A Not-Fast-Enough 20 Miler

I got my first 20-miler in last weekend in preparation for the Baltimore Marathon. It started out all wrong, but, as with every run, I felt great (mentally that is – physically I was a little sore) upon completing what I set out to do. I woke up at 5:15, ate a little breakfast and got the body loosened up for a 6:00 start when Mother Nature decided to intervene with a thunder storm. Running in a rain storm is one thing, but running in a lightning storm doesn’t seem too smart. I sat on my porch waiting and watching the sky. The thunder subsided and the clouds were less dark by about 6:40. My neighbor, who was going to run the first fifteen or so miles, had to bail out because of the delay due to other commitments, so I set off alone in a drizzle. I enjoy the solitude of running alone, but running with someone else sure lightens the load psychologically. The rain persisted for a little more than a half hour before the clouds lifted and intermittently allowed the sun to shine through. I selected a route with a lot of hills, big hills - mile long hills, to better condition myself for the hills I’ll run on the Baltimore course. The hills nearly got the best of me, but not quite. I save that honor for my son. I ran a fifteen mile hilly loop, then stopped at home to put my son in his stroller for the last five miles. Even though those last five miles were flat, pushing his forty pounds around made for rather slow progress. That and listening to his demands of, “faster daddy, you need to go faster!”