20 Miler 2...in the Bag...and In Rough Conditions...

So I have 4 20 plus milers in my training schedule (3 20, one 22), along with a 19 miler and one or two 18s that I've already done too...so this was another good one.

Saturday dawns over Minneapolis, not sunny and nice as has been the case some days, but overcast and rainy, a little chilly, probably lower 50s, hard to judge…anyway, I have a commitment to run with a friend today and I’m not going to back out on it, need the 20 anyway…so I get up, have my breakfast, the usual, scrambled egg with cheese, slice of wheat toast and later a slice of banana bread…Devi got there a little late, but that’s good, she slept, she’s always up early so I’m glad she was able to sleep in a bit, and we had plenty of time, I had nothing going on that day…So we headed down to the chain of lakes, most popular running spot in the twin cities pretty much, we had considered going to another area, but Devi had some foot issues going on and might have to cut the run short, if that is the case by the lakes there are places she can kill time while I’m finishing up. We started about 9:15…even though the rain was coming down, we were warm enough as long as we kept moving. The lakes, usually quite busy, were fairly quiet, but even with the weather conditions there were some diehards out (at least that’s what I termed us, my guess is the people driving by seeing us had a different term, but oh well…hey, there were people out in kayaks!!). Anyway, the run went really well, Devi is shooting to run a 4:15 and is supposed to run at 10:15-10:30 pace, we averaged 10:10 on my garmin, but that was with a bathroom stop and two stops for water and gels, probably 8-10 minutes total time which gets us to a 9:50-9:55 so not bad at all…particularly considering the conditions. The last stop was at 15 miles and I knew if we stopped again it would be hard to stop…with the rain we didn’t drink much, not a good idea, but oh well. I tried one of my fruit bars on the run too and it was really good and digested well so I have something else to bring along to eat if I need it at the marathon. It was a good boost too, running in tough conditions (it was slightly windy, definitely cold and miserable for the rain) and having someone to chat with the entire way. Different kind of taxing and good on a fall back week.

After the run, we went to Whole Foods, with a stop at Caribou Coffee for Lattes, and to warm up a bit…then we went to Marathon Sports for Devi to find some new shoes…The guy looked at the shoes she was wearing after looking at her feet and was surprised she liked them…So we tried on many pairs of shoes, and figured out the guy waiting on us was even more insane than us…he does 24 hours races, the kind where you run for 24 hours and see who can run the furthest…and he’s looking to break the Guiness Record for the 24 Hour Treadmill…nice…Anyway, he was kind of cute too, and we figured out he was single…Devi is looking for the go ahead and figure out a way to see if he wants to go out with me…it’s fun to chat about, but I’m doubting I’ll give the go ahead on it…highly doubting he’d be interested in me anyway. This only came up when he mentioned liking shoes and she said she had a friend she should introduce him to. Anyway, knowing my luck with men, I think I’ll keep it as it is…just a fun flirt in the afternoon after a long run in tough conditions. One other thing that came out of the stop though is a 30K race that we are going to run now for our last long run, I figure I’ll warm up or cool down the 1.4 that I miss from the 20 miler I would otherwise do and figure the racing conditions will be good as well.

That’s it for the weekend. Kind of gray and gloomy today, rained most of it, I stayed inside and cleaned…it was good though, my house really needed it.