Long Run 10-30-11

The Plan said 12 miles.   According to my past on-line mapping,  I fully expected to roll out about 3 loops on my Park West route as a solution to dealing with a. my fatigue of late and b.  my issue with the weather, which has been blustery and rainy.   For once, I set the GPS via Map My Run and headed out just after dawn.


The long loop of Park west, turns out, is barely more than a mile each way.  So after doing 2 of these loops and hearing, in the pause of the music stream, the voice of that GPS say "distance: 3, speed ..." etc, I began to feel what that distance really meant.   In my head I began to scramble my inner measurements.  In all these years I've been doing my neighborhood routes, I think I know them like the back of my hand.  And no, I cannot account for the difference between the on-line and phone app for Map...but suddenly,  a 12 mile goal became a really really long one.


I was just at 6 when I made a pit stop just west of the loop, and feeling pretty fatigued.   I tried to figure out how to place the additional 6 and not kill myself, so I decided to make my usual way up and around 56th and head generally east, while listening to that GPS voice tell me, at every mile mark, how far I got.  The weather threw me occasional drizzles and very strong head winds.  For hill-less folks like us,  a strong wind is the equivalent of hills;  pushing through a steady wind takes enormous fortitude.  Just when I'd think "this has GOT to be another mile!"  that voice would stay silent for what seemed like another mile more before I'd hear "distance: 9 miles" etc.  In fact I never broke into the double digits until I almost hit 29th....and the other voice inside said "hahah, you want to run a MARATHON??? right..."


By the time I made it home,  it was just over 11 miles.  I won't say how long that took.  I walked a few long stretches in the last half;  I was wet, tired, and pretty much over the whole thing.   The 'fight' I usually have to gut out big pushes in Life, weather work-related, relationship or running, just feels like 'flight'....these days, I am never so happy as wandering the inner realms of my own Solitude, where pace and distance have nothing to do with what I feel, who I am, what I'm doing.


This trend is not conducive to marathon training...LOL.  


The World feels to be whirling enough for all of us;  sometimes a girl just wants to be Still.