Wake Up Call

On Friday night, I ran 12 miles with Sandy, who I’m training for the Disney Wine & Dine half marathon in two weeks. We wanted to get a nighttime long run in because it’s a nighttime race. When I run with Sandy, it’s usually between 10 and 11 minutes per mile. Since I’ve run a half marathon at sub 6:50 pace, I assumed the 12 miles with Sandy would be no problem.

I was wrong.

I felt pretty good on the way out. I still had some aches in my left knee from foolishly racing the high school boys on the cross country team in 100 m pickup last week. We ran with two other people and the conversation was good. There was nice scenery and great smells coming from the restaurants downtown. Near the ten mile mark, my legs really started to protest. It was then that it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I had run 12 miles.

My legs started getting so tight that I actually sped up over the last two miles to lengthen my stride and stretch them out. I was very glad when it was over. It goes to show you that no matter what kind of shape you were in, what really matters is what kind of shape you’re in now. I tend to forget that sometimes. I’ve been dwelling on the memories of my 2010 Walt Disney World half marathon performance a lot lately. It brings to mind a certain Bruce Springsteen song.

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After the 12 miles, I stumbled back to the car and drove straight to Little Caesar’s where I purchased a large pepperoni pizza. I then headed to Publix for a 20 pound bag of ice. I set the pizza on an upside down bucket next to the bathtub, grabbed two beers and hopped into my ice bath. I sat for 20 minutes, soaking in the extremely cold water, chowing down on pizza and enjoying a couple of brews. How was your Friday night?

Looking back on the week, it was pretty feeble. My only excuse is that I was resting my sore knee:
Monday: Off

Tuesday: 4.5 miles easy

Wednesday: Off

Thursday: 2 miles easy

Friday: 12 miles

Saturday: Off

I’ll probably run 3 miles today to shake my legs out. I will say that the ice bath worked very well and though my legs felt a little heavy yesterday, they certainly weren’t sore. I think I’m 17 weeks out from the Goofy challenge and I ran less than 20 miles this week. That’s not going to cut it. I think instead of tapering down to the Wine & Dine half marathon, I need to treat it as a training run and run another 12 miler next weekend, and I need to get my weekly mileage consistently back over 30 miles and then keep increasing up to about 60.