25k Done! Goal Achieved!

Yesterday I went out ready to run.  I had some trepidations about it since my training was not what it should have been.  I knew I could get the distance in, but didn’t know if I would be walking the last 5 miles or something.   I prepared as much as I could Friday night, making my bottles, gathering my clothing and gear, so in the morning, I just had to worry about getting dressed and getting to the park to run.

And that’s how it started.  I got up, ate, and dressed and headed off to the park.  I got to the park, and geared up, got out of the truck, and proceeded to drop my bottle right into a big patch of sand.   Hoping that wasn’t a sign of what was to come, I quickly got some towels out of the truck, wiped it off and started off on my run.  The plan was to run 5 minutes and walk 1 minute, repeat until the 25k (15.5 miles) is complete.  I also needed to make sure I didn’t run too fast while doing my runs, so that I wouldn’t blow up too early.

Things did start off nice and slow, the runs were good and steady, the walks were nice recoveries.  The first two loops (6 miles) went by relatively quickly.  I changed out my bottle and sucked down a gel and started back out again.  Things were still feeling pretty good until around mile 9 or so.  My legs started to tighten up, but the amount of tightness in the legs didn’t increase at all for the rest of the run.  Then around mile 11 I started to bonk.  My nutrition wasn’t quite where I should have had it.  I was only eating one gel every two laps which is about an hour when I really need to have two gels an hour.  After getting back to the truck and sucking down that gel and a new bottle of HEED, I was pretty good after 5 minutes.

Legs were starting to feel pretty fatigued around mile 12-13.  But I was managing to keeping them going. Running, and I was even able to do sprints to pass people in tight spots on the trail.  I kept going and kept going and when I was finished running for the day, I hit 15.96 miles or 25.7 km.  And I did it in 2:41:03.

Not my best time, but, I completed the run and completed it running!

Now, the real training starts again.

2013… Flubber to Iron here I come!