Going to bed the night before I did a short mediation and focussed on getting a great night's sleep and thinking of how successful the next day would be. Regardless of the hurdles I was going to finish successfully! Upon opening my eyes after an amazing nights sleep I realized all my "technical" socks were in the washing machine. For those of you who are not runners; you can create work arounds on most anything EXCEPT your shoes and your socks! I was determined that everything was going to go well and thank you to Nike DriFit those babies were dry in time to hit the pavement. First hurdle averted.
I was met for the beginning of my run with two of my many amazing friends. Thanks to Audie who came out to run the first portion of my training run. A "huge" special thank you to my friend Devan. You can not find a more true cheerleader of the human spirit than Devan. Although Devan's big (LOL) next race is an easy peasy 10K he was out there to run with me. I never expected anyone to volunteer to run the ridiculous amount of distance that I was intending to run. After all who volunteers to do that unless you have a race coming up. Well it appears my amazing friend does.
The run itself had an great start. The weather was beautiful. A little on the chilly side which is a good thing, and no wind! Yep you heard no wind! Amazing!!!! and beautiful sunshine! Off and literally running we go.... things were pretty uneventful until about 22-24K when the brain starts to kick in and play tricks. It amazes me that in a 30 second time period you can tell yourself: "You got this!", "oh my god this is horrible", "feeling strong, feeling strong" " okay this sucks"!
A mission was needed to be accomplished and there was no stopping! We continued on..... my pace was getting much slower but thankfully the legs were still moving. At 28/29K Devan and I separated. I was desperately waiting for my I Pod to tell me "6K left". I have no idea why but I needed to hear that number and knew when I heard all would be okay. The announcement came through the head phones and up went my pace. Don't get too excited it here, it probably increased by a 1/10th of a second- LOL! At 30K I had this young girl with her bouncy ponytail fly past me. At first this got my "ggrrr" on and my brain instantly thought " really she is not running that fast we should catch her", my legs on the hand thought was hilarious and refused to work with my brain. So off went bouncy ponytail most likely proud of herself for having past said runner. My saving grace- I have determined that she was probably 3K into her run while I on the other hand was "30k" in! Today I will give her, her victory but next time..... the game is on!!!! 31.4K the dreaded happens. I out ran the life of my fully charged I Phone! Panic- how do I know my distance now?! Quickly the brain triggers into thoughts of prior runs and what the distances were.... I added a few side roads in and actually enjoyed the peace and quiet of no music. Although I still have not determined what my exact mileage was I am confident that I hit 35 and would have be close to 36K+.
Yesterday I proved to myself that I am not only one step closer but
"I GOT THIS BABY"!!!
