Jig and Jog

Yesterday was a super busy day for me. Not that I did all that many things, but starting your day with a 20 mile run means you’re spending a good part of your day running. I started writing this post yesterday, but we had to run for Travis’ birthday dinner, and it got put on the back burner.

Here I am at 5:00 a.m. Saturday morning, ready to head out to Griffith Park for my first 20 mile run ever. I look scared, right? I was. Really, really scared.  So scared I didn’t sleep well Friday night, and my tummy felt gross when I woke up.  It was still dark when I woke up, so I layered: a dry fit t-shirt first, then a long sleeved dry-fit on top. I also wore my hat anticipating that it would be sunny by the middle of our run. I didn’t want to be squinting for 10 miles. I also loaded up my new Camelbak with cold water (I stuck the bladder in the fridge overnight) and three packets of Gu. I also stuck one and a half packages of Shot Blocks in my Spibelt.  I wanted to be prepared to fuel during this run so I could avoid hitting a wall, and generally wanting to die.

Off I went, and I have to admit, we didn’t have this route planned out quite as well as I would have thought we would. Most of the time we’re pretty good about planning a very specific route to follow in order to meet our milage goals. Although, the 15 miles we did totally ruined that trend.  The good news is that there are all kinds of options in and around Griffith Park to make up mileage, so I actually wasn’t too worried about us hitting our goal. I was more worried about other things, like: coyotes,serial killers, pooping myself, knee pain…just to name a few. Janna and I originally planned to meet at Travel Town, but it was still really dark, and all of the signs said NO PARKING SUNSET TO SUNRISE and had a little tow truck on them, so we decided to park in the only lit parking lot: The Zoo.  We did a few minutes of stretching and then headed off along our normal route.  I’m not going to lie, at one point, I saw a dark shadow coming out from one of the trees along the road and jumped a bit, certain we were about to meet our demise.  Never fear, readers, it was only OUR OWN SHADOWS. Janna and I laughed about that.

Anyway, the first half of our run really went well. We made a bathroom stop just before mile 6, Thank God for the Griffith Park pony ride bathrooms. We were feeling great, keeping decent pace (my personal goal was to stay between a 12-13 minute mile the whole time) and aside from when just before mile 10 when I stepped in dog poop, things were going swimmingly.  My right knee was a little bit tweaky feeling around miles 8 and 9, but we stopped a few times to stretch and that seemed to help.  We stopped at a car wash just after mile 10 to get more water and some gummy bears (to meet the credit card minimum purchase, boo.) I have to say, this is the first time I’ve run with my ID and any form of money with me, and it was great because I knew we’d need to refill our Camelbaks at some point. Cash would have been easier, but I never have cash so card it was.  In other fun news, I now own a Road ID which I also wore on our run.

As I said, things were going really well, right up until we hit about mile 11.5 or so.  That’s when things started to get a little shaky.  My right knee had been a little tweaky since about mile 9, but I’d been holding it together well, stopping and stretching as much as possible. Mile 12 was uphill, and that didn’t go as well as the same hill at mile 3, then going downhill was not great either. We stopped again just before mile 14 to hit up another one of the bathrooms in the park, and then continued on, realizing we were getting very close to being int he home stretch.

The good news is once we hit mile 15, I was not feeling anywhere near as terrible as when we ran our first 15 miler.  In fact, I was feeling ok. My knee was hurting but I could keep moving and was fairly confident that the next five miles would be okay.  Mile 16 is when the wheels really started falling off.  My right knee was really painful, but aside from wanting to finish 20 miles, we were still about three miles from our cars anyway, so we both powered through.  I had to power walk most of that, and Janna had to keep jogging because if I jogged it hurt, and if she walked she hurt, so we just kept moving at whatever pace we could.  By mile 17.5 I was almost sure I wouldn’t make it, and I was starting to get really worried about being able to do another 8.5 miles on race day. Mile 18 I made my third, and final bathroom stop at a port-a-potty along one of the paved bike paths in the park, that was surprisingly not too gross, and we trucked along.  When I hit mile 19.5 something crazy happened, and I was able to find a way to run again, probably crazily looking, until I hit that 20 miles.  I just kept pushing myself forward, and had some knee pain, but it was manageable.  I’m really hoping this will also happen on October 16th when I’m at mile 25 and want to die.

When we reached our cars again we stopped to stretch, although it’s tough to stretch in a parking lot, especially one that is now full of families taking their kids to the zoo.  So we did the best we could.  I drove home and once there, immediately rolled my Tiger Tail over my IT Bands and quads, and hopped in the shower to get all the dirt and grime off.  Once out of the shower we hauled ass to The Counter for lunch because, well, after 20 miles, I was starving. After lunch I had to bake Travis’ birthday cake, and while it cooled I took a short nap.  Once the cake had cooled, I iced and decorated it, and then had just enough time to sit down and start this blog entry before I had to rush to get ready to head out for dinner.

Dinner was great, I ate garlic knots, and almost an entire bowl of pasta the size of my head, and some of the birthday cake and a few small glasses of wine.  C&O’s Trattoria in Venice is seriously one of my all time favorite places.  It was the perfect atmosphere for a large group dinner.  After dinner, Travis went with some of his friends to try and watch the UFC fight (which was already over,) and I met up with an old friend from the Bay Area who is now a Flight Attendant and had a stop over in Los Angeles. We both met up with Travis and a couple friends at a bar in Santa Monica called The Cock & Bull which was a great divey English pub.  Even though I had been awake since 4:30 a.m. I was having so much fun I didn’t care.  We ended up getting home close to 2 a.m. which is WAY past our bed time, and I face planted and crashed almost immediately.

Now that it’s the day after my 20 miler, I am surprised that I am not more sore. My right knee is a bit sore, but nothing terrible, and my muscles are tight, but also, not terrible.  We’ve got errands to run, and laundry to do so I need to head off and become human again (still in my PJs at noon! Wheeee!!)

I’ll do a full break down of the 20 miler stats tomorrow

How was your weekend??