Still the Run

On Saturday, I did my last pre-marathon "long" run. But long is by the standards of this training plan I'm trying to follow, so my short-long-run this weekend, is still 8 miles and that's still a sizable distance in my book. That, and I have to run the whole actual length of the marathon on November 18th. All 26.2 miles of it.

But my run on Saturday was a strange one. With my NJ community still suffering power outages in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, there was an odd hum of generators, entire areas that were completely powerless and lines of people waiting for gas that snaked for miles. The path I've been doing my long runs on was in an area totally without power, and it floods in a normal rainstorm, and its a place I have to drive to, so not taking chances and in an effort to conserve fuel, I decided to run by my house instead. But I forget that running on a path means no traffic, it also means running on an evenly paved surface. Running on the street meant a lot of me jumping either into the grass or onto the concrete sidewalks and having to stop and start a lot at intersections.

It also meant that given the amount of down wires in the area, that my pre-planned route had to be altered a bit here and there, but I still made it 14 miles. I was scheduled to do 18, but I didn't have time before I had to pick my daughter up from her father's (if only daylight's saving time had been a day earlier). Still, I'm thinking 14 is great for me, and I'll take it as a win. While I may be sore post-marathon, being able to run more consistently lately makes me confident that I'll be able to finish the marathon in under the 7 hour cutoff time. Maybe even in 6 and a half! (Though I don't want to get too confident). I'm going along with my slow and steady mantra.

Anyway, my run on Saturday was difficult, and while I did get a lot more honks than normal, I got a lot of odd looks. I couldn't help but wonder if people were judging me for being out running while people were still without power, but honestly, I looked at the people spending three hours sitting in line to get gas for their cars and angrily shouting at each other (and getting in fender benders... I saw two during the course of my run) like they were crazy, so I guess the feeling was mutual.

Still, I finished and happily waved and thanked every power person I saw along the way for how hard they were working, and even got to see an amazing sunrise over a very distant New York City in the horizon. So it was a beautiful day... even if my knees STILL hate me for all the running on the hard concrete sidewalks in my not as supportive shoes. Thankfully, the marathon is back on tar, which should make my aging knees happy.

Tonight I squeeze in a training run with Tara, who felt in the mood to do some interval sprinting tonight. Or at least she felt like I should do it, while she set and controlled the speed on the treadmill. While I still felt like I was going to puke afterwards, I did four high level intervals before I felt like I was going to die (and a few moderate level ones), as opposed to the one high level one I struggled through a month before. And she didn't give me long walk breaks like she used to. She thinks that I'm making progress, and I know that after the hill training treadmill workout she gave me for the last couple sessions, I am running up hills A LOT better. So something is finally kicking in.

And when I returned home I had my confirmation email from the Philadelphia Marathon. I looked at it and had a good laugh when I realized that months ago when I registered, I put down to finish in under 6 hours. While that's the goal in the back of my mind, the bigger goal is just to finish my first (and possibly only) marathon. It might be doable, I can run a couple miles way faster than that pace, but my time starts to trail off the longer I go. But I'm not going to worry about time, so long as I keep ahead of the cut off. I'm just going to take it step-by-step and focus on crossing the finish line in a relatively upright position. And maybe even enjoy the scenery along the way... maybe.