Hard to believe, but the hard part of training for the 12 hour race is done.
And because it seems all training plans are required by fiat to go out on some kind of weird note - this one sure as hell did. The forecast was for showers and thunders showers, which isn't necessarily all bad, depending on the temperatures, and when I got up and looked at the radar, it looked as if there was a little line of heavy stuff passing through and then things would settle down. So I delayed my start time by a little bit - actually I'd gotten up earlier than usual so I just kicked back to normal start time - thinking things would improve; they didn't, so I just headed out.
As I may have mentioned in an earlier post - or not, since I haven't been posting all that much this summer - the way I set up for these long runs is to turn my car into an aide station. I put a cooler with drinks and snacks, along with a towel, visor, sunglasses, body glide, or whatever else seems appropriate given the day in the car and I pop by there after running a 6 - 10 mile loop for a short break and refreshment. This is in lieu of carrying around one of those redonkulous "fuel belts," which would allow for longer loops between refills but annoy the everloving shit out of me every step of the way.
Anyway - I set out on my first loop, which was about 8 miles, in a moderate rain with rumbly thunder, thinking it would pass by the time I got done the first loop and I'd probably be in the dry for the rest of the day. Instead it got harder as I got along, to the point of a biblical deluge! In a couple of places the roads were flooded with water that came to my shins. The lightening also got a little closer, but it wasn't all that frequent, so I didn't feel too concerned. Which was optimistic of me. When I was about 1/2 mile from home, I swear a bolt hit where I'd been not a minute before. There was a HUGE flash, an instant crack, and I smelled the ozone. Needless to say, I got my ass home, and went inside until this little bit of nasty had move along a bit.
That was the end of the excitement, but it wasn't the end of the rain. It. Just. Kept. Coming. Sometimes harder, sometimes moderate/steady; sometimes it would look as if it were going to clear and then there would be more rumbles of thunder (nothing close, I figure it was cloud to cloud lightening) and the rain would heavy up again. When wall was said and done, I did a bit over 31 miles in around 6 hours - exactly what I wanted to do - and it rained 2 1/2 inches during that time. The Phils game, which I'd been looking forward to watching while recovering, was rained out, and Philly set a record for rainfall on the day, with over 4 1/2 inches. My local reporting station said 4.69". At least the rain/clouds kept everything cool; the temperatures during my run never made it out of the 60's, and I can't believe how much of a difference that made in performance. I ran 6 miles less last week and HAD to stop at the end because I was just at the end of my rope. The additional miles yesterday were hard but no where near as hard as the last few miles of the week before, and I definitely didn't have to stop at the end, although I was perfectly happy to do so.
Now I have three weeks of taper. Ahhhh...
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