and I thought 18.5 was long?

21 miles.





That is what we ran on Saturday. The big fat blackjack number- 21. 4 hours 1 minute 46 seconds of actual running.

We ran up from Bethesda to the reservoir and while our original plan was to rotate between reservoir and bridle we did 12 loops of the reservoir plus one detour to the 97th street bathrooms and up to 102 and around for some extra mileage. On our lucky 13th time around the reservoir (we started at the lowest part) we ran up to 90th street and then back down to Bethesda.

Nicole got a Garmin. It's the coolest thing ever- good 'ol Mr. G let us know when we were too fast or too slow and kept our mileage right on track. He's awesome and I want to keep him around.

What else can I say about the run. The first 5 miles sucked... from 5-16 the miles came 'easily', I only ate 3 gels... Mango, Margarita salt blocks with lots of water and then Chocolate. I also had a Gatorade... My sight felt dim around mile 20 but I hadn't eaten for a while... I ate at minutes 40, 1:30 and 2:10... now that I see this I see that I need to eat a lot more often at the end but I don't know perhaps I was just ok.... I felt like I could've finished.

My knee wasn't on fire at any point but I def had issues getting my legs moving again in the pm. On Sunday they were pretty cooperative and the massage definitely helped. Monday was slow moving in the am but legs are coming back to life now.

Overall. It's humbling. It's humbling to think that I can do something so physical and so active. It's humbling to know I can exercise for 4 hours at a time. It's humbling to realize how many factors one must consider when running so far. The entire thing- its just amazing. On Saturday I actually liked running. I was actually proud. It was pretty damned cool.

On a side note- Nova is in the Sweet Sixteen- awesome.