For the last three weeks or so I have been having problems with my knees and calves, so I took my running shoes back and had my running re-analyzed. I found out I had been running in the wrong type of shoes and that they were the source of my injuries. I gladly handed over my expensive injury-causing shoes and went home to try out some comfy new Nike shoes. They worked great. Who knew that a shoe could cause such problems?
With happy legs and 31/2 months of training I finally reached the ten mile milestone, and it felt awesome! After being at 8 miles or under for that long, and my half-marathon (13.1 miles) being about a month away, I was starting to wonder if I really could pull it off. However, once I finished ten miles of hills, and realized that I was a little sore but not crawling on the ground, my confidence was majorly boosted. Ten seems to be a magic number...if you can do ten miles then why not three more?
So what goes on inside your head as you are running for 2 hours? Well, as I ran my ten miles I decided that running long distances is very much like having a newborn baby. Only, instead of using all of your brain power to figure out what your baby needs, you use all of your brain power to keep your body happy and moving and injury free. It really was a lot of fun. I particularly liked having an excuse to eat a yummy energy bar while I was running...If you have never experienced that liberation I highly reccomend it.
In short, if running ten miles was this empowering then I can't wait to know how the full 26.2 will feel! (I just found out that I got into the St. George Marathon--so if anyone wants to come-run or cheer-it is on October 4th).