I Like to Run, But…

I think that this past weekend hit the truly ludicrous, at least in terms of getting in a long run.  Here’s the story.

I and my training partner, Mike Fiedler, have been doing our long runs on Saturday mornings.  Like, at 5:30 on Saturday mornings, so that we both can have a day after running for a ridiculous amount of time.

This past Saturday, Jeff left for Japan around 7:15 a.m.  Elijah had a soccer game at 9:00.  As Mike and I planned to run 20 miles, for which we needed to allow roughly three hours and 20 minutes, not including travel time, we would have had to start running in the middle of the night to make this timeline work.  I had a meeting as soon as Elijah’s game was done, and Mike was tied up from lunch time until 8:00 p.m., which pretty much eliminated an afternoon or early evening run, which probably would have been unwise due to the weather, anyway.

So, what to do?

We scrapped the Saturday run.  Elijah’s team tied its game, my meeting happened with the help of a neighbor girl who agreed to babysit, and the kids and I then had a relaxing afternoon.

Mike and I figured out that the only time to do the 20-miler was on Sunday morning before church.  With Jeff out of town, this would be a bit tricky.  What we finally decided was that the kids and I would head over to the Fiedler house on Saturday evening, hang out with Mike’s wife, Robin, their two boys, and their new dog, and spend the night there.  On Sunday morning, Mike and I would head out at 4:45 to start running, while poor Robin got five kids, including my ornery baby, ready for church at their house.

As we were working out this plan, I was struck by how truly ridiculous this training had become!  Seriously?  A slumber party?  So I can go run 20 miles?  Argh!

The plan worked like a charm, though.  We hit the trail by 5:15, after dropping three coolers of water and Gatorade, and ran by headlamp and flashlight for about 45 minutes.  We averaged a 9:39 per mile pace and finished up the run about seven minutes faster than we had anticipated.  We zoomed back to the Fiedler house, cleaned up, and actually made it to church on time.

Jeremy cooperated with Robin, and I think that things went well on that end, too.

I suppose all’s well that ends well, but I’ll tell you…I am mighty glad that we have only one long run left!  Sheesh!