Week 10 – Slacker's late post

My Internet connection (that I 'borrow' from my neighbors) has been unreliable and I haven't posted in awhile. But all is well in land of running:

A good portion of the marathon is run on the bike path at the shoreline of Lake Champlain. One the snow is gone and the ice melted, the bike path is an ideal place to run – picturesque, mostly flat, some shade, some sun. But even as the weather has returned the bike path to usefulness, I've avoided running on it. There's some kind of bad luck mental block I'm having about running on parts of the actual race course. On race day, when I get to the turnoff for Leddy Beach, I don't want to have a memory of how far away Waterfront Park still is.

But last weekend, for lack of other ideas on where to run, I hit the bike path. On Saturday, I ran from Union Station to Leddy Beach and back. The gentle uphill on the way out really dragged me down. I mean, I know I can run 2.5 miles, but I was really working to remind myself of this when I got to Leddy Beach. The way back, much easier.

Sunday was a "shorter" long run – only 12 miles. My intention was to practice the getting-up-eat-breakfast routine, but I wasn't entirely successful. I got up early (6:30) and ate breakfast (toast, peanut butter, egg, fruit, cottage cheese) and then instead of stretching and waiting a bit, I fell asleep until 10 o'clock. I didn't want to miss a lunch that friend was having for her baby's baptism, so that pushed the run into the late afternoon. Not a bad plan, but I wanted to be done before the promised rainstorm came across the lake.

I struck out from my apartment through downtown and out to the New North End -- way, way out to where the neighborhoods end and the river crosses underneath the bike path. I stopped here for minute to futz with my iPod and ran into an acquaintance. This was a huge boost of encouragement because I had always thought of him as really athletic and he was pretty certain that he couldn't run a 7-mile relay leg of the marathon, let along the whole thing. And I was pretty proud to drop the fact that in January I could run just barely 4 miles, and just a week ago I pounded out 18 miles. Not bad!

I turned back down the bike toward home and made it to my doorstep as the first raindrops fell. It wasn't my intention, but this 12 mile run followed the last 12 miles of the race course almost exactly. I'm getting to be a big fan of the idea of running the course and getting to know it. Maybe it won't seem so endless if I know how far it is from this tree to the next turn.