Sunday Disconnect

Today was my Sunday long run.  I love the long run because, in theory, you are supposed to take the speed a bit slower, makes for a more relaxing experience.  Just out for a few hours of casual convo w/ the posse right?

Today's run, however, wasn't exactly relaxing.

For starters, I had a mild panic attack before the run when IronJ, a runner who is never late and had confirmed yesterday, didn't show.  It's out of character, and I texted and phoned... no answer.  At that point, I worried she was in the wrong start location due to a clerical error on my part.

3L was on time though, and after waiting 5 minutes for IronJ we hit the road.  We were going to go a nice easy pace.  Um.  Well, we'll just go with, "We suck at that."

The foot started hurting at mile .4...  No, that's a little un-truth.  The foot started aching at step 1.  It started hurting at mile .4

At mile 3ish, out of total randomness that comes from living in a small city, we ran into SpeeDee and MCM and that was a fun diversion.  They're two HCB runners, and SpeeDee made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to cry.  SpeeDee, I love you.  And, um, you need to do a review of those running tights... I'm just sayin'.

We ran with them until they turned, seeing no reason to veer off their course & away from their (hilarious) company, then adjusted our route and got back on track.  All the way up until the road we were running on was closed.

Mentally I was just trying to hold it together as I felt marathon sized fears of the worst taking over because my foot was in a lot of pain.

Adjusted route again, and back up the hill, and back up the next hill... and gosh i didn't notice we were running down hill the entire first 5 miles, but apparently we were.

At some point on this run I thought to myself "3L is a very wise woman.  I feel very lucky to have her in my life".

At mile 9ish we saw a runner who looked a lot like Q...  but to be honest, my mental strength was fading and I could barely get out a wave in time.

I was concentrating on form, and making sure my foot landed square on each step.  It didn't help with the pain, but then, I don't think anything was going to help except to sit down and ice it.

At mile 9.55 we were supposed to pick up another runner, Art, but ~sigh~ she was at the wrong location.  So we kept going to add our 3.45 miles to make 13.

We pushed through to mile 11... at that point I called parcheesi -  we finished at 12 miles.

Art met us at the finish, and a cup of coffee later we were all feeling a little less freaked out about the whole missed meet up "thing".  I was afraid to set my foot on the ground when we got up to leave.  It didn't hurt though.  It ONLY hurts when I run.  My quads, however, they hurt... plenty.

Tomorrow I rest.

And I hope that tomorrow's holiday will allow enough time for me to sit down and write up a little bit about my first week of school.  I'm sorry, for you long time blog readers, SRG is not in any of my classes, but we have new entertainment - Thing1 and Thing2, two very (very) young and cute boys ARE in my BIO class, and they are most definitely blog worthy.