Saturday: 20 Mile Run and A Bit of Yoga

Today, I was up when my alarm went off and I was at Percy Warner Park at 6:00 AM sharp. I had a great 3.5ish mile warm-up run before starting off on the rest of the 20 miles in all run. Now, ultimately, I feel that the social and competitive structure of our running group has changed. I used to look forward to getting up and running and chatting for a couple or so hours, but now most of my chat group is running later or not at all, and those that are left are hauling. There is not a lot of chatter, and I usually end up falling off in the end and running the last four or five miles alone with my headphones in. Also, I find that my running self esteem is rather low, and I feel quite defensive.

For instance, we have a new runner in the group who is so pleasant and I was asking her about her upcoming marriage and consequently told her that I was married and had a two-ish year old. She replied that I was great for still getting out and running, as a lot of people have babies and just use it as an excuse to give up. For whatever reason, I immediately decided that she was telling me that even though I was ridiculously slow, I could console myself with at least being able to drag myself along behind the group. This was silly of me, but a good illustration of how insecure my running is making me. Its always been my strongest thing.

My splits were actually better today than usual, but I still finished more slowly. I need to do some research on marathon pacing and how many more 20 mile runs I should fit in before Boston. I will put that on the list for this week.

At home, we headed for Starbucks and I ate TWO of their breakfast sandwiches, as I had burned 2000 calories on my run. I finished off my day with Yogurt World.

Bought a copy of Born to Run today. Its a quick read and should be finished tomorrow or so.

Pic of Ivan wearing my Uggs