So Close!

Today was my 20 miler day. I've done 20 miles once before, about a month ago, and the hubs found me around mile 15 to cheer me on.

No hubs today as he's out of town.

Up early this morning, ate 2 slices of toast, drank some coffee, and evantually made it out the door.

Turned on the garmin and nothing. No beep. I pressed the power button again, and again, nothing happened. Funny because I had turned it on last night to upload some old runs and to give it a charge. The screen even said "charge complete" when unplugged.

Went back into the house and plugged the garmin into the computer and nothing. not even a sad face on the screen (the old macs used to do that). Great. Thank goodness for backing up your info. In addition to the garmin, I log my runs in runningahead.com and found that it took me about 3 hours 39 minutes to run 20 miles last month.

So finally, around 6:45, I made it out the door and began running. had to stop at home once to pee (how I'm going to do that on marathon day has yet to be determined). I ran and ran. my first gu was about an hour into the run, then about every 30 minutes.

You know when you find that happy pace? I had it today. i felt strong. My pace was good, and got slightly better throughout the run. there were parts where I felt myself slow down, but then I would pick it up right up.

Once back into the neighborhood I wanted to finish, but I was just at the 3 hours point. I'm so glad I pushed myself to go further. For the first time, I didn't feel like dying at the end. My feet hurt a little, but not like usual. At 3:30 I stopped and while feeling somewhat winded, I didn't want to die. I was able to walk.

Which naturally had me wondering if I really ran 20. After driving the run (no thanks to the dead garmin), the final mileage is in: 19.9. woot woot!

off the store to make a pasta picnic lunch :) 20 more days until 26.2!