training wise and what doesn't. He was also tremendously positive and kept making me feel like I am genuinely on my way. When we hit the 3.5 mile mark he asked how I was doing and I realized that I felt really good. I told him I might turn back at 4 miles and he just nonchalantly said, "No, we'll do 4.5 then turn back." I thought, yeah, why wouldn't we?
We stopped at the halfway mark to get a drink and eat a gel pack (delicious). Before this thing started I had so many ideas in my head about running. I have to breathe THIS way and I CAN'T have a conversation with someone while running and I CAN'T ever stop during a run or I'll never start again. One by one these ideas are being destroyed as I learn more and more about how you teach your body to run long distances. So after our short break we started running back. And we still felt good. We were passing the MS walkers that we had seen before and the run just felt natural. I knew I was getting physically tired, but we just kept up the pace. With one more brief stop for water we realized that we were probably under 9:20 per mile. I was thankful that Adam was there to help set the pace as I wasn't sure that I could have kept it without him.
I got back to the starting point and Adam continued on for a mile and a half in the other direction, then came back. In the meantime I stretched and chatted with a couple of the people doing the MS walk. It was a national thing and they were walking 20 miles on Saturday and another 10 on Sunday for a tremendous cause. Good for them. I also met a couple that was nothing less than bedecked in TEAM gear. They were training for a 100 mile bike race that they were going to be completing on roller blades. These people are nuts. We talked for a few minutes and wished eachother luck and away they rolled. Adam got back, and we headed home.
And that's the story of how I ran 9 miles this past Saturday. I'm trying not to be too proud of myself, but really, I feel great about the whole thing. Not that I just completed the distance, but that I did so in such good spirits and that I felt so good afterwards. My legs definitely tightened up a bit by the time we headed out to the bar to watch Notre Dame get the crap kicked out of them that afternoon, but it was a good kind of tight that told me I had pushed myself further than before and I was happy with that. Now, in the grand scheme of things, 9 miles is still way short of a marathon and there are people out there that can run that distance in their sleep, but it's something that I'd never done before and something that I would have never thought I could do a couple months ago and something I thought that might actually kill me after last Saturday's disaster.
But it didn't. And that makes me excited for next Saturday. Even if Bridget thinks I look like Will Farrell streaking when I run.
DAY 36
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 9
TOTAL MILEAGE: 83
**Auntie Anne - I'M SORRY I didn't call, but we were only there for about a couple of days and it took a near act of God for the six of us to find a weekend that worked for everyone and we spent most of the time drunk and I don't have my own car and I love you guys and promise to see you all soon.**
Adam, our host, and I had talked the night before about going for a run in the AM. He's training for the Baltimore Marathon in October and was planning on running 15 or so miles. I felt bad slowing him down, but told him I would be up for 8 or 9. He decided to do 12 and I decided to start nursing my drink if I wanted a prayer of making this happen. Those that know me are aware of the fact that I am...shall we say...a total freaking light weight when it comes to booze. In fact, I think this was the first Friday that I had anything since we started training seeing as I already fear Saturday - but a Saturday with a hangover? No thanks.
Adam and I got up at around 9:00 and started talking about our run. We had both taken it easy the night before and were mildly surprised that one by one the rest of the group got up and told us that they'd join us on our run. Adam's wife is into running as well and just completed a 10 mile race a few weeks back. Bridge and Dan run together pretty much every weekend and Becky has been running solidly for a couple months now. So here we were, the Brady's in sneakers, piling into two cars at 9:45 and headed over to the Baltimore/Annapolis Trail.
The Trail is a really nice, flat, paved walkway that runs about 15 miles from Annapolis to Baltimore. We hopped on at mile 7 and headed...I dunno...North? It doesn't really matter. Adam told us that the trail was usually populated by lots of cyclists, but on Saturday there was a charity walk for MS coming the other direction, which cut down on bike traffic. Two by two our group started turning back (thus the reason for 2 cars) and at about 2 and a half miles it was just Adam and myself. I was feeling surprisingly good and got a little lift when Adam mentioned that we were keeping a 9:30 pace per mile.
Quick note - Adam is a few weeks away from his race and he is light years ahead of me in preparation. Bill, do you have a running watch? No. Bill, do you have gel packs? No. Bill, do you have vaseline for your nipples? Not yet. Bill, do you have cool looking running clothes and badass socks? OK, I added that one. But yeah, I need some stuff. It was actually great running with Adam because he kind of pointed me in the right direction in regards to what works for him training wise and what doesn't. He was also tremendously positive and kept making me feel like I am genuinely on my way. When we hit the 3.5 mile mark he asked how I was doing and I realized that I felt really good. I told him I might turn back at 4 miles and he just nonchalantly said, "No, we'll do 4.5 then turn back." I thought, yeah, why wouldn't we?
We stopped at the halfway mark to get a drink and eat a gel pack (delicious). Before this thing started I had so many ideas in my head about running. I have to breathe THIS way and I CAN'T have a conversation with someone while running and I CAN'T ever stop during a run or I'll never start again. One by one these ideas are being destroyed as I learn more and more about how you teach your body to run long distances. So after our short break we started running back. And we still felt good. We were passing the MS walkers that we had seen before and the run just felt natural. I knew I was getting physically tired, but we just kept up the pace. With one more brief stop for water we realized that we were probably under 9:20 per mile. I was thankful that Adam was there to help set the pace as I wasn't sure that I could have kept it without him.
I got back to the starting point and Adam continued on for a mile and a half in the other direction, then came back. In the meantime I stretched and chatted with a couple of the people doing the MS walk. It was a national thing and they were walking 20 miles on Saturday and another 10 on Sunday for a tremendous cause. Good for them. I also met a couple that was nothing less than bedecked in TEAM gear. They were training for a 100 mile bike race that they were going to be completing on roller blades. These people are nuts. We talked for a few minutes and wished eachother luck and away they rolled. Adam got back, and we headed home.
And that's the story of how I ran 9 miles this past Saturday. I'm trying not to be too proud of myself, but really, I feel great about the whole thing. Not that I just completed the distance, but that I did so in such good spirits and that I felt so good afterwards. My legs definitely tightened up a bit by the time we headed out to the bar to watch Notre Dame get the crap kicked out of them that afternoon, but it was a good kind of tight that told me I had pushed myself further than before and I was happy with that. Now, in the grand scheme of things, 9 miles is still way short of a marathon and there are people out there that can run that distance in their sleep, but it's something that I'd never done before and something that I would have never thought I could do a couple months ago and something I thought that might actually kill me after last Saturday's disaster.
But it didn't. And that makes me excited for next Saturday. Even if Bridget thinks I look like Will Farrell streaking when I run.
DAY 36
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 9
TOTAL MILEAGE: 83
posted by Demps at 7:24 AM
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