Friday, August 12, 2011

Nineteen and still going strong?

“If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.” -Robert Pirsig

In preparation for the marathon, Amy Meier’s training schedule said we should run a 19 miler this week. So yesterday was the day for the big distance.

We started at 6 am to avoid the heat which was a good plan. It might have behooved us to start even earlier with my plodding speed.

It’s been a while since I’ve cranked out 19 miles in one stretch and luckily my legs held up. There were five of us at the start, three planning to run 14 miles, which just left a 5 miler at the end for Amy and I.

We ran around Lexington Reservoir and down towards Vasona Park, which was still closed, so we headed back up towards the dam and made a few circuitous loops until we nailed the full nineteen miles. I’m slow but reasonably steady, which, as I recall, didn’t fare too poorly for the tortoise.