20 mile run (boring stuff, don't read)

For posterity’s sake

Saturday, September 10, 2011: 20 Miles
I woke up at 4am to get out of the house at 4:40 to meet Ruth at the Starbucks so we could ride downtown together. Still dark out, we met up and drove together downtown to the 9.11 Remembrance race. There were almost 1,100 runners so we squeezed our way into the starting line. The course was very strange and neither one of us knew it so it felt a lot longer than it was. It was a 9.11k (5.6mile) run through downtown Las Vegas. The course weaved up and down the downtown blocks. It was pretty humid that morning. I finished the 5.6 in 56.45 (10:02 pace). For me that’s pretty good, especially since my day wasn’t over at the finish line. Ruth and I finished the 9.11k race and hopped into the car and drove a mile up the street to park at World Market Center (we were more comfortable with that than running in scummy downtown).
We decided we’d just do an out and back since we knew the territory and it was relatively safe in terms of traffic, sidewalks and bike lanes. We ran up Alta for 7.5 miles. The nice thing about this run is that Alta runs directly east-west so we knew the cross streets would be about every 1 or 2 miles depending. I kept the overall mileage and Ruth kept the “part 2” mileage. We started up Alta, past MLK and Rancho and then up past all the big fancy houses to the McDonalds at Decatur. We stopped inside. I slugged a few straw-fulls of orange juice and we were off again. The next mile was a huge hill and then Alta, running east-west, basically was all uphill from there. We kept going strong and mile 10 took another little break for water, gu and stretching. It was only going to be a couple more miles until we could turn around. The weather was perfect and overcast and it wasn’t hot at all. The humidity had almost seemed to subside as well. At about mile 11 or 12 the arch of my right foot started to ache so I made a point to land on the balls of my feet (which I should do anyway) and it seemed to help. We got to Durango and I remembered thinking how far away that was to where we started but it didn’t feel like we had been running that long – I think breaking the run into two separate events really helped mentally. I also remembered thinking that I was closer to home than I was to my car – which is a bizarre thought when running.
I wanted to turn around early, promising to make up the half mile on the other end but nope, Ruth wouldn’t let me. I knew I needed water (I was out) and some sort of electrolytes but there wasn’t a stop on Alta. We finally turned around and got another two miles down the road where we stopped inside the 24Hour Fitness gym for water, Gatorade and gu. We were both still feeling pretty good. I started to feel a little sore and tired around mile 10 (15.5 total for the day) but I knew that if I could get to the big hill before Decatur I would be so close to the finish line there was no way I wouldn’t make it. So I got there. The next light/mile was Valley View where I hurt my arm. Yes, I hurt my arm running. Actually, it was just a cramp but anyone who has had a bad cramp knows that pain can stick with you. I was trying to grab my foot to stretch out my quad but I couldn’t reach it and somehow wrenched my arm to a place that made it cramp up. So, while doing that I missed the light and had to wait for an extra couple minutes. But that was good because I think I needed the break to make the final 3+ miles home.
After we passed Rancho we were both really hurting but we were so close we just kept going straight back to the car.
So 20 miles for the day was in the books. I ran the whole thing. I kept thinking about how excited I was for the following weekend to only have to run 13. And I’m already trying to figure out a mental game-plan for 22. I will be very glad when this whole thing is over.