Saturday, February 17, 2007

Where the hell am I?

Today I got lost. Not completely, not "how am I am gonna get home" lost, but more sort of "if I'm running the right direction, why can I see all that stuff in the wrong direction getting closer"?

Didn't help that it was 70+ degrees (my first hot run of 2007) and the place I chose to get lost was really hilly. So what was meant to be an easy 14 miler, with a fast finish, became an ugly up/down in the sun 14 miler with a slow finish.

I really hadn't planned for 1,400 feet of climbing, which is why I went without water or food. I've read that doing some of your long runs without carbs helps the body better handle things when you run out of carbs. Water would have been fine since there are water fountains on the course I was supposed to be running about every 4 miles. Of course, or should I say "off course", they weren't there today.

I got messed up around Pagemill and Arastradero after taking some random little trail behind some monster Los Altos Hills homes, and went thru the Arastradero nature reserve, and eventually got up near Alpine road. Once I got up there and looked behind me I saw Palo Alto and Los Altos in the distance and realised what a dumbo I was. Of course, it's a long way back and it's all up and down again.

Now my legs are feeling it, especially after running over 50 miles in the last 7 days. Tomorrow is going to be a real easy 3-5 to loosen up for a 10k race on Monday morning. I'm not sure today was all that good for the race, we'll see what that does to my goal (44:30 at 7:09). At least I was smart enough to move my long run to Saturday this week.

No comments: