Seriously, I can’t believe how much food I ate yesterday after getting home from my 17 mile run.

Let’s rewind to how the day started. I was smacked in the face by the obnoxious alarm clock blaring at 3:45am. I had all my gear laid out the night before so I slathered sunscreen and anti-chafe balm everywhere and then somehow managed to get dressed while not nearly awake. I ate a soft pretzel and took a few swigs of water. Took Duncan out quick to do is biz and then I was on the road by 4:25am.

By 5am I was parking in Brooklyn and meeting up with Lisa and Mike. We had planned to run mostly along the NYC Marathon route. We ran 9/1 intervals (9 running 1 walking) and were keeping sub 11 min miles until hitting the Pulaski Bridge. We didn’t really chat much in the beginning. We just ran and every so often five minutes I would complain about the humidity.

Before we knew it we were in Queens and then Erin joined us at the base of the Queensboro Bridge.

Lisa and Mike on the QB (we’ll be back here at mile 16 on November 1!)

At this point the sun had finally come up and I was finally awake enough so the conversation started to flow as we crossed over the Queensboro and into Manhattan.

The next few miles seemed to fly and I felt pretty comfortable. By mile 8 though, the outside of my left foot started to hurt. This is a spot that has caused me a lot of aching for a long time. I have had peroneal tendon issues on and off since an ankle sprain in 2011. And the outside of the foot is where the tendon attaches. I thought about stopping to prevent further irritation but with our walk breaks I figured I’d be ok.

Erin and Mike somewhere on the east side

By mile 11 we met up with a couple more friends. The humidity was raging and I think Erin was starting to have some dehydration issues. Her legs were cramping and she was fading. By mile 13 she decided to change her intervals to 4/1 and I opted to stay with her. I figured that walk breaks more frequently would take some pressure off my foot. So we split up with the rest of the group. It was nice to catch up with Erin since I hadn’t seen her in probably a year! We walked a lot but ran when we could. I wasn’t really concerned at all about the walking—I just wanted to cover the mileage. It’s nice to have no real time goals this time around =)

sunflower in the foreground and the Chrysler building in the background

I stopped my Garmin at mile 17 but we walked another mile to get from the west side to the east side. The good news is that I felt pretty strong even in the later miles. Never felt winded or defeated. Granted I felt the fatigue in my legs but it was just normal fatigue for running for 3+ hours. And I was happy and relaxed. I wasn’t hating running as I can usually do when running long. I would normally have one or two more long runs before the marathon. Probably an 18-19ish and a 20ish. I might still get the 18-19ish done on 10/3 but if not I’m running 2 back to back half marathons the weekend after that (10/10 and 10/11) which will be replacing my 20ish miler. I’ll see how I feel. Next week I’m signed up for the Beat the Blerch half but after finding out it’s mostly a trail run I’ll probably drop back to the 10k. Next week is a step back week for me anyway so no need to run 13 =)

50,000 runners will have to deal with the construction on the Verrazano during the marathon. I doubt it will be complete by then. Oh well.

Meanwhile when I came home I tried to figure out why my foot had started hurting so suddenly. That’s when I felt the inside of my new Brooks Ghost sneakers and realized the vinyl strip under the logo was super stiff and protruded through so that you could feel the ridge on the inside of the sneaker. I’m guessing the 2 shorter runs I did in them didn’t bother me because I wasn’t wearing them that long.

That silver part right under the pink part of the logo 🙁

Sadly, I returned the sneakers. Thank you to Dicks Sporting Goods for taking back slightly worn merchandise! Boo hoo! I’m gonna have to wait a bit for my foot to feel better (been alternating between ice and heat and wearing compression socks to help) and then probably just get another pair of Asics Cumulus. Or maybe get a wide width of these.

Today Duncan and I are relaxing and then I have some freelance work to do. We went for a nice walk early this morning (since I went to bed at 9pm last night I was up super early today).

I can’t believe she took me out so early on a Sunday. She must really feel guilty she was gone for so long yesterday

relaxing

Early morning walk

I hope you all are having a great weekend! And a big shout out to Becky who ran 20 strong miles today. She’ll be rocking the Steamtown Marathon (her first marathon!) in just a few weeks.

Who’s running a fall marathon?
Who has a birthday coming up? Mine’s in 35 days =)

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