Taper Time

On Saturday I had one of those toss and turn nights. I could not fall asleep! I laid in bed wide awake for hours before finally migrating to the couch, where I eventually dozed off for a bit and then made my way back to bed. With the 4:45AM wake-up call looming, I knew it was going to be a rough morning. I got maybe three hours of sleep.

I never have problems sleeping! I'm one of those out-like-a-light-when-my-head-hits-the-pillow types, so this was highly unusual and frustrating.

Sunday morning might have been a good time to take up coffee drinking, but I settled for squeezing every last drop of caffeine out of my tea bag as I slowly got myself slowly into motion. *yawn*

I expected a pretty tough run but great friends kept me thoroughly distracted and the miles were ticking by in no time. The group was running 21K, but three of us got together earlier to run an extra 9K loop. It was nice having a quick pit-stop for a washroom break and water refills when we picked up the rest of the group. Suddenly there were 20 of us pounding the pavement together. Have I mentioned how much I love running with a group?

It was a cool-ish morning, but extremely muggy. My clothes were already drenched form the first loop (should have brought a change) and the air was thick with humidity as we carried on. Fortunately we were soon greeted with a very fine mist/rain. It felt wonderful and refreshing and thankfully lasted until about the last hour of the run. When the sun started coming out and we started feeling that thick air again, it became a bit of a mental struggle to push on. The group had broken up so I was only running with a few others at this point, but we were able to keep each other going as we counted down the miles.

It was a very hilly route and the hills started to take their toll. There had been a nice long descent at the beginning of the run, so we knew we'd be climbing our way back to the imaginary finish line. We managed to hold onto the pace and somehow picked it up ... eventually, we made it.

30.0 KM - 18.6 mi
2:55:10
5:50/KM - 9:24/mi

Our friends who hosted the group run had a beautiful backyard swimming pool, and I was in that water within minutes! Afterwards we were treated to a tremendous breakfast spread - what a spoiled bunch we are!

Having not run any long distances (+20K) since Mississauga, I'm very pleased with how it went.

Bring on Seattle! It's time to taper... again.