Tuesday, January 26, 2010

A Pain that Buckles out Your Knees

Yesterday's run really made today's eight a lot harder. My legs are exhausted, and my shoes are pushing 380 miles. I haven't pushed that mileage on our trail since running the Gobbler Grind in November. It was motivating to remember that the last time I paced through those woods was when I completed my first marathon.



Our scenery improves as the foliage turns green, and the animals come out. When the grass gets tall, Goliath likes to chomp at it and cut his own path. Some days I would be so focused, I wouldn't notice that he'd found some carcass and was proudly strutting it alongside me. Little puppy Goliath found a lot gross things, including snakes. He's such a prey driven dog, that anything that moves along our path catches his attention and needs inspection. The milliseconds where he decides to attack or ignore are priceless. His stance gets wide, and his neck elongates. The ears perk, and twitch like radar.


I get a little intimidated at our splits. My mind gets caught up in the pain in my knees, the muscles that are now bricks and how raw my lungs are. Then the thought of "I'm only halfway finished," enters my head and suddenly I feel exponentially exhausted. Suddenly, I mentally don't think I can do it. Regardless of what the total mileage is, it could be 2 or it could 15, I feel this way.

At 4.1, I collapsed into the grass to stretch. Our scheduled two minute split became a five minute rest. It was laughable: me sprawled out in the grass while he darted in and out of the tall weeds. Smart money says that for every mile I log, Goliath doubles it. I couldn't even get him to sit still for this:



Today's Mileage: 8.3
Time: 1:20:18

3 comments:

Manderz said...

Great speedy run! I love the trail you run on - looks very peaceful

Julia said...

It really is! There's like never anyone on it too, which is a plus!

Anonymous said...

Good Job!!!! I wish I had that great trail to go on!