Twenty Miles... CHECK!

Today was the day.

Back in February, I put all of the long weekend runs on my calendar and I have been dreading May 28th ever since.  Why?  Well, a 20 mile run seems really, really long.  And seeing that on the calendar and knowing that it was going to be "the day" eventually, well, I think you can understand.  People don't just run 20 miles.  It's a long run.  But I bet you were already thinking that.

My parents graciously agreed to let our kids come and visit them today (thanks Mom and Dad!) so that Gary and I could run/jog/walk/limp the 20 miles together.  It took forever to get the kids up and moving out of the house this morning.  And truthfully, we weren't all that excited to get started, so we didn't push them too much.

After dropping off the kids at 10:30am, (I was hoping for a 9am drop-off,) we got in the car and tried to figure out where we were going to run.  We normally run the trails at Bunker Hills Regional Park, but after the disastrous 18 mile run there a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't excited about hanging out there for 20 miles.  We decided to head to Minneapolis Chain of Lakes and we ran around some of the lakes there.  I had a map that showed the distances around each lake and the distance between them, so we decided to park on the west side of Lake Calhoun and then do a bunch of little runs and come back to the car between each run for water/gels/powerade.

The first 3 miles around Lake Calhoun went well, as did the next 5 miles when we ran around Lake of the Isles.  We managed to meander around all the people who were out with their dogs and taking up the whole path while walking really slowly.  (So much more complicated than the empty trails at Bunker!)  The second run around Lake Calhoun was not feeling as good as the first time and we took our first walking break at 10.5 miles, but at least we found some guy who was handing out free bottles of Vitamin Water!

By the time we got back to the car, Gary wasn't feeling great and I wasn't feeling much better, but we were off to Lake Harriet.  There was a lot more walking and less talking.  But the really bad part was when we headed off to do our final 2.87 miles around Lake Calhoun.  Gary told me to stop talking to him (normally I'm the one telling him to "Shhhh!") and he had to really concentrate on just running.  I wasn't feeling terrific, but I'm positive that Gary was having a harder time than I was having.  I could feel the blisters on my feet blowing up like balloons, but I was more worried about Gary falling over and looking like this.  (For the record, it's called "Very funny marathon finish" but there's nothing funny about it.  It's incredibly admirable that these two women were willing to leave everything behind and completely empty their tanks in order to finish their race.)

Anyway, we FINALLY got to 20 miles and we stopped where we were and headed right to the car.  We stretched.  We drank.  We stood still and were thrilled that the run was over.  Wow, did I really just do that?  It's so strange because it really seemed so much easier than the 18 mile run.  I know that we didn't run the entire time, but I'm pretty happy with how we did and more importantly, how I felt when we were done.  I wasn't completely spent and while I wouldn't have been thrilled with running 6 more miles, I felt like I could have finished that if I needed to.  In all, we were moving for 3:32 which averages out to about 10:35/mile.  If we stay that same pace for the marathon, I'll be really happy with the outcome.

Now, the most interesting part of the day... I've done some reading about recovery after long runs and I decided to give an ice bath a try.  I was too wussy to actually add any ice, but I did fill up the bathtub with only cold water (we measured the temp and it was a chilly 54 degrees!) and I sat there for about 15 minutes.  Gary was really wussy and wouldn't get in the tub, so we'll see who's feeling better tomorrow!

And to celebrate that we were still alive after running 20 miles?  Well, we went to Texas Roadhouse!  Yee haw!