18+ miles almost killed me

Nic and I ran a full 18.44 miles on Saturday. And no, that's not a typo. Over 18 miles. Wow. I think the finality of running this marathon has finally sunk in. I physically ran for over 3.5 hours. Lemme tell you-- let's all pray this was my worst run ever because it was pretty damned bad. My knee was flaming up, even though we ran a pretty easy course. We started on 72nd street (our meeting point) and headed up for a counter clock loop and once we hit the reservoir (at the lowest east side point) we did 2 loops and then 2 bridle loops (the bridle loops felt soooo long and normally theyre my fast ones!!!!) I had a gel at min 25-- not a great start but was starving! (note: Mango by Clif-- the only one that really stayed down that day)... we then continued our run up to 102 (with a quick pit stop at the 97th play area) and back down the west side for a full loop of the park. By that point we had run about 10.5 miles and we were already sucking big time. We finished the loop and our mileage was at 11.5ish and I made the executive decision that we needed to stick to the lower loop 4 more times because I didn't think I would make it up the hills on the west side if we tried a 4 mile loop and a reservoir... so we then did 4*1.7m= 6.8 miles on the lower loop. The first two were ok but the 3rd started kicking my ass. At about mile 16.85 (good estimating huh?) I stopped to stretch a 'charleyhorse' in my buttocks, bent over, and promptly gagged and threw up my mocha gu. wonderful. i then proceeded to drink the rest of my water, and slowly continued running the remaining 2 miles. its my second gagging during training. wonderful.

that last 2 miles was long and terrible- but i did finish.

my knee overall felt better on sat night/sunday. i drank a gatorage, had my coffee, egg sandwich, a grilled cheese, some sunchips and olives all within 1.5 hours of finishing the run... and i did a cold bath... i think this aided in recovery big time.

sunday was such nice weather i almost considered going for a run!! does this mean I'm addicted?