It's better than pulling a Grete Weitz, but just barely.

While at first running appears to be a civilized sport after further examination it turns seemingly regular folks into savages. This past weekend I had the joy of banging out my last real long run, of 22.5 miles one(the fourth 20+ run). Most of the charity runners were shipped out to Hopkington to the starting line and then ran into town, stopping at BC. The nice part was they had some amenities which you usually only find on race days. Well I am not sure how nice it was but at least they had them. See the thing with runners is they make up for the fact that their sport is fairly civilized by pounding cups of coffee and Energy gels and then destroying Port O Johns before there run. I would take a Port O John in Somalia over one near a road race. And while I suppose this is better than the Weitz alternative, she was the German marathoner who was known to just let go of her bowels while racing. It would be one thing if a guy like me in the middle of the pack did it but she had cameras on her. Hell, Grete makes Matt Cooke of the Penguins look polished.

Anyway, back to the training. After battling a fever Thursday and into Friday night I was not sure if I was going to be able to do my long run with the team, I had to skip my run Friday because I felt so crappy. I felt ok at the start but at mile 17 I started to feel a bit achy(sick achy not running achy). It took a lot to keep going because my house is just past mile 17, but I sucked it up and finished off my goal which was 22.5. If you are one of the two people who read this blog you remember that two years ago my ankle blew at mile 22, well at least I know it will last a half mile longer. And even though I felt like junk for the last 5 miles and was not pushing too hard I still ended up running 8:33's which wasn't too bad considering. I was also happy that even with a fever, three Energy gels, one cliff bar and a bunch of Gatorade I still held it together better than Grete.