What's the big deal?

I spoke with my sis yesterday afternoon and she was wondering why I was so tired. "You've run 20 miles lots of times, why aren't you used to it?" she asked. Hey, 20 miles is 20 miles whether you run it daily or every couple of months or once a year. I don't know about you, but I never get used to it.

I got up early Sunday morning and drove down to the Alameda Creek Trail in Fremont for our anticipated 20 miler. At 6:30 am I met up with Sandy and Anita and we headed west along the trail. I realized that maybe we were starting too late; the sky was rapidly clearly and it was getting warm. Uh oh. I thought it would be ok to run five miles west before turning around, but in that last half mile on the flats beyond Coyote Hills we were getting a strong tail wind. I wasn't looking forward to having that as a head wind so we turned around, headed back, and completed nine miles in that leg.

We resupplied and moved our cars into the lot and started off in the east direction. I was already getting tired, not a good sign so early in the run. It was warm and fully sunny and my legs were feeling flat. Pushing through that makes for great training but a lousy run. We ran all the way to the Niles staging area, turned around and headed back. At this point complaining started in earnest. I switched us to 4:1 run:walk and that helped a bit. We refilled our bottles at a fountain along the way; we were all drinking a lot in the heat.

It was a lovely scenic day, had we been in the mood for it. At the western end of the trail we saw lots of bunnies and birds. It's always amazing to see pelicans and egrets. At the northern end we saw chipmunks, herons, egrets, some unknown-to-us raptors and enormous carp in the creek. We've never seen fish before, never seen the water high enough or clear enough to see through.

The original plan was to finish 19, run to our cars and replenish, run another mile or two before quitting. I was afraid that we'd see our cars and call it quits so I revised that plan. Then I was afraid we'd all run out of our drinks so I re-revised that plan. We zoomed down to our cars, grabbed more drinks and zoomed back to the trail. Ok, zoom was only in relation to the slow speed we had going. Think of a snail zooming. We ran out another half mile, turned around and decided to just walk in the last half mile. Twenty finished and done. Actually a bit more than 20; the last mile leading to Niles is at least .1, maybe .2 long so we ran about 20.4. That's important, I have this mental thing about my long run being longer than 20.

Usually finishing my run is the greatest part of the day, but I was sore, tired, a bit nauseous from the heat, dehydrated, salty, congested. Y'know, feeling totally crappy. We hung around for a while chatting, none of us in the mood to drive or even move from our tailgates.

Finally we couldn't stall any longer and we all wanted showers and food so we headed off. I was going to take an ice bath and it would have been a great idea, but I just wanted to get clean and back into bed. I'm paying for that decision today but it was the right thing at the time. Advil can correct my mistake.

Going way back to Friday night, after work I met Petra, Olivia, Claudia and Rocky at the A's game. They got beaten up by played the Kansas City Royals. Since the home team was playing so poorly we spent most of the time talking instead of watching closely. It seemed that every time we'd look, there was something bad happening. We ended up leaving during the 7th inning stretch; we mostly had early mornings planned and wanted to beat the crowds.

I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of my yarn haul from Stitches. This is what everything looked like piled upon my dining room table:A lovely rainbow of luscious yarn. What, not enough? Below are the most of the reds. At the right is Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Embers; the middle is Ellen's Half Pint Farms 50% merino, 50% silk; left is Claudia Hand Painted Yarns, sport weight 100% merino, in Buckeye; top is Socks that Rock heavyweight in Mustang Sally.

And the gray/blacks. Top is Aussi Sock, 90% Aussi Merino, 10% nylon, in Silver Anniversary; the middle is Art Yarns Beaded Silk; 100% silk with glass beads; bottom is Art Yarns Silk Rhapsody Glitter, 50% silk, 50% kid mohair.