11/25/06: The 18 Mile Tour de Memorial!

I can think of a few things I would like to be doing at 6 in the morning on a Saturday during my vacation, and luckily, running fits the bill! After getting some sleep (but probably not enough!) I got up early to drive out to quiet West Houston. It was a good weather morning, justtttt cool enough to make you want gloves, but nice enough to realize you could go without them.

I wasn’t sure what pace I wanted to run, although I knew I had to run with *somebody* as the TdM is notorious for getting people lost. Not to worry, I had my Strider buddies of Pam, Frank, Santos and Janet to run with. We ran a great pace, that probably averaged from a 9-10 minute mile. No one was trying to break a speed record, and we were all concerned about staying injury-free and healthy.

Wow, 3 hours of straight running, with a few stops thrown in there for water/GU/snacks. I stretched lightly when we stopped and devoured 3 Carbbooms and a package of Sports Beans over the 18 miles. I didn’t drink a lot of fluids, but probably had one cup of water and one cup of Gatorade every 3 miles or so. I do need to remind myself to look into buying salt tablets, as I was desperately craving salt at about 12 miles and sloshing a little water in my tummy, and oranges just won’t cut it when I crave something salty!

Overall, I was very very very pleased with my efforts and how I felt during my run. Although I was running slower then I would have liked, my body seemed happy with the pace and I wasen’t too terribly sore at the end. (A sore left calf and lower back, but that is to be expected after 80% of the course being on the dreaded concrete!) Thanks to Coach Steeeeve and the Houston Striders for another awesome pre-Marathon event. Bring on that damn 30k!

THE STATS:
18 miles

about 3 hours of running
ave 10:00/mile

Heart-rate: n/a
Weather: suprisingly cool.