I Must Be Crazy

I know that I have been MIA for a while but I hope you will all forgive me and that you will accept this embarrassing/funny story as a peace offering.

As you may know, I am planning on running the Salt Lake City Marathon this Saturday, April 19th. I have been very lax about my training for the last month so I haven't been feeling too confident knowing that the race is now just one week away (don't judge, you wouldn't want to train while on a cruise to Bermuda either). I decided that yesterday I would attempt a 20 mile run and see how I did to determine if I really could be ready to do this thing. I know that in the last few weeks you are supposed to taper down your workouts so I really shouldn't have even attempted but I am stubborn and anyway it is too late now. So, yesterday I set out at about 1:15 pm (probably the worst time choice possible) and after running for about 4 miles I was so hot and dehydrated that I started walking. I was wearing my Camelback so I did have water but I knew that I didn't have the endurance or the water supply to last for another 16 miles so I had to make a choice to either walk it or cut it short. I decided to walk it and I would use this as an experiment to see if I could finish the 20 in 6 hours. So, I did it. I walked and walked and walked. I got a lot of weird looks from people gawking at the crazy girl walking with her own water supply but I just brushed it off. I reached my house at 7:45pm and I wasn't really exhausted but my feet were KILLING ME!

All in all, I think that the experiment was successful because I now know that I can cover 20 miles, even if 80% of the distance is walking, in about 6 hours (I am taking out the extra 30 minutes that was caused by waiting at traffic lights and the trip to the Tesoro station to buy a Snickers Marathon bar). So, if I can utilize the early start on Saturday and if I run more than 20% of the distance then I totally will be able to finish the marathon by 1 pm. That little detail is critical because they start opening up the roads for traffic after that time and there isn't as much hoopla at the finish line if you are one of the stragglers.

As a side note to this story, while I was out walking I didn't realize how much sun I was getting or that I was getting burned. I was wearing shorts and a long sleeved shirt that I pushed up on my forearms so I now have a wicked ankle sock and 3/4 sleeve burn line. Awesome. Also, when I was lying down and "recovering" I had not yet realized that I was sunburnt but I did notice that my legs were burning. I had a minor freak-out moment when I thought that I had done something to my leg muscles and now they were burning and were about to swell. I then took a shower and realized that it was just a sunburn. I think I was overly paranoid because Jeremy keeps reminding me that P. Diddy's foot pads separated from his foot bones after he ran a marathon without proper training. Thank goodness for sunburns, I guess.