I'd Like A Dozen, Please

Yesterday we ran our longest run of the training season before our race on June 6th, the Rock N Roll San Diego Half Marathon.  If you follow a training schedule for a marathon or half marathon, you'll know that the last two weeks of training before the big race is a taper down. You run your longest distance training run three weeks before the race, then you taper down the next two weeks, so that on race day your legs are fresh! So only 10 miles next Saturday and 6 miles on 5/29.

Nevertheless, I was a little nervous about running 12 miles, since last week we only ran 9, and the week before was 10 miles. We ran from Carlsbad to Oceanside and back. I totally forgot to take any photos until about 5 miles into the run. It was super-cloudy too, which was great for running but not great for scenic photos.

The first two miles felt like a little bit of a struggle, which is always the case for me on a long run. It's like my brain and my body KNOW that I need to go 12 miles, so it's conserving energy or something. When I know I'm only running 3 miles, I go quite a bit faster even in the first mile. I got into a groove in the subsequent miles and that's when the endorphins kick in and you feel literally like you could go on running forever. But alas, that was not the case. I stopped by our West Coast Road Runners aid station at mile 4.3 and had some cold water and a raspberry flavored Clif Shot. It tasted gross! But whatever, I swallowed down the 100 calorie packet and it kept me going well for the next few miles.



Karen and another teammate.


At about 5.75 miles, I ran into Todd's group coming back. (They ran 13 miles, so their turnaround was 6.5 miles.)


I turned around at 6.07 miles, in the middle of nowhere. I thought there would be a landmark of some kind, but no. Those are the times when I'm glad I have my Garmin watch and I know I'd already gone over 6 miles. I stopped by the aid station at 7.7 miles again, and ate another shot (my own vanilla GU this time, which tasted much better!), some pretzels, and some more water. After I hit 10 miles, my legs started to feel tired and I struggled. The last two miles felt like forever, so I thought I was really off-pace and slow, but that was not the case. I kept pace and finished the 12 miles. I was so glad to finish though, it was hard.

Location: Carlsbad to Oceanside roundtrip
Distance: 12.14 miles
Time: 2:16:33
Avg pace: 11:15/mile (go me!)
Calories: 1199

I listened a lot to The Weepies during the run. Peppermint turned me on to them and I really love to listen to their harmonies BOTH during scrapping AND running. Isn't that weird?

After the run, Todd and I went to Beach City Cafe and ate a big breakfast. :D I mean, when you burn 1200 calories in one workout, I think it's okay to eat some, ha ha. Todd doesn't like breakfast food so he had a fish taco and a steak taco. I had a Florentine omelette (spinach and mushrooms) and fried potato wedges. Todd always steal my potato wedges, but it's an unspoken agreement that he eats half of my potatoes, LOL.

In the afternoon I rested a lot, I was tired from running. I finished Sookie Stackhouse book #4 and started book #5. Then my friend Sally called and said her and her friends are having dinner at Station Tavern and Burgers in South Park for her birthday, so I drove down there and met up with them.

Dinner was super-fun. I had met most of Sally's friends individually before last night. It was a fun bunch. My stomach was growling a little bit because our meetup time was 7pm, then we had to wait for everyone to arrive. Then we ordered drinks first. I'm not a drinker, so I sipped my ginger "beer" and tried a sip of Sally's brown ale beer. I was hungry though, so I was glad when we finally ordered food! I had thought Station was more of a restaurant, but it seemed that it was more like a bar with the restaurant as an afterthought. The menu was very limited (like, a half a slip of paper laminated sort of limited). However, what they had tasted very good! I had a cheeseburger and I wolfed it all down, so yummy. Sally talked about her new house and how she's excited for everyone to see it after the renovations are done and she's moved in. I'm excited to see too!

Here we are.

From left to right: Mauria, Seekey, me (taking the photo), Amy, Sally, Lara, and Michelle. The photo is grainy because I bumped up the ISO for a flash-less picture at night. I tried a flash pic but the flash blew out the people towards the camera and the people in the back were too dark.

Seekey secretly bought Sally a cake from across the street, and the waiter brought it after our meal.

I've known Sally since 7th grade, so yea, now we're the same age!

I'm glad I drove to a strange place to meet up with people I mostly didn't know, except for Sally. That's not my usual M.O. most of the time, but it's good to step out of my comfort zone sometimes. :D