Thank you mother nature

I had 22 miles to run this morning and I was semi looking forward to it. At least until I woke up to the torrential down pour of rain outside. The whole spring forward thing also threw me for a loop. I had every intention of hitting the ground running @ 6:30 am so that I could make it the St. Paddy's run to cheer on some friends. I estimated that if I stayed on my target pace of 8:00-8:30/miles I would need 2:56 to complete my easy 22 miler. When I looked outside at about 6:00 am I realized that it was still awfully dark out there. Me being a complete scaredy cat about running in the dark decided to crawl back into bed. I was also hoping that the rain would stop....it didn't.

When I finally made it out the door @ 10:45 it was still raining. Yuck. the first couple of miles were brutal. My left leg hurt, but after stopping and stretching it out it seemed to feel better. I was actually contemplating calling it a day 1.5 miles into my run, but instead I trucked on. I told myself if my leg started to bother me again, I would stop. With this in mind I ran my 22 miles in several loops that were close to my house.

I ran my first 5 miles and looped back to my house because I needed to discard my soaked gloves and rain coat. By this point I was in my zone and feeling spectacular. The rest of the run felt pretty good despite the weather conditions. I stayed on target pace and actually had to slow down a lot because I was dipping into the high 7:50 range.

At mile 13.5 I decided to take my first gel. I purchased some peanut butter GU at REI on Saturday and I was pretty excited to try it. It was amazing! It tasted exactly like peanut butter to me and I love PB! I brought 2 gels with me, but I didn't need the second one. I also brought water and gatorade with me. I only took a couple of sips from my water, but drank all of the gatorade. I haven't run with gatorade before, but with the issues I have been having with swelling (I am a salty sweater) I figured it might be wise to be ingesting more electrolytes.

My overall time was 2:55:53 (7:59 pace). I am ecstatic that I ran 55.25 miles over the course of the week!!!
This next week I don't plan on running any extra miles because I think my body needs a break after 3 weeks of 50 + miles. I think that 45-50 miles should be a good target. I have another 22 miler next Sunday that will involve some threshold running. Ideally I would like to be rested up for that.

Right now I feel pretty good, just rocking my pink CEP compression sleeves. I might be wearing them to work tomorrow under my pants. :-)

Questions for you:

Is anyone else a "salty sweater"?
Have a you called it a day a couple of miles into a long run?
Did anyone else have a long run this weekend? How did it go?


--Tasha