17 miles

“Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

I told myself this at mile 14. It wasn’t encouraging to my aching body. Nevertheless, I completed 17 miles. I ran 5 of those miles, however, with a full bladder. Why? Because the first bathrooms that I pass on my run were locked. I have no idea why. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them closed, and of course it was the first time I really had to use them. Thankfully, I made it to the second set of bathrooms, 5 miles later, without any accidents.

Including bathroom/drink breaks, my pace was pretty much exactly the same pace at which I ran my 14-mile-run. Although it’s nice to know I’m not slowing down as the miles keep building, I really would like to see myself getting faster. I’m praying that the cool weather coming this fall will somehow impact my pace, but I have a hard time trusting in temperature alone to get me across the finish line under 6 hours…

Dilemma. Yes, I can switch from the marathon to the half-marathon. And I don’t even have to decide until October. But, it makes sense (at least to me), that I should try to decide sooner, so I can train accordingly.

The Hammer HEED was great. Lemon-Lime tasted completely different from Gatorade’s Limon-Lime or Limon-Lime Sports Beans, but it seemed to do its job and definitly has a conservative amount of sweetness to it.

On a side note–school starts again Wednesday, and I move into the dorm on Saturday. Class work load might be the sole determinator of whether I drop down to the Half. School definitly should come first. Theoretically, I have time to both study and train. The one difficulty, though, is having the disipline to do both with 100% effort. But such is life, I suppose.

A quick update.

I wasn’t certain about running today, because I had started coughing more than I had been. But when the saying, “Running won’t kill you–you’ll pass out first.” came to mind… I ran. I felt worse than I have in a long time, but I lived through it and don’t feel any worse off as far as coughing/sore throat is concerned.

This week , with being slightly sick, I’ve tossed the two “strategies” around. If one comes down with a cold or any other mild sickness, should he or she completely recovery before running again or run regardless of health. This time I decided to try the latter option. For now I figured, if I suddenly developed a cold right before my very first 5K, I would want to know if I could really still run “sick.”