Fifteen

Today I ran the farthest distance I've ever run in my life. Not a bad little accomplishment is it? Today's total distance was fifteen miles... 2 more than a half marathon.

I went into this run with two things in mind:

1. It's ok to poo in the bushes.
2. I wasn't going to look at my time.

Ok, I know both of those sound odd when coming from someone training for a marathon. If you've read the last couple posts, you know that I had a really rough week of running. I got all my miles in (total of 29!) but I hit some sort of plateau and they were terrible, painful miles, interwoven with tummy troubles.

Enter the first point. I was told by someone I work with and respect a lot as a runner that she has tummy issues all the time. In fact, she has to pull over at times when there isn't a bathroom and, well, poo in the bushes. I've been working on what I eat before I run (no fiber, no more red sauce, etc) but sometimes your tummy just doesn't want to be there. I even packed a couple squares in a plastic bag in my run pack, just in case.

Now onto the second point. I really pushed myself last weekend to run fast. I think that might have contributed to some of my issues after my long runs. So, today I decided not to look at my run tracker at all (ok, I snuck a peek around 13 miles to see what my half marathon time would have been) and to just focus on running. Like just running at a pace that felt good. I ended up running the 15 miles in 2:38, which is a little slower than the pace I've been running at over the last few weeks, but it felt good and was a great confidence building race. I think I'm going to stick with that for the next few ones... just to get back into focusing on the running.

Then I came home, took the best shower of my life and napped for two hours. Not a bad day. I'm sore, but it's more of the joints-are-sore-from-pounding than the muscle sore.

Happy Saturday people!