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October 15, 2005
Blame it on the rain
Last night, Mary text messaged me asking if we were going to run this morning if it was still raining as hard as it was. I was pretty sure that it couldn't possibly be raining that hard for that many more hours and I told her we'd be fine. Sure enough, I woke up every hour during the night to hear a steady downpour which didn't let up in the morning. Even weather.com didn't seem sure when it was going to stop raining. We decided to wait a couple of hours and see if it let up. I like to get my runs (especially long ones) out of the way early in the day so I can get stuff done the rest of the day, but today I was trying so hard to be flexible. Anyway, after a lot of waiting around and falling asleep reading boring finance articles, the weather wasn't showing much improvement and we just decided to go.
It wasn't raining that hard the whole time, but there were so many puddles in the first few miles that we both felt like our feet weighed 20 pounds by the time we got to the hills in Winchester. (We were doing the same route we did at the end of September and had planned this to be our last 20+ run before NYCM.) For someone that seemed like she really didn't want to run in the rain today, Mary was in good spirits and kicking my butt up the hills as usual. I think we actually started out a bit fast because of all of our pent up energy from waiting around to run, but I felt pretty good (groin-wise and in general) for the first hour and a half. Then I knew I needed to eat something but it didn't seem to help all that much. My hamstrings were so tight (and they still are) that I felt like it was affecting my stride. I also just wasn't mentally into it during the second 90 minutes; I kept thinking about how I probably hadn't eaten enough beforehand and it was worrying me.
But Mary reminded me that we pretty much had to finish out the run because we weren't near any public transportation options and took my mind off how I was feeling by telling me the plot of Finding Nemo, one of her all-time favorite movies and one that I haven't seen. We finally made it back to Somerville and amazingly had run about 3 or 4 minutes faster than last time we did this route in gorgeous, 60-degree and sunny weather! We were both glad to finish and to officially start the pre-marathon taper. (Usually I dread the taper, but I'm sort of looking forward to the next few weeks.)
Our late start today means I didn't get a whole lot done, and we're going out tonight with some friends from Matt's class. We are driving to New York in the morning for the wake and funeral for our friend, so I must go get ready and packed.
Posted by becky at October 15, 2005 6:18 PM
Comments
I was wondering if you'd go through with it in the pouring rain. I'm very impressed that you did -- it was a really slow day, so it's great that you ran the route faster than last time. Hopefully the weather will be nicer when you run New York, and congratulations on making it through the hard part of your training!
Posted by: Alison at October 15, 2005 11:13 PM