Saturday, September 01, 2007
Running fool
This morning I ran my longest distance, 7.7 miles at exactly a 10.0 min/mile pace. I wasn't shooting for this pace, I was only trying to see if I could run over seven miles. I needed to know this, because I foolishly agreed to join my brother's team for Reach the Beach. That's right, 200 miles in 24 hours. The legs range from 2.8 miles to 9.3 (gulp!) miles, with many in 7+ mile distances. To make my little test more accurate, my route included several killer hills and I only slept four hours the night before. The latter feature wasn't intended, I was suffering from some insomnia and decided to make it useful. The cool thing is that I finally reached that runner's high. I could have kept going past my house, my lungs and legs felt perfectly fine. Granted, I had energy lows later, so I don't know how well I will do after my first leg, especially as I will be going at a faster racing pace. But while I still feel completely daunted by this relay race, I know it is possible. Of course, my students will have to prod me with sticks to get me through the following Monday's classes.
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3 comments:
That's great! I've put down the bike for the time being and I'm training for the Philadelphia half marathon (the Sunday of SMT--just a short train ride from Baltimore). My longest distance so far has only been about 7 miles, so we'll see how it goes!
The Reach the Beach sounds awesome.
That's excellent. I'm unfortunately one of those people who's never gotten a "runner's high." The farther I go, the worse I feel. Of course, with training, I can go farther. I'll be doing my second half-marathon in December.
Good luck on your run, Scott!
TTU, that's a great idea, to schedule a race around a conference. I'll have to try that in the future. Here is a movie about Reach the Beach.
Dave, have you tried changing your pace? I feel miserable when I push my pace to racing speeds, but when I go at a 10 min/mile pace it feels great. Good luck on the 13.1 miler!
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