28K: A Long Run in Two Parts

The original plan was to run my 20 of my 28k with JS, but when she got a bib for Winterstart tonight, she decided that she'd scale down to 7.  I didn't really want to run alone as part of my Mojo Maintenance program so I turned to Twitter to find someone to run the remaining 21k with.   I had made a promise to myself going into this training that I would try my best to not run alone on the long runs to keep the mental strain down.  It was the thing that made my marathon training so hard last time.  Thank goodness for social networks and the Calgary running community.

Originally, it looked like Leigh might join me for 18, but she ended up getting super sick.  And then Michelle of Fine Fettle Frets tweeted me last night

Yay - I had partners for the whole way (maybe).

So, bright and early, I headed into the city.  I was meeting JS at 8:30 and, when she arrived with a friend, I had been standing outside trying to get Satellite reception for 5 mins.  The heavy cloud cover was making it a pretty slow process.  But soon I had it and the three of us were on our way - heading west from Eau Claire.  We ran over the Peace Bridge then up to Crowchild and back again.  Exactly 7k in just shy of an hour.

I quickly stretched and then we headed to the Running Room to meet up with Michelle.

Now, Michelle had gotten me to sign up last minute for the Twitter Road Race to benefit the victims of Hurricane Sandy.  Our first 10k was dedicated to that.  We headed out toward East Village to follow the fun 12k route that JS and I had taken a few weeks ago.  The idea was that we would aim for 12k with Michelle and assess how she felt at that point to see if she would carry on for the full 21k with me.  We were almost back to Eau Claire when we hit the 10k mark.

And she decided to carry on with me :)

Downtown was so foggy...this was the first time we could even see buildings...

We kept heading west.  As we were approaching Crowchild, we decided we should maybe look for a potty and figured there would probably be one at Tri-It, which was about a kilometre away.

We were right.   And I did a little shopping while we were there and picked up a fun red and white striped sweatyband (like this one, but red) for the upcoming holiday season :)  Then, we hit the path and headed back in.  Even had the Running Room truck try to run us over play chicken with us on the path on the way.

I'm not good at math at the best of times, so we figured I might be a kilometre short on my 28k by the time we got back.  I admit - the walk breaks started to get longer near the end...they always do at these distances.

In the end - my Garmin said 27k, but Michelle's iPhone said 21 so I think my Garmin was 1k off and I really did 28. Now, a few hours later, I REALLY feel like I did 28.

And the latte always tastes better when you earn it...ALWAYS.

Thanks for a great run, ladies!  Thanks for keeping me company on the long, long miles. 

Garmin Geekery:

I'm almost into the distances where my splits will need to be 2 screenshots...