It was "long run day" as part of our build up to the Walt Disney World Marathon 2006.Bill, Jeff and I left Bill's house at 7:15 AM to run about 9 1/2 miles down to the Lakefront in Milwaukee. The first couple of miles we were finding our groove. We settled in on a faster 9:10 pace than the 9:30 planned pace, but it felt good. In less than 30 minutes we could see the buildings from downtown off in the distance as the sun was coming up.
We ran mostly on sidewalks as the city blocks ticked lower and lower. A lady tried to bum a cigarette from me at 25th and Wisconsin. Yes, we are in the city.
We arrived at the lakefront after running for 1 hour and 26 minutes. We had to scramble a little bit to get our Lake
Front Discovery race numbers. Yes, we ran here to run a RACE! A 15k race none the less. Mike found us. He had our race numbers!As the gun sounded to start the race, we left the starting line with 10 miles already run as our "warm up". I'm guessing not many other people running this race had already run 10 miles today. So off we went! Check out the iRun Podcast live while I was running the Lakefront Discovery Run.
I ran with Bill, the Rabbit (Jeff) had been released to scurry ahead. Mike hadn't run to the lakefront with us, so he was going to be booking this race in under an hour.
At 2.5 miles into this race, we ran up a long winding hill. My legs (knees) really got tired. We passed the
3 miles marker and then 4 miles, my breathing was great. Cardio-wise I could run much faster, but just couldn't get the legs to do much of anything. At 5 miles (15 miles for us), Bill looked good and took off to pass a bunch of people. I shuffled along.My pace stayed around the 9:30 mark so I wasn't doing as poorly as it seemed in my mind.
I brief ran backwards at the Calatrava and snapped a picture. I finished the 9.3 miles race in 1:29:50 with a final 25 yards sprint as two women tried to pass me. I did say (or maybe yelled) "no way no way NO WAY" as I referred to letting them pass me after I'd just run 19.3 miles! We all crossed
the finish line at the same time. I was still standing!Jeff met me at the finish with a bottle of water. He'd been done for 25 minutes. Bill appeared to say we've got .7 miles left to run! I waddled off another 3/4 of miles to the parking garage.
I can't imagine another 6.2 miles tacked on for a marathon, but we'll keep at it!
All in all a fun morning.
