Lead Legs, Sheriff Surveillance and 12.9

There are good run days and THOSE run days. Today I had one of THOSE run days.

The plan? Run 11-12 miles, knowing I had 10 in the bag last week with not too much trouble.

I was so confident in my ability to kick it today that I spent last night Googling half marathons for the weekend of May 10. After finding a lovely run around a lake in Pewaukee, all I had left to do was to wake up, put my sneaks on and get it done. With that distance under my belt, I could run an easy 8 or 9 next weekend, taper the week after that and hit it on May 10.

I slept well. The sun was shining. Jim left early so I had all the time needed to ease into the day. This was going to be a piece of cake!

I brushed my teeth, put my gear on, went to unplug my phone from the charger and noticed that it was ... dead. It had been plugged in all night, but apparently not well enough. Argh. With Jim gone, I needed to have a phone on me. So I plugged it in and waited. For an hour. And a half. Got a quarter of a charge.

It was nearly 11 a.m. by the time I headed out, much later than I'm used to running. Which meant I'd had to eat, and I don't normally do that before I run. I was off kilter from the word go and it didn't get better.

Windy. Cooler than I dressed for. By Mile 3, I was all in. My legs feel like lead. They were so heavy. My whole body was heavy. Slogging through concrete was the image that I couldn't get out of my head.

By Mile 4, I took a walk break. Just 50 or so steps. And again in Mile 5. At the beginning of Mile 6, I was out of water, out of ideas to make it better and wanted to stop. Water was the thing I had to take care of first, so stopped at a friend's house to fill up.

They weren't home. Of course.

Thankfully, I could use the spigot on the back side of their house. Par for the course, I couldn't get their gate latched properly as I exited the yard. I fought with it for a good five minutes before giving up.

As I rounded the house to get back on the road, I noticed the squad car parked out front. Watching me.

(Yeah, sure. I'm clearly breaking in. I look like I'm about to keel over and am unlikely to carry a big screen TV on my back for very far.)

I chose walk/run intervals for the next two miles, in an effort to not totally throw in the towel. By Mile 8, I knew it was all over. And I walked from 8 to 10.5+. It was a very long three-ish miles and it seemed to take approximately 83 hours to traverse.

At that point, my phone decided to give me the figurative finger one more time. I heard the telltale beep of the battery croaking as the whole thing shut down.

Now I was just pissed. I wanted to be home. I wanted this to be over.

So I started running again. I did run/walk intervals for the next 1.5 miles, determined to finish on the run.

I did. It was downhill.

It wasn't the run I wanted. I'm really not sure what was so different between this week and last week. Was my body trying to tell me something or was my head playing tricks on me?

I'll probably never know. What I do know is that it SUCKED. I hated every step.

And I still went 12.9 miles in about 2h25m ... which is:

• Farther than I have gone since last June
• "Only" 16 minutes behind my first half marathon two years ago ... a race I hoped to finish in 2h30m
• Faster than my walk/run half marathon last year in Fort Atkinson ... by 12 minutes! 

Not the run I wanted. But it is the run I got.

How do you know you're a runner?

When you are already hoping for a better run next time.