Monday, August 29, 2011

Rogue 20

My long runs lately have been very bi-polar. Either they are great and I feel encouraged, or the last 5-6 miles are a struggle and I wonder how I'll ever get through 26.2 on November 6th. I had originally planned to run the Bronx Half Marathon, and maybe even try and push it a little bit and put in a race effort. Well, as I'm sure you've all heard, not only did NY feel the aftershock of an earthquake in Virginia earlier this week, but had a hurricane this weekend too! With the race being canceled, I knew I had to run my 18 miles. And the way it worked out, I was alone, and dreading it. It didn't help either that I was super stressed about impending hurricane and only got about 6 hours sleep.

I had planned an all Brooklyn route that had a few options, depending on how I felt. Here's the route I ended up taking.


I broke up my 18 miles into 3 chunks, the first 6 miles, the middle 6, and finishing the last 6 strong. I was also focused on taking my 3 gels every 4.5-5.5 miles. The first 6 were pretty uneventful, I felt pretty good the first 3-4, but started to feel the effects of my light breakfast so I took my first gel. The middle 6 were mostly in Prospect Park, which is also when I started listening to music. Man, no matter how many times I go up Zoo Hill, it seems to always get me, especially at mile 12! I tried to use all my hill techniques, but still need to work on running hills on tired legs. I felt really strong heading down Ocean Parkway for my final miles. My legs were a bit tired, but I was so happy that I was feeling good, so I thought maybe I'd tack on an extra mile or two to make it a nice round 20 for the weekend. Of course, a few minutes later I started getting this stabbing lower stomach pain. It took me a minute to realize, gee, maybe your hydration belt is a little too tight?! By the time the pain subsided I was probably at mile 17 or so, and decided just to go home and call it a day. It also didn't help that as I was a block away from home   it just started to downpour. I was a little disappointed that I stopped at 18, but who am I kidding, that's what was on my training schedule!

Fast forward to a shower and putting on some nice dry clothes, I went to map out my route for the day so I could upload it to Dailymile.com. Now, as you probably have noticed, I keep saying I ran 18 miles, but when I mapped out my route, it mapped out to EXACTLY 20. I'm not quite sure how my Garmin "lost" 2 miles, I noticed the mapping was pretty spot on with my Garmin until around the time I got to Prospect Park.

Regardless of the reason, I'm going with the map on this one. So I guess I ran my first 20 miler of the year!

5 comments:

  1. And now we all know where you live, heh heh. Are you in Brighton Beach? I have become obsessed with Brighton Beach after watching Russian Dolls on tv lately. True.

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  2. Oh you're such a stalker! I live right by there...if you come visit me we can drink vodka on the boardwalk!

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  3. If you're having vodka shots you have to take them with pickled mushrooms. And maybe some pelmeni. Great job on the 20M!

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  4. Pickled mushrooms?! That sounds.....awful (coming from someone who loves pickles and sauerkraut!)

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  5. By the way, there was 5.8 magnitude earthquake around the eastern area.
    Also, the hurricane Irene arrived already.
    I wonder you are safe?

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