That was pretty much the feeling I had heading into this weeks long run. Its definitely crunch time and with my longest run up until this point being a 13 miler, I needed to get back on the road for some serious mileage. As I mentioned in my last post, this weeks L Street long run was scheduled for a 15 mile stroll through Boston. As Sunday starting to get closer, I could definitely feel some anxiety building up. I didn't know if my elliptical training was enough to get me ready for this type of distance or how my knee was going to feel during it. Regardless, there is literally 4 months of training riding on the fact that I can do these last few runs and complete the big run on April 18th.
As I wrote about in my last entry, our Saturday night was spent at the DMSE Gala with Tom and Lyn. Unforunately, this weekend happened to be daylight savings time ... which meant that we turned the clocks ahead and lost a precious hour of sleep. Regardless, Renee and I ended up getting to sleep around 12:30 am (after pushing the clocks ahead). Before I knew it, my alarm was going off ... 6:30 am! Despite the fact that we were meeting our friend Lauren at 7:30, I woke up a little bit early so I could shower to make sure I was wide awake and to get some serious stretching in.
The weather this Sunday had finally started to warm up. In the morning, it was in the 40's with overcast clouds and barely any wind. I decided to wear shorts, a T Shirt and a wind breaker. As we stepped outside, I knew this was crunch time ... and I was pretty focused on having a good run. Renee, Lauren and I started out an slow - average pace. From what I had noticed based on my last few runs, my IT band pain seems to be better if I am running at a faster pace (apparently, after doing some reading online this is pretty common). After we hit the first water stop at about 4 miles, I decided to try to run at a little faster pace and ended up breaking away from the girls.
The first four miles had gone by like nothing. For the next leg, I increased my pace a little bit and was lucky enough to find a group of 4 runners that happened to be running at the same speed I was. I ducked in behind them much like a race car will draft one in front of it, and I used them to help me maintain my pace. The next few miles seemed to fly by. While I didn't have our watch on, I am guessing that my pace was probably around the 9:30 mark. I passed another two water stops and before I knew it I heard someone say that our mileage was up to 8.5! Yep, thats right, I had just run 8.5 miles and barely even felt tired. While my knee was starting to get a little bit sore, I felt great.
After our water stop at the 9 mile mark, I hit my first group run screw up. The guys that I was following seemed to split ways and before I knew it I was running behind 3 other people. As we were coming up to an intersection at Beacon St they turned around to me and said "Any clue where we are supposed to go?". So this brings to light another fact of my running career ... since I am no where near the fastest person on these runs ... I really only look at the route for the first 3-4 miles of a run since I know that after that there will be a ton of people in front of me that I can just follow. Well, needless to say, I followed the wrong people and got myself lost. Thankfully, there was a speedy lady in her 40's who ran up and said she knew where to go.
I basically spent the next two miles running along the Charles river trying to keep up with her so I didn't lose sight of her and get totally lost. And when I say "trying to keep up with her", I basically mean trying to keep her in sight. It wasn't until this portion of the run that I started to hit a few problems with the IT band. At around mile 10 or so it started acting up a little bit but as long as I was running, I was fine.
The real trouble hit when I stopped at the water stop at mile 11 and started to stretch out a cramp I had in my right quad. I learned a hard lesson on this one ... my IT band tightens up really quickly when I am not moving. It only took about 1-2 minutes worth of standing still and them my IT band totally locked up. I spent the next 2-3 minutes massaging it and stretching it out. After walking for a short distance, I finally got it loose enough to get back to running. I knew in my head that for the next few miles ... there wasn't going to be any stopping!
The last portion of this run took us from downtown Boston under I-93 and back into Southie. I guess to make the run harder, they build in a huge 0.75 mile hill (West Broadway) into the end of the run. This is when I really started to feel fatigued and realized I probably hadn't drank enough water to replace what I had been sweating out for the last 2 hours and 45 mins. I ended up digging it out up the hill on West Broadway, and had to go right past the water stop because I was afraid that if I stopped moving the IT band would lock up yet again. In the end, I was able to push up the hill on West Broadway and run down the hill on East Broadway to complete a 15 mile run!
Like I said at the start of this entry ... this run was a do or die for me. Deep down I felt like if I wasn't able to complete this run i was going to be in some real trouble for the marathon. That being said, I am not out of the woods yet since I am still nursing this knee issue, but this run definitely gave me the confidence that I needed looking ahead at my last two big runs .... #1 March 27th - 20 mile long run ... #2 April 18th - Boston!
Its hard to believe that when I first started this blog I mentioned how the Boston Marathon was ~148 days away. Well, now its only 34!
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