Friday, September 01, 2006
Fifteen miles
Today was another landmark run. Now they're coming almost every week. Call me crazy, but I did this one before work too. I actually suceeded in getting the run done, and getting to work by 8 (8:10, to be honest). As I mentioned in a previous post, it adds to the sense of adventure if you have to get up extra early.
It was a nice run. While I didn't see the complete sunrise, from no sun to full sun. I came close, though. I came round the bend in the river just in time to see the sun as it was halfway over the horizon line, squeezed between two apartment towers.
This was another run along the Charles River to the Museum of Science (the easternmost river crossing), but this time I extended the route on the western end to achieve the necessary distance. Its neat how the experience of running past the Museum of S. has changed from a feeling of crossing an exotic frontier, to something familiar. I'm sure I'll run past this a few more times before the trianing is done.
At an 8 mile pace a 15 mile run takes precisely 2 hours, a satisfying number. I came pretty close to this goal (a couple of minutes over, but, given the imprecision of my distance measuring, whose to say). The oddest thing about the run was waiting for the halfway point. The Museum of S. is a conceptual halfway point, because I cross the river and head back in the other direction. But the actual halfway point, which I considered to be the 1 hour point, seemed to take forever to reach. When I did reach 1 hour, I found it hard to believe I still had another hour to run, judging by my sense of distance. I had to think really hard to convince myself that I hadn't made a huge error in selecting this route. But as I've already said, I used up that next hour easily.
I felt tired afterwards, but not completely exhausted. During the run I felt what might have been light leg cramps, something I've never had before, so I really feel like I am pushing the limits now.
So, theoretically, if I ran this twice in a row I could do 30 hours in about 4 hours, so doing 26.2 in less than 4 should be a piece of cake. Well, not really, of course. Also, this course is very flat, and we know the C.C.M. , as we know, is not.
It was a nice run. While I didn't see the complete sunrise, from no sun to full sun. I came close, though. I came round the bend in the river just in time to see the sun as it was halfway over the horizon line, squeezed between two apartment towers.
This was another run along the Charles River to the Museum of Science (the easternmost river crossing), but this time I extended the route on the western end to achieve the necessary distance. Its neat how the experience of running past the Museum of S. has changed from a feeling of crossing an exotic frontier, to something familiar. I'm sure I'll run past this a few more times before the trianing is done.
At an 8 mile pace a 15 mile run takes precisely 2 hours, a satisfying number. I came pretty close to this goal (a couple of minutes over, but, given the imprecision of my distance measuring, whose to say). The oddest thing about the run was waiting for the halfway point. The Museum of S. is a conceptual halfway point, because I cross the river and head back in the other direction. But the actual halfway point, which I considered to be the 1 hour point, seemed to take forever to reach. When I did reach 1 hour, I found it hard to believe I still had another hour to run, judging by my sense of distance. I had to think really hard to convince myself that I hadn't made a huge error in selecting this route. But as I've already said, I used up that next hour easily.
I felt tired afterwards, but not completely exhausted. During the run I felt what might have been light leg cramps, something I've never had before, so I really feel like I am pushing the limits now.
So, theoretically, if I ran this twice in a row I could do 30 hours in about 4 hours, so doing 26.2 in less than 4 should be a piece of cake. Well, not really, of course. Also, this course is very flat, and we know the C.C.M. , as we know, is not.
