Longest Run in 20 Years for Me - 12 Miler

I didn't really warmup this morning and I didn't run with my group.  When running with our group, there is usually water and Gatorade in different places on the route.  On my route this morning, there was water.  Once every 4 miles there was water and that didn't seem to bother me too much until the last 2-3 miles when I really started dragging.

Not warming up a little wasn't a good idea.  I got right into it and my right hamstring was tight for the first 2 miles.  I stopped for a couple minutes and stretched it out, but my pace seemed to be trained into me already.  I ran the first 2 at 10 minute pace.  I pretty much kept that up the entire run, too.  As of last night, I planned on running my normal 10 miles, but since I started off so slow, I decided that I would make up for it by running a couple more miles.  Those last 2 miles were brutal for me.  I had no energy and it was really hard just to keep my legs going.

When I got home, I drank a Gatorade and a couple slices of deep dish pizza from my favorite place Pizzeria Uno's.  They're called Unos Chicago Grill or something like that now, but whatever.  I'm not showing up for anything but the pizza.  I sat down with my laptop and was about to start typing away on my blog, but I was literally delirious and couldn't type more than 3 letters without making typos.  I felt like I was going to pass out sitting up.  It took a good 30 minutes before the Gatorade and pizza really kicked in and started to give me some energy back.

The most I've run recently has been 10 miles.  I've done that distance plenty of times, but I haven't run 12 miles since high school when I did the the Citrus Bowl Half Marathon a couple of times.  I'm debating in my mind whether I want to try running 12 again next weekend or just settle back into 10 considering how depleted I felt this morning.

Just for a note on Thursday's workout.

Coach had us run 4.25 miles from the track around Lake Baldwin and back.  Our instructions were to run 5 minutes pretty hard, but just a little slower than 5k pace.  Then run slowly as a recovery for 2 minutes.  He said to do this 3 times since it was hot.  If we had a 4th one in us, then do it.  For good or bad, I ran a 5th hard portion plus another 25 seconds to bring it all the way home to the track.  I thought it was bad, because it took me that long to run 4.25 miles, but my coach thought it was good that I gave the effort of running a 5th portion.