7 Brutal Miles

I had high hopes for my run on Thursday night and I went out looking forward to it, albeit a little tired. I am happy that my mileage is starting to increase as it starting to make me feel more comfortable that I am on the way towards putting in the distances required to run 100 miles in a single day. As usual, the one major wild card in all of this is the health of my shin or lack thereof. It is becoming increasingly painful as the days go on. It just gets fractionally worse as each day goes by, so unless there is a major increase in pain, the discomfit has to this point been manageable. Denying that I am in pain or that its affecting my running has been working. I just need to concentrate on the denial a little more each day. Kind of how I am tacking on just a little more mileage each week. At first I thought my run would be ok. I wasn’t running with any sort of pace, but I was at least making decent progress. It is annoying to have runners passing me who in the past would have never had a chance to pass me while I was on a run, but I console myself with the fact that I am going for the distance and not the speed. I couldn’t keep up with the small group that past me, but my heart rate was ok and I was averaging around a 10 minute mile. I was ok with that. I got around the first loop in around 36 minutes, which was acceptable considering the easy pace I went out at. My second loop was more of an adventure. I started to fatigue when I got down to the bottom of the hill and I caught myself wanting to stop and walk several times. I refused to let myself do that. I just kept saying how just one more step wouldn’t kill me and I kept on going like that for a while. I just put my head down and focused on the white lines painted in the road. This got me around ¾ around the park before I found myself forced to walk. My legs simply had no more juice in them. I would walk for a while and then try to run again, but it was painful. When I got back to the top of the park, I had 7 miles and decided to bail out on the last 2. Anymore than 7 would have just been very ugly, so I dejectedly walked out of the park and tried to do a slow trot home. The ending to the workout was upsetting, but not too surprising. There will be better days.