Wednesday, February 17, 2010

too far from home

Things were going along fine this morning. We were lucky to have made it out on the roads; it had been a late night. Today’s route was the same as yesterdays, just backwards. The roads were slick and we were moving slower than the day before. There were parts of the road, epically in Lincoln, that we seemed to be skating more than running. There was some celebration once we hit Branch Ave. We had gone far enough that the run would count, we had also under-estimated how far we were from home. It didn’t take long to reach that final left onto Charles St. I knew we had at least a mile, maybe slightly more. There is the mildest uphill on Charles and we pushed up that, but then we didn’t slow again. Off Joe went and I foolishly kept pace behind him. Without a watch I have no idea what we were doing, but the lungs were indicating this was somewhere faster than a 9:20 pace. For sure he’ll slow down in a few steps, only when he did I took the lead. By the time we passed the bakery I was having trouble breathing. It was at that point where if you think about breathing you seize up because everything is working so hard. Damn it! We still had more than a third of a mile to go. We hit the gas station where I would normally decide we are at the home stretch and speed up; today I had to just keep moving. There was no more speed to add. I started to wonder if this mile would ever end, I had been able to see our street for a while now. Joe pulled onto the sidewalk, not realizing why I kept going. 2 blocks to go, 1 more, and here we are. Finally the right turn onto May and we can stop. Only I stopped dead in a puddle, too winded to yelp, we cheered that we had finally reached the finish. Next time I won’t charge home when there is over a mile to go.

Miles trained today: 5

Days till the Chicago Marathon: 234

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