Long Run - 20 miles

Holy cow - I did it. I ran 20 miles!!!

Rather than do the same out and back that we have done for all our long runs Traci found a course from Wallsberg to Provo Canyon. We left around 5:30 am and started running right around 6. The course had a lot of rolling hills and some fairly challenging hills between 9 and 11 miles. We tried to take the "adventurous route" off the road and over to a path but there was a guy in his truck at the fence so rather than climb it when it was clearly marked private property we turned back and ran on the side of the road the whole way. The funny part is that I was being a "ninny" about going off-road so when we started on this very rocky trail I was mumbling to myself about how I was going to twist my ankle and Gretchen kept laughing at me with all my complaining :) The bad part about running on the road was that it was longer than we needed so we ended up walking about 1.5 miles to get to the car for our cool down. It was good for me but that doesn't mean it was fun.

I didn't eat before the run just drank some water (and had to pee by mile 3 - oh well) I did my first AccelGel at mile 8 then did Shot Bloks at mile 13 and another AccelGel at mile 16. I drank about 60 ounces of water/gatorade on the run. Took 2 Endurolytes before the run and 2 at mile 15. No cramping during or after the run. Woo Hoo!!

We did the majority of our run between a 9:20 and 9:45 pace then started feeling good at about mile 17 and picked up the pace the last 3 miles to about 8:30. It was a tough pace and there is no way I could have held it longer than 3 miles but I was so ready to be done running that there was no reason to slow down at that point.

When I got home I did a 10 minute ice bath, drank my Accelerade and hurried off to take 6 kids bowling for Tayson's b-day. My legs were pretty tired for a couple of days and the top outside of my quads are tight and tender when I use my stick to roll them out.

Now it's time for a recovery week!