15 Miles!

I got up at 4:30 this morning so that I could drive down to Ithaca and run 15 miles. No one else in the group wanted to get up this early but I needed to start by 5:30 since I knew it would take me around 3 hours to finish and I needed to meet Braman at the violin school and take Nora before Larsson's group lesson at 9am. Monica, one of the coaches, graciously agreed to meet me so we started off together.

She needed to get back to meet the rest of the group at 7am so, since she didn't want to go too far from where we started and she didn't want me to run alone for too long, she decided that I would run a 7.5 mile route two times. We ran out 3.75 miles from our starting point and then turned back. When we were almost back it was clear that, if we stayed together, she wouldn't make it in time, so she took a shorter way and I finished the first 7.5 miles by myself.

Liz in the group recently injured her leg and has been receiving physical therapy. After taking a week's break from training, she was back at it this morning but only wanted to do half the distance instead of the full 15 miles. And, since she needed to go slow, we ran the second 7.5 miles together. She's also going to be running the San Francisco marathon so it was good to have a chance to talk.

Including several water breaks and some walking, I finished the 15 miles in 3 hours and 5 minutes. It seemed like a very long way and my legs were already dead-tired by 12 miles. I felt really sore for about an hour afterwards but now, several hours later, my legs feel much better but the bottoms of my feet are still really sore. I guess this is one of the joys of marathon training. My toenails still look pretty nasty but at least they aren't sore. I will spare you a picture.

Saw many deer this morning: in people's yards, on the road, on the bike path, including several babies with their mamas. And was happy to be able to provide Larsson with a handful of acorns from an oak tree on the bike path. Where are all the oak trees these days? This is the first one I've seen since we started looking for them last week.

Pud's Run is tomorrow at 10am. It's only a 5K but maybe I should have looked at our training schedule before signing up for it. Hope I'm not too tired. I'll take Tuesday off to compensate so the next training day will be Wednesday for 8 miles. Since this is the first time I've run that distance at home, I'll have to find a new route.