Day 7, Week 12: A 20 mile run masquerading as a half marathon.

Because I am apparently addicted to Turkey Trots, in addition to the 4-mile one I busted out on Thursday I ran another one this morning that was a half-marathon. 

You already knew, however, that I was going to turn this race into the 20 mile long run that I missed last weekend because I am a complete idiot who knows better than to try and make up miles...but I will do it anyway.  Let's talk about how those miles went, shall we? 

Well, we'll talk about them after we admire how awesome my crop tights were that I wore to the race:

They have POCKETS, people.  So awesome.

OK, admiration complete.  On to the race recap.

The morning started with me getting up at my normal time and driving about an hour to the race location.  It happened to be in a scenic forest preserve that has copious amounts of running paths.  I know this because this was the same half marathon at which I first broke the 2 hour mark, so this race is kind of special to me.

All the specialness is just shining down.

Look!  Water! You don't see that every day.

I then busted out 5 pre-race miles on the paths around the start line because I figured getting more miles in before the race started was better than having to do all 7 of the extra miles afterwards.  And by now I think we all know that anytime I say "I'll do it later" that "later" really means "lol never, suckers."

By the way, the last 0.2 of those 5 miles were spent dodging members of the lead pack of the 5K that were barreling towards me on the path.  That sure will get the heart rate in the zone, let me tell you.

Afterwards, I spent some time running little distances to the port-a-john (always a must), as well as back and forth to my car to ditch that sweatshirt and grab extra gels.  I did record those itty bitty distances because every little bit counts, doesn't it, when you're trying to make a 20 miler out of a 13.

The 0.25 is what happened pre-race.  Obviously, the 13.13 distance is the actual race itself, which considering there was a freaking strong, cold, and gusty wind the entire time, went pretty well. 

I have no idea what my hand means.  It was early.

Well, the race went well except for the fact that I was supposed to run the damn thing at a 9:35 pace and, as you can see, it ended up being at a 9:15 pace.  While I had a few 9:30 splits, my legs again decided to not listen to me at ALL and do their own thing.

I kept trying to get behind people and pace them to slow down, but I think the sound of my breathing/wheezing was forcing them to slow down to look at whatever was making that noise (me), so I just had to keep passing them one after the other.  And then the finish was upon me, where I grabbed the boxed water they were handing out (yes, boxed!), squatted a bit to stretch my quads out, and then walked back to the 13th mile marker and started running the 1.5-ish miles back to my car.

Now, I know you read the end of that last sentence and were all like, "Yes, Terie, it makes perfect sense that you would run back to your car after running 18-ish miles, 13 of which were a race."  OK, maybe you were more like "crazy woman you RAN back to your CAR?!?" Yes, I did.  That was by design.  I could have taken the shuttle back to my car, but I knew getting back to my car was pretty good motivation for me to finish off those 20 miles.

Plus I have taken the shuttle before.  It takes forever.  It was faster just to run back to the car, trust me. 

Once I got back to that car I tried to take a cool pic of me with my medal but the wind kept making the ribbon do weird things so instead I got one that looks like I'm strangling myself with it.

When I got home and showed large dog my medal, he was highly impressed, especially with the fact that I managed to make a half marathon turn into a 20 miler.

Just oozing with being impressed.

Post is done, learning has begun:

• Can you tell that's my fave running hat since it's in almost all my race pics?  
• Even if large dog isn't, I am impressed that I actually pulled off 20 miles today.  I thought for sure I'd wimp out and just do the race.
• When I was running back to my car, people finishing the race kept telling me I was running the wrong way.
• When I told those same people I had already finished, one of them yelled, "And you're *reallybadword* still running?!?"
• Hubbs wants it noted on record that I am, indeed, a crazy woman.

Tomorrow's workout:  I honestly have no idea.  Maybe weights?  Maybe yoga?  I'm all discombobulated because I ran long on a Saturday instead of a Sunday.  Stay tuned or the resolution of this fitness cliffhanger tomorrow.