i am officially on the backslope towards the race!

the internet connection at my in-laws was not working for some reason unbeknownst to me, so i was unable to write about saturday's run over the weekend.

somewhere about 16 miles, i couldn't help but think about what i was going to post. in my head, it sounded something like this: "i killed it. i stepped up and slayed it." about the 18th mile, though, i encountered a difficult hill that was far more traumatic than i thought. and then when i took me longer to reach 36th street than i had expected, i kind of broke down a little and walked for 45 seconds.

but in the end, i finished in 3 hours and 17 minutes (9:51), which was three minutes faster than i had reasonably hoped to finish. if i had run at my 18 mile pace (10:13), i would have finished over 7 minutes later than i did. this is progress, and it is far better than i had expected. and i had no pain like i did for the last couple miles of my 18 mile run.

shortly after i finished, i had a thought that i never wanted to run that far ever again, but after encouragement from my wife, mom, and in-laws, i am confident i'll feel as fine as anyone could after running 26 miles 385 yards. my mom, especially, helped. she told me that she had absolutely no doubt in her mind that i would finish the race. barring the bizarre, she's probably right.

*****

john and i set out to run 5 miles and stop at subway for lunch today. it ended up being almost 6 miles, and we finished around 53 minutes (i forgot to stop my timer), which is about 9:20 per mile. i am supposed to run 8 tomorrow evening, and then only 4 on thursday. my mileage is decreasing! i'm starting to conserve energy for the race.

*****

sarah has asked me to figure out how far i've run through the course of training thus far. she has (and i have, really) been struggling to grasp the sheer distances i've run. even though i was awake for, and can remember the entirety of, my 20 mile run on saturday, it's still difficult to really appreciate how far that is to run all at once. and combined with three mid-week runs of 5, 10, and 5 miles, i ran 40 miles last week. that is most of the way from my parents' house to my former dorm at michigan state, and hour's drive away.

so i just did a quick calculation including today, and i have run 368 miles since commencing my training on june 17. by the time i have run the race, i will have run 449.2 miles. that is the equivalent of running from my house to marquette, MI in the upper penninsula. it would put me about 60 miles shy of ottawa, ON, the national capital of canada. i'd be about 20 miles past madison, WI or 30 miles past of elizabethtown, KY, an easy mid-way point for my parents' drive down to visit us in meridian, MS.

it's hard to imagine.

robb.