Sorta Sweet 16

The rest of my runs were pretty good this week, for those of you who were scared away by my last post. My legs still felt pretty heavy, but greatly improved from last week. Am I back to my old self yet? Not quite, but I'm on my way!

However, I was pretty nervous about my 16 miler today. My 16 miler last year was pretty pathetic due to a combination of unfavourable weather conditions and my asthma. Needless to say, that memory was still fresh in my mind when I was thinking of my run today, as well as my shitty performance at the RnR two weeks ago.

I decided that I didn't want to make the same mistake as the RnR, so I made sure to eat a bit more than usual. I stayed at my friend Jen's house on Friday night so I wouldn't have to drive up on Saturday morning. We had a big pasta dinner and watched Spirit of the Marathon. So when 5 AM rolled around, I was ready to run. The humidity was predicted to be pretty high, so once again I fell back into a rather pessimistic mood.

Well, the first 12 miles felt pretty good, actually! I even remember passing Belmont harbour, the location where I stopped and thought about turning back early for last year's 16 miler. But I kept going. As we got ready to make the turn around for our last 4 miles, I could feel my legs starting to become heavy, from the bottom up. Luckily, my friend Jen stayed with me and we just took a few walk breaks on the way home. It was the longest four miles of my life, but I made it home, largely due to Jen sticking with me and pushing me along. The pace greatly slowed, but I finished. As Jen said, "You don't get points for style."

Jen also said something that rang pretty true for me about running in general. Jen talked about how we're not professional athletes. We're not getting paid to run. In fact, we're paying to run. No one forced any of us to sign up for any race, from a 5K to a full marathon. These were all choices we made, and we're really fortunate to be able to make them! It's my choice to run 16 miles, and for that, I'm grateful to God.

So here's to 18 miles next weekend. I'll be there.