Livin' on a Prayer

I shouldn't be posting right now. I'm supposed to be spending time with my sweetheart in Santa Monica, but instead I'm at home blogging about a run I shouldn't have had the time to take. Sorry to say my streak of stupidity continued today as I managed to take a routine turn in to a gas station too short and manage to clip the curb just perfectly to tear a chunk of my tire's sidewall out at 5:30 PM on the Friday going in to a four day weekend. Long story short, I don't feel comfortable driving on it and I can't get it fixed until 10 tomorrow morning making me very late for what was supposed to be a very lazy drive up the Pacific Coast Highway. As one might imagine this infuriated me, and after a bit of cooling down I decided to take out my frustration on the pavement. I initially set out to just do the three miles I'd need to leave only the big run for the week, but not long out the door I realized that I hadn't run yesterday and I certainly wouldn't be running tomorrow, so I might as well go for it. The goal was set: six miles. I've never made it further than five.

This was a reasonably optimistic goal considering that my run on Wednesday had been a near-disaster. After doing 3 miles the day before (sorry, no data for that one, the Forerunner crapped itself again), I made the mistake of eating too much at lunch and my side stitched up very early in the run and would not go away, even when I walked for a quarter mile. I finished the four miles, but it took me nearly as long as five miles had taken me on Sunday. I felt a bit discouraged, but like so many things lately it was my own damn stupid fault and I could have avoided it.

Tonight there would be no failing. I set out up the hill, starting on a wide loop to leave myself an out if my body wasn't up to the task tonight. By the time I made it through the office complex loop I was barely tired at all, so I chugged up the next hill to the Pacific Life building. Near the top the stitch in my side threatened to make a comeback, so I shortened my steps significantly, remembering the story from Born to Run of trying to pace a metronome at 180 beats/min. This didn't eliminate it, but it did buy me enough time to go on a long downhill stretch on Pacific Park (past the $#^@ curb) before settling in on the run I'd also done a couple nights ago. Finishing the loop across Alicia, Moulton and finally Aliso Viejo Parkway took me to just shy of six miles. I probably should have felt exhausted, but at some point my body had just given up fighting so I did an intentional extra jaunt to the 73 onramp before turning around and running back to my door. This little extra bit of distance put me up and over 6.2 miles, meaning tonight I ran a 10K in a hair over an hour and a half only stopping for traffic lights. I started this blog fifty days ago and it's now fifty days to the race, and I've made it to the halfway point of the distance I need to run the race. It's a good sign, but I can't let up now.