Tales of a 19 miler...

19 Miles done!
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Saturday night I went to bed around 10:30..... at around 11 I realized that I hadn't seen my ipod all day... I got out of bed and went looking for it. I had no clue where it was.....I even texted my oldest daughter, who I knew was still awake in her room:

Even she knew the severity of the situation.....

So after 30mins of searching for it, I gave up and went back to bed. 

The plan was to be up by 5:15 and out the door by 6am..... The alarm clock ran at 5:15 but I couldn't get myself out of bed 'til almost 6. It was cold and the bed felt soo comfortable. By the time I got dressed and was ready it was almost 7. I had to use the quick mix on Pandora on my iPhone for music since my iPod was no where to be seen. Pandora is OK, except for the fact that the free version only allows you to forward or skip only 3 times. And you can't rewind a song. So I'm stuck listening to whatever comes on.

The temperature was a chilly 34 degrees when I walked out the door this morning. I was wearing shorts, but I had a long sleeve shirt, winter hat and gloves on. It was sunny, which made it warm in the sun, but it was chilly in the shade.

So off I went.... The first 7 miles were really uneventful. At mile 4 the gloves came off. They were mostly up hill so I was just concentrating on just keeping moving. Miles 7 - 9 were deep back roads of Dudley & Oxford. There was a lot of shade so the gloves came back on. At about mile 9 1/2 it was steep down hill for about a mile that my legs welcomed happily! My legs felt beat. I remember mumbling to myself at about mile 11 about how tired I felt. I wanted to stop and walk for a while. But I kept on pushing.

At about mile 13 I was on auto pilot. My body was moving on it's own. It knew where it had to go and was just going....

You ever have one of those moments where you were running and were like "WTF"??... Me neither. Until today. I was a mile away from home when I realized something was wrong. I looked down at my Garmin and I was only at mile 16!!! How could this be!? I know I followed the route I mapped out perfectly. I used Mapmyrun.com to map it out. Looking at it after I realized that I had double clicked somewhere and clicked on a 2 mile stretch twice. This was honestly a hard blow. I was tired and hurting by this point and the thought of needing to run 3 more miles killed me. My mind was like "whatever.... just do it". So I did. I ran up and down side streets before reaching my house just trying to make up the mileage. You never realize how short these stupid streets are until you are trying to make this up! Streets that I always thought were about a mile long were only really about a half mile. Felt like I was running around aimlessly.

Finally....... 19 miles done.

This was a tough run. Mentally one of the hardest I have ever done. Those last 3 miles almost did me in. I didn't realize until I looked at this, that I actually ran this a bit faster than my 17 miler. That makes it feel great!

I walked the last 1/8 of a mile back to the house which is what I normally do. Then I do stretches at my back door. I was hurting. My legs started to cramp up. No amount of stretching would alleviate the pain that my legs felt. I layed on the driveway for about 20 mins before I walked (wobbled) in the house. My wife knew I wasn't right. She could see it on my face. I layed down on the living room floor with my legs up as that was the only way I could keep them from cramping. My loving wife and daughter massaged my calves which helped tremendously.

I hurt, but I felt good. 

After a warm shower I started to feel normal. I was still walking funny, but at least my legs weren't cramping up. 19 miles - 7.2 more to go. Soo close. I almost feel like if I had to do the whole thing today, I think I could have done it. It probably wouldn't have been pretty, but I think it would have been doable. 

I have a 20 miler in two weeks. That one will be interesting. I'll have to make sure I map this one out right. I really dont want another repeat of today.

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That's it for me today. I'm going to bed. I need it. 

Thank you for reading! Have a great week!