Strength in numbers

When you are training for a marathon, you do crazy things. I suppose some would say running a marathon is crazy in itself, huh?

So guess what I did on my one and only day to sleep in this weekend [curses to working on Sunday]. I got up at 6:30 a.m., drove down to the lake front amidst a fear-inducing highway detour [yes, of course I got lost. Would you expect otherwise?], and went for a twelve mile run.

You see my running partner had to golf all day long which meant I would be left to my own devices for The Long Run. A local running club hosts build up runs each Saturday before the marathon. The problem is the runs start at 8 a.m. and I get uncharacteristically shy around hoards of runners. What if I'm the slowest one out there? What if I have a bad run and make a fool out of myself? What if I poop my pants? What if someone wants to run with me and actually converse during the run? Nate and I don't talk when we run together, we jam out to music and get lost in our own little worlds. Does that make us weird?

After stewing over this potentially scary group of fellow runners, I decided that I just needed to suck it up and go. After all, there would be water stations and food waiting for me which would be a luxury compared to our typical runs. I showed up with no time to spare, thanks to the stupid detour, and walked up to a group of at least 60. Yikes!

I didn't exactly reach out and befriend anyone during the run and therefore mostly ran by myself again. But there were always runners in front and behind me which helped me keep a good pace and provided for some fun people watching time. I may or may not have eaves dropped on a few conversations, too, which is always entertaining. The 'hardest core award' goes to the sixty year old dude with "26.6" tattooed on his arm---I made sure to hold my breath when I passed him, for fear that he'd trip me and scream "nobody passes me, biyatch!" Which totally didn't happen, obviously.

Since I wore our pimptastic Garmin I noticed that I was running faster than normal throughout the entire run, and yet I didn't feel tired somehow. So I went with the flow and plugged away at the course. It was only set up for ten miles but my training schedule calls for twelve, so I took the liberty to add two more miles onto the end. Which made the gods angry, apparently, because it started to pour on me. When I say 'pour' I mean cats and dogs adhered themselves to my slick body. I could barely see two feet in front of me but I was determined to finish my run---I guess running with a group is truly inspirational, huh?

I finished my 12 miles in 1:52:00 which is a heck of a lot faster than our 10 minute mile average. Come to think of it, a lot of our runs have averaged closer to 9 minute miles, which seems like a freaking sprint to my slow legs. When I finished I was so proud of myself that I even managed to talk to a few runners. Made conversation. Found that they really weren't scary at all and were actually quite nice. We stood around in the pouring rain, with our cute running clothes plastered to our bodies, and slammed water/Gatorade/and orange slices---and it felt great to be a part of a group.

So I might drag my running partner to these runs on Saturdays because let's face it: running for absurd amounts of time is a whole lot better when you are doing it as a group. I don't know why I didn't realize this sooner. And I'm so glad I didn't poop my pants.