I went to bed at 8:00 last night, knowing I had to wake up early for my run. I slept soundly until about midnight when I woke with a start, “What day is it? Do I have something I’m planning on? What’s going on?” Then I remembered, “It’s Friday… oh, technically it’s Saturday now. I have my 20 mile run with Team today.” And from that point on, I hardly slept at all.

I usually set two alarms on Saturdays. One alarm is set to go off around 2:00 so I can pop my thyroid pill (I’m hypothyroid and have to take synthetic thyroid to keep my system in balance.). Then I doze off again until the other alarm wakes me at 3:15 so I can eat, get dressed and drive to whatever location for our run. But after my midnight waking, I didn’t need either of those alarms.

At 3:15 I ate my bowl of oatmeal, checked a couple things online while I waited for my body to fully wake up. I contemplated making myself a mug of tea, but since I haven’t done that before any other long runs this season I didn’t want to change anything. I got dressed, made sure I had my sunglasses, gel, iPod and Cytomax, then got in my car to make the 25-30 minute drive to our starting point.

We were running at 5:30 this morning. It was about 59° at that time, not too terribly frigid although it certainly felt cold to me at that time. I debated about whether I wanted to wear my jacket at first, but eventually decided I didn’t want to have it with me the whole time. That was the right choice, I didn’t really need the jacket as I got going, but I kind of needed gloves. My fingers were pretty frozen.

My iPod died about 40 minutes into the run today. I made sure it was fully charged last night and then today it just croaked. It is charging now, but I’m thinking that it is about time to retire the device. It is a 1st generation one and has been through a lot. My husband has a 3rd generation Nano he’s no longer using, so I’ll just steal that. I’ll have to find a case for it, but that’s not too rough. I hated not having stats to know how many miles we covered, since I was kind of unsure of our course today.

Our group this morning consisted of 5 runners when we started. Melinda stopped running with us after 10 miles because she ran the full Nike Women’s Marathon last weekend. Then after about 13 miles or so Jim had to stop due to knee pain. Then Jewels needed to slow down some, so she told Donna and me to leave her behind. We were down to just 2.

About 3 miles before we finished I told Donna that I really needed a bathroom. The first place we found to stop was a Denny’s. I was grateful the bathrooms were right inside the front doors, not at the back forcing us to walk through a crowded restaurant when we were all sweaty. Sweet relief! After I was finished taking care of business I had an epiphany, something that would normally hit people earlier but since I had to go really bad I hadn’t thought of this at first… We were in a Denny’s. Do you know how good the pancakes and maple syrup smelled? I wanted to swing by a table and join random strangers for a meal. But no… We made our way back out the door to get moving again.

We saw Jewels ahead, our pit stop had allowed her to catch up to us so we played a little catch up to be with her. She had her headphones on pretty loud and was zoned out, we actually ended up startling her when we caught up. But we were able to run the last stretch back all together… the last 3 runners remaining.

The run took 3 hours and 21 minutes. Well, that’s kind of untrue… I paused my watch timer while we took a pit stop and when we talked to our coaches after 10 miles to clarify the course, so technically we were out longer. Neither of those stops would be excluded from a marathon time, but hopefully nobody would have to stop in the middle of a marathon and ask where they were supposed to go to get the full distance. 🙂

I finished feeling pretty strong, a few aches but no new wounds. I took the best (and worst) ice bath and that will help with recovery as well. And now I’m tired and feeling a little like I could consume the entire world. So hungry…

Next week we only have 12 miles to run and I think we’re not even starting until 7:00 AM. That’s practically sleeping in!