Make Mine a Venti

Best 20 mile run ever. No tears. No pain. Just tired by the end.

The weekend was a gluttonous one, so I knew I would have plenty of fuel to burn. Tessa’s aunt was in town to celebrate her 60th birthday, so this meant that copious amounts of food and wine were constantly at hand. Friday night, I think I ate an entire lamb myself, and I am pretty sure I put a few vineyards out of business by drinking everything they had ever bottled, then flying to Bordeaux and actually eating all of their grapes. And their vines. And their roots. And their soil. And their berets.

Saturday I cut out the alcohol but helped myself to Hungry Man portions at a family barbeque. I then went home and made a big pasta dish for the following morning out of fusili, tuna, and an aioli-like substance. (For the record: This did not taste good.) …You can see how I am obsessed with food right now. Its all about the Michael Phelps diet in this camp. If I eat like him, I am sure to grow seven inches and put on twenty pounds of pure muscle…

Sunday, I woke up at six and ate. I had the hardest time keeping my pasta dish down because I wasn’t that hungry at that hour, and as I mentioned, it didn’t taste so great. “ots of water helped. I took down two bananas as well as I mapped out my route. I had actually crashed out at my in-laws house, so I knew the route I would run from previous experience. It was pretty much a straight shot from their house to the Millenium Bridge/Tate Modern, via London’s east side.

The run was urban without being urbane (see what I did there? Eh, eh? What a loser!) It was exactly how I remembered it: lots of eel and pie shops, lots of people still partying from the night before, lots of tourists from the Tower to the Tate, and no Amy Winehouse laying in a gutter. I actually enjoy the route because it is easy, even if it is not as immediately beautiful as some training runs I have done in Germany, Switzerland, or even Chelsea. There is a certain rugged energy to London’s east side which somehow contributes to better running. That must be why the Olympic village is being built near Stratford. They are counting on the athletes to be similarly pushed by the fear of muggings and Jack the Ripper’s progeny.

I won’t give a mile-by-mile recap here, but it generally went down similarly to my 18 miler in Cologne. I brought three gel packs and three bottles of sports drink. I stretched at street lights and just focused on keeping my form throughout. I mostly listened to NPR, and by the time I was home, I was tired but not desperate. I ran a little slower than I was supposed to: I finished 20.6 miles (I had to round up while mapping it out in order to get to a discernable landmark) in 3:20:55, which was a 9:45 pace. To be honest, I’m okay that I ran it slower than the schedule plans, because I have two more twenty milers to run, and I can work on speed then. This time, it was all about me wrapping my head around the distance and showing myself I could do it. That part was accomplished, and I feel good.

Well, I felt good.

On Monday I put on an old pair of tennis shoes, and as I was going down the stairs I felt the arch in the bottom of my foot tighten up. It hurt oh so good, so now I am off my feet. I tried running yesterday and stopped at a quarter mile. I have speed work tomorrow, and will probably put it off until Friday in order to maximize the recovery.
It’s about right, though. I have agonized through twenty miles and wanted to die, only to turn around and run just fine immediately afterwards. This time, I got through this twenty miler with a relatively decent amount of ease, and pulled up lame from walking down stairs the next day. You would have to love running. If it didn’t constantly make you want to cry.