Dragons

On Christmas Eve, I went ahead and picked up Omni and got my first taste of The Sunday Long Run From Mike's. The previous morning, I had posted about desires to top Tumamoc (to date, my 'long run') but I reconsidered after realizing that, for as high as my spirits were this holiday season, it wasn't reasonable to expect me to do Tumamoc and then go 90 minutes. So, I ended up doing about 7 with Omni that evening. On this run, he informed me that the hills on Sunday would be 'gradual'. His reassurring statements fell on deaf ears as I was going out for this experience the next moring, come hell or high water.

Arriving 5 minutes late (I don't drive as fast when I'm listening to AA meetings on KFMA on Sunday mornings), J and and I met up with the group and we were off. The cold air was not my cup of tea but I felt that, regardless of the temperature, my best bet was just to find a shoulder to hang out on and then zone out for the next hour and a half. Unfortunately, constant pack restructuring during the run did not allow me such behavior and after about 25 minutes, Mike commented that my breathing was sounding a little labored. I wanted to, but could not, deny this. My legs remained numb through about 10 miles of loops around various roads. Listening to everyone's stories, I spoke little and tried to not think about (a) being able to see everyone's breath; (b) the gradual inclines everywhere around us; (c) the idea that 45 minutes was only the half-way point.

I began falling off at around 70 minutes as we headed onto a trail. Somewhere along that section, the pack really spread out and, upon coming out, I saw that Omni had moved to finish his run with a little speed. Behind him at equal distances were Shane followed by the pair of Mike and Lucas talking about...I don't even remember now. They held back and allowed me to catch up with about 2.5 miles left. Hearing my first words of encouragement in quite a few years, I felt quite shitty about falling off those guys again with about a mile left. I was feeling pretty nasty but when the Sun warmed my legs to a point that I could finally feel the damage caused by the previous 82 minutes, there was just no pleasing the leg gods and I had to hobble through the final turns of Mike's neighborhood.

While I was not surprised by my eventual tanking (I was actually kinda pleased that I didn't fall off sooner/harder), I was even more concerned by the necessary recovery this run set me up for. With my legs just feeling tired more than anything else, I held off Monday's run until the evening. This turned out to be little help as I hobbled through well under four miles in 28 minutes. Yesterday morning, I woke up and, after getting on the shoes and walking around the house a bit, I could feel that any run that morning would just hurt. I put off my run, again, to the evening hours. That afternoon I met Omni at his place for a run on the river along with one of his roommates. What seemed like a pretty quick clip probably actually wasn't but it didn't matter and we were in and out of that run in under half an hour.

Today, I woke up to the realization that I was on track to hit 28 miles for this week. Yes, something would have to be changed. So this evening I went ahead and extended my group run session to 10 miles and I feel a lot better for it. Keeping the pace under control (plus temperatures above 40) was key and I think it will allow me to get in moderate mileage tomorrow before something a little more intense on Friday. I have little tweak in my right knee that has been coming late in runs but I'm not too worried about it.

New Years Run -- Tempe Block Party