After failing to meet my goal of 12 miles last weekend, I was determined to give it everything I had when I stepped out the door yesterday morning.
My morning started per the normal Saturday Routine and I made my usual coffee and oatmeal.
When I went to start the coffee, I saw something sorta upsetting. The mesh sieve that fits into the cone of my coffee pot had accidentally been thrown away last weekend.
Not the end of the world. The coffee still turned out just fine. It’s a bummer though because this is a particularly nice coffee pot that was given to me as a gift. I’ve made coffee in shitty little Walmart coffee makers and I would rather continue to brew at the upgraded level. No grounds floating in my coffee though so I’ll put this issue to the back burner.
When I left it was actually cool and cloudy and not yet hot and humid as some of my runs have been recently. I didn’t know until I moved here but May and June in SoCal are actually not scoarchers but are heavily dominated by the marine layer. The cool cloudy morning is a staple of the beginning of summer here and the perfect running weather.
Will is working on running these days and we’re even looking at doing a 5K together this summer so he came with me for the first two miles. Those serve as a nice warm up before I put in my ear phones and cruise off on my own for the next two hours. I try not to think about it too much so as to not psych myself out but that’s quite a long time to be pounding the pavement. Case in point, I had forgotten about an occurrence early on in yesterday’s run until I went to look at the pictures.
Just roaming about like it’s no big deal. I don’t know about where you live but this is not a common occurrence here in the expansive metropolis of the greater Los Angeles area. Hence the need for a picture.
That first half of my run is such a blur. It was the better half, too, so it’s a shame that it got overshadowed by the lesser part. Miles 1-9 were great and that felt like a decent run. Miles 10 and 11 were painful and mile 12 was absolutely by all means the limit. That last mile was a run a block, walk a block type of mile and the only thing that motivated me to run any was that it meant I would be able to put my feet up quicker.
Most half marathon training plans are 12 miles with thinking being that you’ve ran 12, what’s one more mile?
Today that one more mile would have been the difference between making it home proud and accomplished and failing miserably with the need to stop and puke on the side of the street.
12 miles accomplished. And absolutely worth the sore legs. I know it might seem strange to run to the point of complete fatigue every Saturday with no real goal in mind but the sense of accomplishment is the same whether I’m training for a race or just seeing how much my body is capable of. I do plan to do a half marathon sometime in the near future but my running still won’t be about training to cross a finish line. It’s about knowing I’m capable of something I once thought was impossible.