Hurrah!

Saturday I ran the farthest I have ever run. Ever. 15 miles! I thought for sure I was going to die, because I remember the 11 miler for me was insane. I didn't think I could make it past the 9th mile. But really, this was not so bad. I don't know if I was just more mentally prepared for it or what. I had some great songs on my ipod to keep me going, which I'm sure helped. I found that when I am really into a song the hills really aren't that bad.

There were also some other marathon groups out doing similar routes...go figure, since we were running a lot of the course. This was very confusing. One group was running the opposite way we were, but the other group had runners going in the same direction we were for some of the route. What made it confusing was when I got to Mariemont. Since there were only two people in front of me, I figured they knew where they were going and followed them. AND Mariemont was really confusing to me anyway. There are all of these weird turns on the route that don't make a lot of sense. The email that went out with the route had the wrong directions and so when Bill (my husband) and I drove the course we got lost too. So nothing really looked that unfamiliar. Well, the girl in front of me and I missed a turn on Settle and continued in a circle. We were following some guy who wasn't in our group. Whoops. I guess it was ok, because we did end up meeting up with the group on Mariemont Square.

When everyone was finished we were all hobbling around like we couldn't walk. Coach Joe said to lie on the floor as close to the wall as you could and to put your legs up against the wall. Apparantly this helps get all the lactic acid buildup out of your legs and helps you recover more quickly. It felt soooooo good to do. Usually when people say that stretches feel good I think they are crazy. This one really did feel good now. And believe it or not, I was not really sore the next day. That doesn't even happen for me on 7 mile runs! Anyway, I felt so much better about this run than my other long runs. So now I'm even kind of sort of looking forward to the 17-18 miles in two weeks!