Saturday, March 29, 2008

18.8 Miles - OUCH!

So, last night I had to figure out where I was going to run for my 18 miler this morning.  I had an inspiration: there is a new road in Rockville - Montrose Parkway - that has a really nice, wide asphalt sidewalk along the road.  I mapped out a course to get down there and back - 18.8 miles.  If I'm already doing 18 miles, what's an extra 0.8, right?

I went to load music on my iPod - I decided since it was a long run that I would listen to The Beatles - I hadn't listened to them in a while and I love their music, and there's lots of it.  I open iTunes click under artist for The Beatles and drag the albums into a playlist...and something looked strange.  Hmmm.  All of the albums were sorted in chronological order - not alphabetical!  How did that happen??  Well, somehow - when my son was playing on the computer - he sorted by "Album by Year".  I didn't even know that option existed!

Having your kids playing on the computer is kind of like that Friends episode when Ross's pet monkey was playing with the remote control and he turned the Spanish audio on - and no one could figure out how to turn it back to English!  I can tell when my kids have touched the computer since there is always something that has changed or is missing...

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This morning, I woke up at 5:10am (I actually did not hear my alarm, but my wife did and kicked me out of bed) got dressed in shorts and a long sleeved running shirt and ate a Clif Z-Bar for a little fuel before my run.

Mike - Aren't Clif Z-Bars for kids???  Yes - and I'm sure every parent has a similar story:  Kids eat a certain food and say they want more of it; parents see that there is actually some new food that their kids will eat so they buy 5 boxes of it; 2 days later kids say they don't like it anymore.  So we have a bunch of Clif Z-Bars in the house that the kids won't eat and we need to get rid of them before Passover.

Before I left the house, I decided to check the weather one more time.  I'm so glad I did.  It was 37 degrees - but the wind chill was 29 degrees.  I decided to go back upstairs and put on my windbreaker and some gloves.  Good call...it was definitely needed today.

All in all it was a good run.  It actually was a very good run until about mile 13 or so.  At that point, my right foot started to hurt.  It wasn't too bad - and I told myself that I could definitely run through this.  I slowed down a bit and the pain subsided.  About 10 minutes later the wind started to pick up.  I was soooo glad I grabbed my windbreaker and gloves!  But I tend to run faster when there is wind, and today was no exception.  Of course this brought the pain in my foot back again :-(

The last 3 miles was like a comedy of errors.  First, I went to grab a tissue out of my pocket and they all dropped out.  Stop run, turn back and pick up tissues.  Then one of the water bottles on my AmphiPod water belt would not stay in place.  I would click it on the belt and after a stride or two it would fall out again.  Stop run, turn back and pick up water bottle.  This happened about five times (I thought I felt it click in each time, so I was certain I fixed it), until I finally decided to hold the water bottle the rest of the way.  Finally, while I was crossing the last major intersection on my route, I was watching the road for traffic instead of the ground in front of me (smart, right?) and it ends up that the walkway portion of the median is a raised a bit from the street.  Of course I tripped on it - and luckily caught my balance, but barely...

When I finally arrived home and stopped running - in 3:34:56 - I realized how much my body hurt.  Mostly my foot, but also some pain in my hips and knees - actually every part of my legs hurt.  I came inside and took a warm shower and then sat in a cold bath for 10 minutes.  I still find it difficult to get in that cold bath - so much so, that I have all but given up putting ice in the bath.  My feet feel like they are going to freeze off as soon as they get into the water, how the heck will I be able to do this when the water is colder???

I'm still sore now - a good 12 hours after my run.  I've been hobbling around all day.  I'm hoping that a good night sleep will heal some of the pain.





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