Week Eighteen: Saturday

Put on a pot of coffee, put some cough syrup on the kid’s pacifier and take your phone off the hook. I had an eventful Saturday.

Due to my poor showing last weekend and during this week, I was very motivated to run 16 miles on Saturday. I tried to prepare for this run using some of the tips I have picked up. I ate a spaghetti dinner the night before, half hour before the run I ate a Clif bar, and super hydrated myself with water and Gatorade. I deicided that I would run my 4 mile route 3 times and then run 4 miles on a connected trail to mix things up as well as make it convenient to stop by the house to grab some Gatorade. I started a little after 8 am.

Mile 1: I needed to finish listening to the Bill Simmons podcast, the B.S. Report. I had 17 minutes left so I figured this would carry me into mile 2. I have mentioned in the past how podcasts can actually be a determent because the pace of someone talking usually isn’t a good running pace. However, I figured that I had a long run and using the music crutch right away would make it useless down the stretch.

Mile 3: Switched to listening to This American Life podcast. This pacing is usually even worse, but the shows are an hour and it means not f’ing with my Ipod constantly. The pants I am wearing have no pockets. They only have a pouch that fist the Ipod perfectly. However, it requires me digging in my pants to get the thing out. I worry that someone is going to call the cops on me one of these days.

Anywho, I was making my way between mile 3 and 4 and I saw a couple bicyclists really Lancin’ it up. Not that out of the ordinary. About a minute later, as I rounded a corner, I had 25 bikers coming at me. Now, if you have read this blog at all you would be aware that I have been pretty critical of bicyclists. So when I see a group of 25 coming at me, my mind goes to two things: the movie Better Off Dead, and that they are coming to silence me. My life flashed before my eyes. However, my mind has confused my life with the life of characters on Television. So I remembered the time that I played Neptune, King of the Sea, the time I got addicted to my sister’s friends weight loss medication, the time that my friend that left for a summer and came back wearing a cowboy hat shot himself playing with a gun, and the time that I shook hands with Wayne Newton (Wait, that one was real).

Despite my fear, they passed me with no incident. Once I reached the beach I realized that they were part of a triathlon.

Miles 4 – 12. I ended up running my 4 mile route 3 times. I would think that anyone who happened to drive by me three times was wondering why the hell I was running the same stretch of road over and over again. I would ask them why they were driving it over and over again.

Mile 12 – 13 I ran back to the house because I had to use the bathroom and get some fluid, as I had been at it for almost 2 hours with no hydration. I ran into the house, Mrs. Fat Guy grabbed me a Gatorade and a Gel while I was in the bathroom, and I ran back to the trail. It was a pretty seamless transition.

This was also the time when I ran into a new trail dweller that I hadn’t even thought of. A dude, wearing a helmet and a backpack, on a unicycle. The reason I reference the backpack and helmet is because it looked like this dude was going on a distance ride.

Now, ever since 5^th grade when Kit Ward came cruisin’ up to Rusty Walbon’s house on a unicycle I have been fascinated by unicycles. Do I think they are cool? Hell no. They are like the dorkiest thing I can think of. However, when I have tired to ride one, I have always failed. This makes me want to master them all the more. Plus I can juggle so I would be a couple balloon animals away from being qualified for clowndom.

Before this sighting I thought that I had seen everything out there. But my guess is that the trail is hiding some more characters from me.

Mile 13.11 – At the time I was only guessing that I was at the 13.2 mark but I checked my distances after the fact and it turned out I was dead on. I ran 13.11 miles in 2 hours and 17 minutes. That is a half marathon in 16 minutes faster than 2 weeks ago. Not only did I finish it faster, I did not stop to walk at all. The only time I stopped was to go to the bathroom.

Mile 13.2-16 – This is where stuff gets a little hazy. I was starting to lose it a little At one point I was singing out loud along to the music I was listening to if that is any indication of my mental state at this point. Oh, and just so you know, Evan Dando sings “Rockin’ Stroll” 1000x times better than I do. . I think that I walked for about a half mile (13.5-14) and then ran and walked the remainder of the run.

During miles 15-16 tried a strategy that my friend Vik emailed me a couple weeks ago. He knew people that would run 2 minutes and then walk 1. This was a great strategy not only for keeping myself going when I am out of energy, but also as a way to get going again. Going from walk to run again is difficult. But if you know that you can stop in two minutes you can get through it. Then you extend the running time a little. Using this mentality, I was able to not only run the last half mile but for the last 1/10^th mile I kicked it into high gear. When I finished, if there wouldn’t have been some people 30 feet behind me I would have dropped to my knees and ripped off my shirt.

I like to walk after the run is done to stretch out, but at this point I was ¾ miles away and my legs were in very bad shape. I actually started jogging back home towards the end because it felt better than walking.

My legs felt like I had been worked over with a bat. I laid in bed most of the day Saturday. I did take a bath to try and soothe my legs. It is Sunday and while I have not fully recovered, I feel pretty good.

The time for 16 miles, you ask? 2 hours 50 minutes. Oh, and when I double checked the route, it was actually 16.2 miles. So I added 3 miles and only 17 minutes. This was a very satisfying run and has gotten me motivated to make sure that I am not skipping the shorter runs.