10 mile torture
So I have only run after work during the week very infrequently. When I have, it typically was a shorter three or four mile jaunt. I got the bright idea that since I was unable to run 10 miles with the club on Saturday morning I would simply run 10 after work last night. Sounds reasonable.
I decided to park at the running store and start from there instead of starting at the normal park the Saturday morning run launches from. Doing this changes the dynamic of the run. Instead of it having two water stops and being broken into 3.5, 3, and 3.5 mile segments it becomes two 5 milers.
Very early on in the run I had a couple tweaks in my knees that didn’t feel great and resulted in a slight limp for a bit. However as I warmed up I was able to resume my normal stride. I ran as I would on a club run morning, in the bike lane against traffic. I quickly found that doing this in the evening is more of a pain in the ass and dangerous.
There were a lot of vehicles that were either heading off to catch an early bird dinner special or see the sunset. I had a number of (old)people that were riding on or over the white line that designates the bike lane. A few of them got angry hand gestures from me indicating they needed to move the f over.
I found that running the course during daylight made it feel longer as opposed to when you run the streets well before sunrise as is the norm for our group.
The first half of the run I didn’t feel too bad. I averaged a pace in the low 9’s which was all I was looking for.
As I arrived at the Port Royal fitness club which is our normal water stop on early Saturday mornings I walked in on busy tennis courts. I walked my shirtless, stinky, sweaty body right past one of the multiple “Members Only” signs and grabbed a drink at one of the fountains.
There was an older couple there that looked like they should be named Mr Howell and Lovey that just stared at me as I dared to drink out of their members only water fountain. I didn’t acknowledge them, finished my drink and continued walking through the facility. I could sense eyes from the other courts focused on the “outsider” that dared to tread on their grounds. As I walked past the fitness center building I did an inventory of the cars parked in the lot. 85% of them were either Mercedes or Lexus with a spattering of BMW’s and a lone Corvette.
The run back was in a word, miserable. During the first couple miles of it I just used a slower pace. Although my breathing never got labored, my legs were rapidly running out of juice. The last couple miles of the run was fueled almost entirely by my mind telling my body that I was too close to quit. My legs no longer felt like legs, they felt like two slabs of concrete. My pace was slow and labored.
I was so annoyed when I got back to route 41 and saw I still need like .17 miles to reach the 10 mile mark. I just wanted the discomfort to end. I turned down the sidewalk and just kept plodding along until the GPS mercifully clicked over to 10.00. It took me 1:36 and change to cover the 10 miles. I did the first 5 in around 45:30, meaning the last 5 took me over 51 minutes.
Those numbers make me not want to consider running the Hooters Half Marathon in early March. I will be doing a couple more long runs in February. If they go like last night did I’m not going to do the race. I’m not looking to go slower than the year before.
So I slowly walked back over to the Tacoma and released the tailgate so I could use it as a seat. I sucked down a Goo and gulped down a bunch of water. I felt totally spent. On the way home I even grabbed a coffee but even that hardly made my energy level meter tick up a notch.
By the time I got home it was close to 8. By the time I took out the trash, made dinner, and emptied the dishwasher it was 9pm, another reason doing long runs after work is not a good idea.
I did manage to keep my eyes open long enough to catch the new Walking Dead. Now if I can just find a place that streams Blood & Chrome.