I had 20 miles on the schedule today and really didn’t want to run it by myself; I looked around online with different group to see what they were running and none was running 20 but people were meeting early to get miles in before meeting to run with group. After considering the idea of waking at 4:30am to drive 45mins to meet at 5:30am to run about 10+ miles before meeting the group back at 7am fro more miles I realized I needed more sleep and will be running this solo.

I really didn’t feel like getting up to run, read chapters out of 4 different book, got up made coffee carry coffee back to bed read some more, but eventually got out of bed, got dressed, made mum breakfast then headed out the door. Getting outside I realized I was running later than I expected, so it was hot and humid and for some reason I decided to only carry my handheld and also run a new route with no idea where a water source was since I do not go to this side of town often. Lots of mistake made for one run, oh forgot I was also wearing my new Adidas marathon 10 with new sockguy sock.

With the temperature also high and tiredness in my legs due to hard trail race on Thursday I decided to do a 5/1 run/walk ratio really my first time doing a run/walk but really had to admit it wasn’t that bad, 1 minute goes by very fast that I was wondering if it was worth stopping for but 5 mins take so long that I was looking forward to the 1 min break.

The new route was great, actually once construction is done on Bainbridge this will be a great route to get to the park via Liberty/Solon Rd and get some trail runs in. The only problem was I only had 1 hand held and by mile 4 I was completely empty and had no idea were water source was, I was hoping someone was going to be out in their yard and I could ask them for water but I could find someone until about mile 6 and he was nice enough to even put ice in my bottle but by this time I was so dehydration that when I took one sip I drank half the handheld and I had 6 miles to get back home. Bummer.

I got home with 12 miles done with my tongue hanging out; I was so thirsty, tired and sweating like a pig, got some water down (probably should have got for something with electrolyte instead of just water) and wipe down with a cold towel. I knew I was done with outside so changed shoes and headed down to the basement to get the last 8 miles in.

Just 2 miles in, even though I still had garmin at a 5/1, I got incredible tired, like I said should have taken something else instead of just water, paused the treadmill and got a can of FRS energy drink and that hit the spot and I was back to running in about 10 mins. This was hard probably one of my hardest long run ever but at least I finish but it does not give me great confidence for a great pace at the Akron Marathon, although I also made a lot of mistakes, live and learn.