We're watching our friends' kids on Saturday while the wife does a triathalon, so we did our long run tonight (not ideal, but that's just how it worked out).
We ran mostly the same course that we ran on Saturday, but we were both definitely more tired with more aches and pains--it was a pretty grueling day for both of us today, especially since it's one of the two days a week that Neil goes to the lab at 6:30 am so he can get in lots of quiet worktime before anybody else gets there. And it was a pretty hectic day here too (doctors' visits in both morning and afternoon, fun fun).
When we first started running I felt terrible. At the first quarter-mile, I honestly didn't know if I'd be able to finish. Around a mile and a half, I was focusing on not throwing up (partially because the bog at 8 pm REEKS). So we detoured for water, and walked for a minute around the drinking fountain, and then I felt a lot better. We ran steadily for another couple of miles, then down through the glacial ravine and back up again, and when we reached the top of that hill--which honestly, I have never in my life come across a steeper hill on a trail; it's like a total scramble (Happy Hollow to the Indian Trails trailhead, if you're local)--when we got to the top of that, Neil wanted to walk for a minute. Which is the first time that's ever happened since we've been running together, so that tells you something about how tired we both were. At this point we were about five miles in.
So we walked for a minute, and then we started running back home again. We passed a lot of people with grocery sacks in their hands (like seriously a million) and I made some comment about root-beer floats that practically killed Neil for the rest of the run...I think he was dreaming of fizzy happiness for the next three miles. Poor guy. I kept saying, "Just remember! Carbonation is bad for distance running!" and he would say things like, "But I'm not going to drink it...just eat it." Then he asked if we could make samosas when we got home. I guess having Chicago restaurants as our main topic of conversation was kind of a tricky choice...
We detoured for water again, then we started running back through the woods for the final leg, and oh my goodness--it was practically pitch black. Neil suggested we turn around, but I get really fixated on running a mapped course rather than freestyling...so we just kept going, albeit quite a bit more slowly I could barely see the ground under my feet, and we kept warning each other about roots and dead branches and exciting things like that. So that made the end of the run quite exciting, and when we were out of the woods, I was totally in my zone. Too bad we only had a mile left, right? By the time we were back in our neighborhood I seriously felt like I could have run forever. I kept picking up the pace and by the time we hit our driveway, I was running faster than I had the rest of the night. Go figure. It only takes 8 miles for me to start feeling good. Plus it probably helped that it was MUCH cooler by that point.
STATS: 8+ miles, very hilly, trail run, not sure on time (somewhere around 85 minutes with 2 drink and stretching breaks, 1 walking break, and woods-trail slowdowns)
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