Run #39 and #40 - Easy 4 miles and Easy 15 miles

Good evening Blog-O-Sphere. Again I am writing a double blog for my last 2 runs. Yesterday was REALLY busy. Run #39 was at the house Saturday morning. I ran at 6:45am on our road. It was 55 degrees when I headed out. On my last lap, Laurel was sitting on the front porch with Sheeba so Sheeba joined me for the last 3/4 mile. That ultimately led to an off road detour, to run her back to the road. So my run was a little interesting. From that point, I left to DJ an event at the Tri-County Mall. After that, it was a shopping trip at Jungle Jim's and then birthday party for Annika. We got home at 10:00pm and headed to bed.

Sunday morning was run #40 and set up a whole new challenge. I had to play at church and then the girls had a birthday party at a local skating rink. I took a change of clothes so that while Laurel took the kids to the party, I could go run my "easy" 15 miles. The other fun fact was that rain and storms were forecasat. I said a prayer for the rain to stay away and headed to the dam. 2 laps of the entire dam would make 16 miles, which is what I wanted to do since I missed some miles earlier in the week. My training plan called for only 14 miles.

When I got to the dam, it was windy, cloudy, and 65 degrees. I started out doing the ascent run. You would think that I would learn not to do this on my long runs. My plan was to stop at 8 miles for an energy gel and water, then keep going. This meant that miles 9.5 to 11 would be a steep uphill run and mile 13 would also have a steep incline. When I got to the 13.25 mile point, I was psyched, every step past this point was the furthest I have ever run. As I worked towards mile 16 I hit the wall at mile 14. I pushed my body for another mile and then was done, but it left me a 1 mile walk to the truck. Mile 15 was more of a "wog" or a "jalk". I worked sooooo hard to maintain a running/jogging form for that mile. It was not fast, but I made the mile. Even though I was spent and could not run any more, I still had a mile walk back tot he car, which was good for keeping loose and cooling down.

I am now happy to say that my longest run ever is now 15 miles!!!! I need to add another 11.2 miles to that for my running "Holy Grail" - the 26.2

I am off to ice my feet and take some drugs before bed.

Peace,

Philippians 4:13