20 felt gooooood

Yesterday was the big 20 mile training run. For those not very familiar with marathon training it is pretty standard that you build up your mileage to 20 miles than taper down until the actual race. This is because after 20 miles you begin to run at a point where science says the human body should not go. After 20 miles your body begins to take some serious wear and tear and you can easily cross the line from healthy to injured. That's probably why A. The marathon is so elusive to the insane runner such as myself and B. runner's have a lot of knee, shin, calf and foot problems. Because you build up to 20 miles and the actual marathon is 26.2 miles a saying came out that a marathon is just a 10k race with a 20 mile warm up. Now some advanced runners will run programs where you run 20 miles multiple times before the race or build your base mileage to over 20 miles. I personally like to play it safe, build my miles up slowly and not put too much strain on my knees for too long. It's all a matter of personal preference and fitness level I suppose. Anyway, we started bright and early at 5:30am! I ran with a fellow ARC member who runs my pace and Todd ran with another ARC member who runs his pace. 3 hours and 15 minutes later I was done (Todd, obviously done before me) and actually felt GREAT. I can honestly and comfortably say that I am ready for the marathon which is only 3 weeks away from today! Todd felt really good about his run too. He's still hoping to qualify for Boston in the next year or so so he has really been pushing himself lately. I, on the other hand, consider myself a finisher. I'm not looking to run Boston or smash my personal record but to safely cross the finish line, hold my head up and just say that I finished.

So how did we reward ourselves for such a pinnacle of training success?? We went to Buffalo Wild Wings of course :) Some hot wings and beer make running 20 miles WELL worth the work. Then we relaxed the rest of the day and watched A&M BTHO Iowa State with some fellow Aggies. It's been a pretty good weekend. Today after church we ran some errands and watched some more football. Next weekend we will be going to San Antonio for my friend Kristen's wedding which I am very excited about because I know it will be a beautiful wedding celebrating an adorable couple and also because we will get to spend some time with a lot of friends we haven't seen since our wedding.