Uncharted Territory

Friday am, 6 miles in :46
Saturday pm, 16.3 miles in 2:00

Friday was a bagel run with Silas. He was game for anything, as long as he was able to wear his guitar shirt, which I pulled out of the dryer for the occasion. Berkeley Bagels was out of mini bagels, so I got Si a regular bagel with peanut butter.

But the real story is today's long run. I'd only been planning on 12 for today, but events had kept my weekly mileage a bit behind schedule. I decided against my usual long run route, up the hills toward Grizzly Peak, and opted instead for the flat and boring Ohlone Greenway. I started out, carrying a bottle of Gatorade (with extra salt), a Cliff shot, and the ipod. Shuffle mode did me right today, with Franz Ferdinand and the Decembrists providing most of the soundtrack, with some Billy Idol and Modest Mouse thrown in as well.

I ran out the Greenway and found the end, in Richmond, a little sooner than I had hoped. I continued up San Pablo Ave through Richmond and into the city of San Pablo - a town whose existence I had forgotten about but should have inferred, given the road that I was running on. I kept on until about 59 minutes, then turned around at San Pablo Dam Rd to retrace my steps. I took the goo and finished my Gatorade, and noted that I felt pretty darn good. I picked up the pace for the trip home, and kept feeling good except for a bit of stiffness (I stopped to tie my shoe about a mile from home and groaned audibly when I bent over). I negative split by a couple of minutes, so I ran around the block a bit to stretch the run out to 2 hours. To top things off, Christine was taking chocolate chip cookies out of the oven when I got home.

This was my longest run of the year (and, it turns out, the fastest overall) and went a lot better than my last 2 hour run. It leaves me feeling confident and ready for more. Normally, this would indicate that I'm due for an overuse injury, but fortunately next week is planned to be nice and easy before going to Lake Tahoe for the weekend.