Keep on truckin'

So I said I was gonna do an easy 4 or 5 miles on Friday morning....well, it only ended up being 3 miles because my left ankle became aggravated and I didn't wanna mess with it, especially with a long 18 mile run coming up this morning. So, before I had to report to leave for Pitt, I iced it and generally tried to make it feel better.

This weekend was great, save for the long bus ride. We left Friday morning, pulled into a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio, in the afternoon to run a practice on a high school football field, then proceeded onto the Airport Mariott at Pittsburgh that night. Usually we stay with host families when we go somewhere...the general deal is we play a performance for a high school that night and then the parents of the students take in around 4 of us for the night and then bring us back to the high school in the morning so we can continue to the game we're going to play at. That's how it always works when we go down to South Bend to play Notre Dame. For some reason, this trip was different, and it was cool to stay in a hotel!

I must say, Pittsburgh is a nice city. I've never been to Pennsylvania before, so it was cool to see the rolling hills of what I presume to be the Allegheny Mountains. The rivers in Pitt also contributed to the nice look. The game went swell too (mostly because we won!), the 38-23 score was closer than the game was because Pitt scored the last 14 points in garbage time. Now it's on to play Notre Dame this weekend on our home turf, 8pm on ABC! You can tell I get excited for these things...

This morning I managed to get up for an 18 mile run. It was tough because I'm all stuffed up since Mother Nature apparently thought "Oh shit, it's still summer!" and got warm again, plus my roomate invited people over last night and they were loud as hell so I didn't get much sleep. Anyway, the run went well. The first 10 miles I ran on the river trail path that happens to be the course for next week's Capitol City River Run 10 mile race. It's an out and back deal, and the halfway point of the race just happens to be right by my house. The leaves are starting to fall here, so seeing some leaves on the ground made me remember why I love running in late September and October. I hit the halfway point (5 miles) in 37:25, which is 5 seconds faster than a perfect 7:30 pace. It was a tad faster than I've been doing my recent long runs, but I felt great so I wasn't complaining.

The next five miles brought me back to my house so that I could grab a couple Clif Blocks and a drink of water, and lose one of the shirts I was wearing. I felt like I was going a bit faster on this portion, but I forgot to stop my watch when I got to my house. So, by doing what I needed to do inside my house, it had to have taken me about 3 minutes max before I realized I needed to stop the time. I stopped it at 41:15, subtract 3 minutes and we have a 38:15 split for the second 5 miles. A little slower than the first 5, but I was still fine with the pace.

Then I was on with the final 8 miles. I ran about 2.4 miles to a 5K course that goes through a student neighborhood, then ran the same 2.4 back and added .1 at the end to make it an equal approximate 8 miles. Around the 2nd mile (12th overall), my ankle started hurting me again, but the pain lessened when I didn't think about it, and then I was fine for the rest of the run. I ran the first 2.4 in 17:44 (7:23 pace), the middle 5K in 23:31 (7:35 pace), and the final 2.5ish in 16:31 (6:36 pace). I think I was a little slower on the 5K portion because my ankle started acting up around the beginning of that, so I took it easy until the pain went away. And man...was I trucking at the end!

Final time - 2:13:29 for 18 miles, good for a 7:25 pace throughout. I'm pretty satisfied with it, this was a BIG confidence booster. I took an ice bath this afternoon and I really feel great now. Bring on this next week...