The place I thought was the World of Hurt...wasn't

(so hard to get out the bathtub, and my husband offered to duct-tape my head to the side of it, but I've successfully resumed a terrestrial existence, and am now pounding this awesome salmon spread...)

Guess I didn't make my 2nd weight workout this week, but I ditched it for a good cause: Monster Run.  Admittedly, it was sort of impromptu; I'd thought about doing it next week, but then I found out a couple of days ago that someone was throwing a Party today!  Actually, a 25K and 50K in the forest.

I didn't feel up to "racing", or committing, or subjecting anyone longer than absolutely necessary to the copious amount of onions I ate last night.  I figured that I would run opposite the runners and, if things went well, I could leach off the excitement for 4 laps, and then aim for a Monster Run later in the month.

It was only 15C when I set out at around 8:15, but humid...I didn't feel that great, except thankful that I hadn't committed to anything.  I hit the forest and did a slightly shortened loop, skipping a section and substituting another to avoid congestion on a couple of narrow sections, and then I got into a groove.  I didn't even walk up the worst hills as planned.  It was super seeing so many other runners, and I wore out "good job," "looking good", etc (and, once, errrr, "good looking!", sorry, dude!).

My husband had talked about meeting me there with the dog, and I figured I'd meet them around the third lap or so.  Finished it, no boys.  But I was feeling good, and it was fun encouraging other runners so I kept going.  I fully ran that fourth loop as well, apart from a few narrow sections where I stopped and stepped aside for the racers.  By the end, I'd run 19-ish miles and I forget how many hours.  3:50ish, I think.

Hey, why not keep going?

The fifth loop was a new realm of sorts--I was starting to feel warm, but still surprisingly good and amazingly NOT clumsy.  Walking up the two worst hills was a great break.  The trails were emptier--most of the 25K people were done or on the final shorter loop.  By this point, I was familiar with the two guys in the lead, but I couldn't figure out the rank for the women.  Oh, well, I cheered everybody on.

I still had plenty of homemade gel (new recipe, molasses, honey, salt, whey powder and cranberry juice to cut the sweetness a bit), and the boys still hadn't shown up.  Foremost in my mind, however, was my tentative plan to do six loops later in October.  Slay 'em now.

Or at least slowly bore them to death.  The wheels started to come off.  Extra walk breaks.  But I still wasn't feeling too bad.   And then things royally crumbled.  I'd been dealing with some stitches and a few aches and fatigue, and I was becoming increasingly aware of some chafing, but I suddenly got really tired.  Full body drain.  But, by this point, I felt pretty close to the runners still on the course, which helped.  I met two guys, one on his last lap, the other on his 2nd last, and we stopped to talk for a minute.  I congratulated them for being almost done, and they teased me for not signing up. 

But I wasn't going to do the last, seventh loop.  But then, I started thinking about how beneficial it would be to keep going for six hours at least.  That wouldn't be my longest run time-wise, but since I'd mostly kept running, it would be close to my max distance (32ish miles, I think).

Finally, I met the boys at the very end of the six loop!  By this point, I'd run about 28 miles.  I had about a half-hour left of running at this point, so we set out again.

Then, about 15-20 minutes later, things really hit.  FFFFFFFffffff......  This was a whole new level of running-related discomfort.  I didn't just have a stitch, more like my whole abdomen was on fire.  My abs were mutineers.  My quads were torching police cars and my shoulders were hanging effigies, and even my ankles (shoot, I almost never think of those) were holding a magnifying lens over hapless ants.  It was a devilish mess.  I wonder if the elite athletes who race marathons feel that bad, or worse--kudos to them! I'm more of a wimp.  I took one walk break after another; the slightest incline was a good enough excuse.  Finally, with a few minutes left to go, that was it.  No more.   As far as I can tell, I'd traveled about thirty miles by this point.  Definitely well over 29.  Gotta say, 30 miles on trails is barely a distant relative to 30 miles on roads.  It takes longer, and there's just so much more going on in terms of crappy footing and so forth.  At least the impact is reduced.

Ending the push invited more demons to the fray.  Walking was surprisingly sore.  Like something was sucking the marrow out of my femurs, and something else was peeling my muscles off my core.  I didn't walk the whole seventh loop; we still had to walk home, so my husband picked a shorter loop, and then we walked home.  Total on my feet: 32-33 miles, I think, and about 7 hours.  Yeah!  I really got a lot out of it. A pleasant surprise was finding less sand in my shoes this week, thanks to less holey shoes.  Even better was an increase in agility.  I quasi-tripped/slipped umpteen times, but no real trips at all, much less a yard sale.  I am thrilled with this because, up until recently, I started snagging my feet at about the two hour mark. 

My stretching in the garage turned into a nap.

The plan is to do an even more monstrous run in November...hopefully the weather cooperates and lets me feel an easier gear.  If I get into this race, I got to get used to being out there for a while (incidentally, I think I could hold my little bike headlight in my hand...wearing a headlamp makes me queasy).  Meanwhile, I really got to do more situps and other core exercises that I'll likely end up substituting with more fun powerlifting stuff.  There's a fair bit of abs in clean and press, isn't there? lol  But, yeah, I wish I had more in the muscle bank. My legs were not much worse than expected, but it was crazy how my core hung me out to dry.  I'm feeling rather betrayed.