Thirty

Once upon a time, running thirty miles was not such a big deal for me. I had determined that doing this "over-mileage" was the answer to hitting the wall at 20 miles during my marathons. During one of these no-big-deal training runs, I actually ran 30 miles at an average pace of 7:30 per mile.

Those days are gone, perhaps forever. Thirty *is* a big deal now. Now that I haven't done it in several years. I felt the need to do it, and to do it on roads, because I've got Chicago AND JFK to look forward to. And I need to somehow train in such a way as to maximize my performance at both. So I got it in my head that I was going to do 30 road miles early this morning.

I was out the door before four. It was cool - in the upper 50s - but not bad. The couple drivers that were out probably thought I was nuts. Little do they know.

I did my 11-mile Substation loop in 95 minutes. A bit on the slow side, but that was ok. I'd pick it up later. Yeah, right. After a quick pit stop at home, I went back out for another 11 - this time my "new subs" loop. I did fine for a while, but the last couple miles were slower. This time I did the 11 in 97 minutes.

During the ensuing quick pit stop - my second, I really felt like hanging it up. 22 was plenty, thank you. I started running again before I thought too much about it. By now it was about 7:15 and getting light. I did 4 miles across 303 at mostly a 9 minute pace.

For that last pit stop (my third) at 26 miles, the voices were *really* telling me to stop. But as before, I started running again before I thought too much about it. These 4 would be on the Presidential streets, and they were *good and slow*. About 9:40 pace. Nothing I could do about that - just get through them.

So I was done by about 8:30, having completed the 30 miles in 4:27 - an 8:54 pace. Now I'm a little sore and tired.

The salt pills help - I took one at the start, and one at each of the first two pit stops. On the other hand, I'm not sure they help all that much either.