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February 26, 2006
12 Miles Running, 10.8 Miles Driving
Whew, I barely outran my car today. The 10.8 miles came from driving home from work this morning, then driving to and from the trailhead to run this afternoon. I don't think I could actually outrun my car every day, because of the bigger driving trips, as my commenters mentioned. Say, if I drive to Bozeman and back for groceries, I've banked 140 miles worth of running miles to catch up on. Still, I say it's a fun game.
Today was a bonafied 12 mile death march. Conditions (my own and environmental) were not exactly on my side. I was way, way behind on sleep (1 night of 3 hours sleep and 1 night of 5 hours sleep in 2 "long" naps punctuated by some work in between) prior to falling asleep after work this morning. When I layed down to sleep this morning, it was actually hard to fall sleep. You know that feeling, when you're so tired that you can't fall asleep? Then, when you start to drift away, your body does this monsterous twitching thing that re-awakes you? That was me this morning. I did manage to get 7 uninterrupted hours of sleep once I went unconscious, which wasn't at all enough, but it will get me by until tomorrow morning.
It was another spring-esque day, as evidenced by the Olympic-sized pool of melted snow gathered in my side yard. Instead of muscular men and women swimming laps, I had 3 mangy, skinny elk standing in the water, apparently enjoying the 33 degree ankle deep wet stuff. I was amused. It wasn't easy to get my arse out the door, despite the temptation of warm temperatures and sun on my face. I just wanted to sleep more! At my house, I noticed a breeze, and then I remembered that the weather forecast was calling for some big breezes today. I drove out to the trailhead from which I was going to run. When I got there and shut off my car's engine, I could hear the wind howling around my vehicle. It was pretty tempting just to sit in the car a little while, but the whining dog in back pushed me to put one foot in front of the other.
Once I started running, I didn't feel that bad. It wasn't as if my legs were tired, it was just a feeling of general lethargy and malaise, which I could pretend to ignore for a while. The first 3.5 or so miles was with the wind at my back, and we just moved along. At this point, I was running on land split between private property and forest service property. From somewhere, I heard about 4 gunshots. They were a ways away, but it was a little unsettling. That wigged my dog out (she hates loud noises) and her anxiousness to move on prodded me to giddyup. Then, we had to run into the wind for about 7 miles. This was a true slog. Again, I didn't have dead legs or anything, but it was just so hard to make forward progress with the wind and in feeling just a bit tired. It took 62:30 to run 7 miles, and that required decent effort. The final 2.5 miles with a tailwind back to my car was a well-earned reward of smooth sailing after slogging for an hour. I had wanted to speed up for the final few miles of this run, but decided not to until I turned my back to the wind. When I did, the wind easily pushed me to 7:10-7:20 pace with little effort of my own. That was really nice. Even with this pleasant ending, I was just happy to have completed the 12 miles.
I have to end with a clothing mention. I wore even less clothes again today, and I was still hot! I wore tights, a long sleeve polypro shirt, a windbreak vest, and gloves. At various points in the run, I took off the gloves, pulled my sleeves above my elbows, wished I could ditch the vest but didn't, and pulled my tights up to capri length. And, I WAS STILL HOT. And I wore no hat again! I almost feel naked leaving the house without a hat, after months of donning it. It was remarkable.
Posted by Meghan at February 26, 2006 7:04 PM
Comments
Meghan, the trail running sounds great. I love negative split finishes especially when your legs have been calling for them the entire run. It's great that you can run with your dog. I hope your legs are feeling good for your next run. I love how you compare your running mileage to your car mileage!
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