Running on Dumplings

Today after church, we had a big family dinner and my aunt made delicious chicken and dumplings. I didn't overdo it and was a good boy. We even had cake. After about an hour or so I had to get running or I wouldn't make it back for evening chuch and beat the darkness. So my tummy was still quite full when I embarked.

I put a new twist on a familiar loop. I ran from PS to Talcott and back and then down to Lowell, crossed the old railroad footbridge and back to PS. It was 16.59 miles total and it took me 2:36 (9:24 pace).This is slower than I had wanted to run it. I wanted to run it at marathon pace which for me is 9:07. It was a balmy 40 degrees when I left the house so I said eh, no gloves needed. Boy was I wrong. In the first minute I had my hands pulled back into my sleeves. I had on shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt and that was it. I was comfortable except for my hands. This meant, I couldn't see my garmin. I guess I could have taken it off and put it on the outside of my shirt but I didn't really care at the time. I just thought I'd run and it felt like I was at my goal pace. Well as I started looking at the garmin, I was behind schedule and with bathroom breaks I was never able to catch up.

I got some really strange looks as I ran because here I was running along the road with a few inches of snow on the ground everywhere and I was in shorts! People were really giving me the eye as they drove by. I would have like it about 5 degrees warmer but it would have really been nice if I would have had gloves. Anyway, I knew I was going to run more than 15 so I toyed with the notion of taking an ibuprofen with me. I decided not to to see what would happen. Well sure enough about mile 14 I started to feel some acidic burning in my legs and by the time I got home I was walking funny and my legs were burning pretty good. I took a 200mg ibuprofen and hurried off to church. That took care of the burning for a while but then a couple hours later some soreness came back. So I am just becoming more unusre about my ability to "run long". I guess I just need to keep trying and keep running long. It just doensn't seem like I can overcome this burning in my legs after about mile 15. I think my next long run I will try to take an ibuprofen with me and take it about mile 13 just to see if and how it helps. I don't want to do that but I want to keep pushing over the 20 mile mark.

I am in the process of picking out a spring marathon. I have four choices right now. Charlottesville VA on 4/21, Abingdon VA on 4/1, Athens OH on 4/1, or the National Marathon on 3/24 in D.C. Right now I am leaning toward the National but I really like the closeness of Charlottesville though I hear the course is killer with a lot of hills. We'll see but I need to decide in the next two weeks so stay posted.