. . . in which neither Rochelle nor Marlo showed up and so I was able to win the Port Wing Fall Festival 10K again. Whichever :) But hey, like my teammate's dad told me in high school - you can only race the people who show up, right? I actually almost didn't do the race. I ran 15 miles the day before and was worried about messing with me knee. Except, as I was talking to Leslie in a run earlier in the week, I realized that mostly I was worried about not being as fast as I wanted to be. Which is a stupid reason to not do a race, especially a race I want to support, so I did it. I started out super conservative and picked it up a bit as I went, let a guy push me to a 7 minute mile in the middle and finished feeling good. The roads were not great to run on since they had just re-graveled it due to some rain damage so the footing was lousy but my knee had no issues with it. It was fun to win, even if my time wasn't all that spectacular. Then I had two pieces of pie. Yum. But seriously, guys, I had no business winning with that time so I better see some more people there next year!
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The next weekend I spent pacing a friend through the woods of the Sawtooth 100 mile. After work Friday night, I headed to Finland to hopscotch/help crew until my pacing duties started around Cramer for the last 26 miles. So, way back when, post-injury, pre-night run, I was going to pace for 30 miles. Then I did that night run and realized I'd be doing a disservice to Marcus if I tried to keep up for 30 miles since I just wasn't in that shape yet. So I figured on 15-20. Then various events led to me doing the last 26, which was close enough, right? Marcus' parents then arrived at Finland and let me know Marcus was ready for company so I suited up and jumped on board for the next 12 mile section. His brothers then took over for the next two legs and then I brought him in to the finish for 38 miles for me. Sounds so easy, huh? We were moving a lot slower than Marcus wanted to go, which is the only reason I could stay with him. I became rather possessive towards the end and wanted to keep behind my runner the whole way. So the most important outcome, Marcus finished his first 100 mile and beat the sun, finishing in the light. I'm very proud of "my" runner - a lot of you know he got the cursed Sawtooth Shin and every step was painful with the added mental pain of the legs working fine otherwise. So I got a good lesson in being tough which will serve me well next year. And maybe even in a few weeks since I seem to have signed up for the Wild Duluth 100K . . . More on that later.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Recovering
You should all be very proud of me, because I'm rather proud of myself. I've been very careful with upping my mileage and with easing out of the brace. I haven't upped mileage more than I should and I've been smart about transitioning to braceless.
Well, smart about mileage uppage until a couple weekends ago, anyway . . .
See, I have two friends (Lisa and Marcus) who are both running their first 100 mile at Sawtooth. We'd been planning an overnight run on the Superior Hiking Trail for a while and I'd been very excited about the idea and now, here it was - time to run it! My previous long run had gotten up to 11 miles - woot. So I was originally planning on going 15-16, a reasonable jump. However, it turned out that we were planning on starting in a different spot than I thought, which meant that I'd be stopping just before the Sonju section. The section so many people complain about and that I really wanted to see. It meant running just under 24 miles instead of 15ish, but hey, we'd be going slow so I'd be fine, right? Silly Sam.
It was a fabulous run for most of it. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the stars were amazing. It was funny coming to what you knew to be a beautiful overlook just to see a black drop off into nothingness.
I made it about 20 miles just fine. And then my legs realized that I was more than doubling their mileage. And then we got to this little sign near when we should have been done. A sign which indicated we had 2.5 more miles to go since we didn't park in the parking lot . . . Since I had just spent the last mile convincing my poor legs that they only had to go one more mile it was rather a shock. The last section was a slow crawl and I felt bad for slowing down Lisa and Marcus who still had another 12 miles to go once they dropped me. I kept trying to make them go in front of me so they could hit the car and do their aid station stuff while I was following but it was a no-go. So that made for a total of 26.something miles. Oops.
I did learn that it wasn't a problem staying up all night while moving. Of course, how that works out when I've already been moving for 12 hours and have much more to go when it gets light again I don't know yet . . .
I have more to talk about, but we'll save that for later so that I actually get this one posted.
Up next is pacing Marcus at Sawtooth this weekend. I know a ton of people running it (extra good luck to Marcus, Lisa, and Christi in their first go at it) and so good luck to everyone! Exactly when/how far I'll be pacing is still up in the air, but I'll see people out there, and I'll be at the finish. Good luck everyone! And to those doing one of the many OTHER races this weekend, too.
Well, smart about mileage uppage until a couple weekends ago, anyway . . .
See, I have two friends (Lisa and Marcus) who are both running their first 100 mile at Sawtooth. We'd been planning an overnight run on the Superior Hiking Trail for a while and I'd been very excited about the idea and now, here it was - time to run it! My previous long run had gotten up to 11 miles - woot. So I was originally planning on going 15-16, a reasonable jump. However, it turned out that we were planning on starting in a different spot than I thought, which meant that I'd be stopping just before the Sonju section. The section so many people complain about and that I really wanted to see. It meant running just under 24 miles instead of 15ish, but hey, we'd be going slow so I'd be fine, right? Silly Sam.
I made it about 20 miles just fine. And then my legs realized that I was more than doubling their mileage. And then we got to this little sign near when we should have been done. A sign which indicated we had 2.5 more miles to go since we didn't park in the parking lot . . . Since I had just spent the last mile convincing my poor legs that they only had to go one more mile it was rather a shock. The last section was a slow crawl and I felt bad for slowing down Lisa and Marcus who still had another 12 miles to go once they dropped me. I kept trying to make them go in front of me so they could hit the car and do their aid station stuff while I was following but it was a no-go. So that made for a total of 26.something miles. Oops.
I did learn that it wasn't a problem staying up all night while moving. Of course, how that works out when I've already been moving for 12 hours and have much more to go when it gets light again I don't know yet . . .
I have more to talk about, but we'll save that for later so that I actually get this one posted.
Up next is pacing Marcus at Sawtooth this weekend. I know a ton of people running it (extra good luck to Marcus, Lisa, and Christi in their first go at it) and so good luck to everyone! Exactly when/how far I'll be pacing is still up in the air, but I'll see people out there, and I'll be at the finish. Good luck everyone! And to those doing one of the many OTHER races this weekend, too.
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