Well, there goes another 18 miles for the books. Today’s run was a practice run on the Baltimore Marathon course. Those doing the Baltimore full had to run 20 miles, while the halfies did 10-12. Since MCM is a little later, our mileage was 18. We decided that we would cut the 20 mile course short and in doing so, we got a little lost and ended up a mile short at the end. No worries…we found the 18th mile.

Here are our stats:

1. 11:26
2. 11:13
3. 11:07
4. 10:59 (Roctane GU)
5. 11:00
6. 11:05
7. 11:17 (Waffle Stinger)
8. 11:00
9. 10:50
10. 12:37  <—-First time we got lost (Caffeinated GU)
11. 11:13
12. 10:37
13. 10:59
14. 10:49
15. 12:08 <—-And we’re lost again (Caffeinated GU)
16. 11:41
17. 11:55 <—-Crap, another mile to go. Stop now or keep going….keep going…
18. 11:32

Our pacing was little fast for a long run, but the stops to figure out how to get back on course made up for it. Overall, I felt pretty good. No major issues with the calf and my energy level was steady. Don’t get me wrong, at the end of 18 miles, I felt like I ran 18 miles. The course in downtown Baltimore is tough. Since it wasn’t a closed course, we pretty much stuck to the sidewalks, which meant maneuvering over curbs and uneven concrete. If you think about it, it was 18 miles were you had to lunge up on a curb, lunge down a curb, block after block after block. The course was also very heavy with hills in the beginning and had a mixture of concrete, bricks, and cobblestone, which makes the Baltimore Marathon a challenging course. I’m glad that I got that marathon out of the way last year. I don’t think I’d do it again.

Usually when we run, we’re a bunch of chatter boxes. This run was a little quiet. We were a little rushed in the beginning then annoyed by all the bad manners displayed by fellow runners. We came up with a list of 17, but I can only remember a few of them now. Here are some good manners that we should practice during an open course training run (or any training run really):

1. When it is not a closed course, please do not take up an entire lane of traffic.
2. Don’t run in the middle of the street if you have a shoulder to run on.
3. Don’t run with traffic…in the freaking middle of the street and get annoyed when a car honks at you.
4. Please obey traffic signals. There were many runners running against the green causing traffic to back up. (We did it once because we followed a group and didn’t pay attention. I gave the drivers my “I’m sorry I’m an idiot” look and crossed over…bad manner ding for me)
5. Cross at crosswalks….seriously, it’s not that hard to run to the traffic signal and cross at a cross walk. This isn’t a race.

Again, we had more, but those were the ones that really stood out. I know there’s a campaign of sharing the road with runners and bicyclists, but if we’re not being courteous it gives us a bad rap. And I understand that as runners we feel that we are superior beings (I know I do 😉 ), but we’re really just setting ourselves up for getting hit by a car. Ask my friend Lisa…she’s been hit by a car twice since she started running (she’s the one on the left).

Next run is supposed to be tomorrow’s recovery run. At this moment, I don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s raining and I’m expecting it to rain all day tomorrow.  Getting up at 4AM sucks and I do that 5 – 6 days a week. All I want to do is sleep in and wake up without the sound of an alarm clock or my cat. So in about 7 minutes, I will hopefully be tucked away snoozing and working on a puddle of drool on my pillow. Good night!