30 Miles, 26 Hours

Sure, I made it through Sunday's run bucket-of-chickenless, but that wasn't the only downside to a good run. There's the whole my being an idiot that came into play.

Eager to write and talk about the run, I plopped on the couch (still pretty gross, too), tucking my leg beneath me and making my achilles squeal. It felt like something serious all of Sunday and the better part of Monday. I rode an easy hour on my bike on Tuesday and took the legs for a test run on Wednesday after work.

Fingers were crossed.

Creakedy start —achilles sketchy, calves reluctant and tight— those first two long miles, and it almost seemed like a bad idea until I pushed through Little Italy, passed a cyclist up the hill, eventually hit my "base" stride and cut all the apocryphal thoughts ('you were marathon-training and you injured yourself sitting?') these tweaks induce.

The short, slow test run turned into a pretty good hill exercise and 11-mile run a touch under 9:00/mile. Warm-up miles were tragically slow, but I tackled each incline and flew the downhills to pick up the pace. And the achilles scare? All just a bad rumor.

Not that it helped my super tight legs today! I took the buses (express into downtown, transfer to HealthLine) to work in the morning and tried to keep my legs stretched and warm all day. It didn't matter: I started running on a cold, rainy day, and my calves were stiff as stones.

Seven some miles later, I met E on the Marginal, where it was 15-20 degrees warmer and 100 percent sunnier than when I started. My calves? About 70 percent less stiff.

We took the scenic lakefront route home, and I dipped and peaked all over the place. At some points I suffered from post-work malaise; other times I was just pumped to be finishing my long run on a week day. The post-work thing, however, is pretty rough for me, so I finished that few miles feeling more ragged than usual. E, as usual, talked me through it. Whew!

We reached the end of my street (just past 19 miles), and I bid E on the rest of her Wednesday run. I ran the slowest cool-down in human history and smiled. Feeling tight, rough and a little slow, I still managed 19 around 8:50/mile. Now I need a massage...