Running Chick

I wrote this on Saturday afternoon, but it took forever for my PT video to upload so I wasn't able to post it until today. So, pretend it's Saturday when you're reading because I'm too lazy to go back & fix it. ktnxbye.

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I was sitting on the couch last night watching The Good Wife (seriously good show, go watch) and popped open my laptop to check Instagram and discovered a lengthy discussion about getting the Team /var/run people together for a Saturday morning run. Nine miles is what Amy suggested.

My leg was feeling pretty good, thanks to a week of The Stick (quads, calves, hamstrings, hips – 3 min. sets each):

The tennis ball (I'd go as long as I could stand it).

And more of the above but replaced with this little torture device (loaned to me by Amy, whose friendship I started to question right after the first use. OUCH.)

And an awful lot of trying to replicate this treatment, which my PT allowed me to take a video of when I saw her a couple of days before the marathon.

I was planning on running on Saturday, but only 5 miles. Anything over that wasn’t even on my radar. But, everybody else was on board and it sounded like a lot of fun, so leg be dammed, I jumped on board, too.

It was in the low 30s when I got up in the morning.  It’s been a while since I’ve run in those temps, so I spent a while scratching my head over which cold-weather gear to go with, and then more time trying to locate it all. Josh was in better shape, since a lot of his cold weather biking gear doubles as his cold weather running gear. Anyway, all gear finally located, we headed out for our 10am meetup at the Suomi Restaurant.

Josh and I arrived first, G and Amy a couple of minutes later. Shortly after that, we were off. Our route took us on a loop through Houghton & Hancock. It was mostly flat, but we did hit a few hills heading up to Daniell Heights and M-203 and some gravel on Navy Street.

I was concerned about the hills and the gravel (extra stress on the tendons), but I never felt more than the occasional twinge. It was awesome, and such a relief. I was starting to really worry that this thing wasn't going to go away for a long time, probably thanks to reading all the worst-case scenarios on the intertubes of people being laid up for six month or longer due to their tendonitis. p.s. it's probably not a good idea to research your injury on the internet.

You know what else is awesome? Chatting with somebody the entire way and completely forgetting to look at your watch every minute. I'm sure the guys were rolling their eyes at some of the things we were gabbing about, but hey, run with girls, talk about girl stuff.

Here's a thing from Garmin that shows our route.

We headed over to the 5th & Elm coffee shop for warm drinks & lunch, before everybody took off to take care of their Saturday errands.

I think we decided that we're going to try to do a group run a couple of times each month, hopefully that works out because this really was the most fun I've had on a Saturday run in a really long time.

Also, here's a fun, yet crazy fact: at no point did I ever really consider those nine miles to be a long run, so I never even took fluid or nutrition. Nine miles not a long run? No fluids or nutrition? What has marathon training done to me?