That's why we're Michigan State

I should have seen it coming. It has happened before.

Saturday night's football game between MSU and Notre Dame was going very great for the first 3 quarters...I mean, as long as you're a spartan fan. It even started monsooning rain in the 3rd quarter, which just added to the craziness. Then for some reason, MSU handed Notre Dame the game on a platter, and the rest is history. Irish win 40-37, see you later. It's not the first time in recent memory that this team has jumped out to a comfortable early lead only to make dumb mistakes and see it evaporate - see Michigan game of 2004, Notre Dame game of 2005, Ohio State game of 2005. I got up early on Sunday (obviously) to get ready for my 20 mile run and I was watching ESPN. They were recapping the game and were asking what the headline of the game should be - "Great Notre Dame comeback" or "This is why you're Michigan State". Personally, I'd pick the second one, how pitiful is that?

So anyway...enough about the game. On Saturday, I barely ate anything after 4pm, and was standing up for most of the game, so I had absolutely no idea about how I was gonna run these 20 miles. Fortunately, the game was never delayed by thunderstorms, and I got to bed around 1am for an 8am wake up call. Perfect. The weather during the 10 mile race also couldn't have been much better. A rain shower moved through right before, but gave way to clearing skies as the starting gun went off. It was cool in the morning so I wore two shirts with a pair of short shorts, but it quickly got warm and started worrying about being too hot...though I ended up being ok. I wanted to go out at BQ pace (7:14/mile) or faster, depending on how I felt, so here's how my splits went:

Miles 1-5: 6:50.74, 7:20.14, 7:17.29, 7:04.47, 7:13.24
Miles 6-10: 7:10.30, 6:57.01, 7:03.93, 7:02.71, 6:51.65
Miles 11-15: 6:53.72, 7:06.37, 7:16.30, 6:51.02, 6:58.11
Miles 16-20: 6:56.99, 6:57.49, 7:07.29, 6:51.90, 6:43.21

First 10 miles: 1:10:51 (7:05 pace)
Last 10 miles: 1:09:42 (6:58 pace)
Total: 20 miles in 2:20:33 (7:02 pace)

For the first 6 miles I was pretty adamant about keeping in between 7:05 and 7:15 pace because I didn't want to tire out after starting out quick, but then I felt like I could pick up the pace on mile 7. Running between a 6:55 and 7:05 pace felt like a real good comfort zone. On the 12th and 13th mile, I caught up with two guys who ran the 10 mile race and were doing a cool down, and they gave me some good advice about running my first marathon in Detroit, so I didn't care that I slowed down a tad. They turned around after mile 13, so I was on my own for the rest of the way. Every split after that was in the 6:50's, save for two - the 18th and 20th miles. Obviously the 20th mile because I finished strong, but on the 18th mile I went to grab a cup of water to wash down my Clif Blocks, but I fumbled it! So I stopped to turn around and get another cup, so that's what slowed that mile down.

All in all, I felt great. I felt like I was starting to hit some semblance of a wall on the 18th mile, but that HAD to be due to all the work I was doing the previous day and night. No way I'm gonna be doing any of that stuff come marathon time.

Yesterday I was sore as hell, no joke, so I ended up biking about 15 miles throughout the course of the day to loosen up my muscles a little bit. This morning I did the obligatory 4 miles on the elliptical to loosen them up a little more. My buddy Phil says that he's not impressed with my running because of a new world record set by joggling...he says I've got a lot of work to do!