Mind games
This morning I joined the group for a tour of most of the Austin Marathon course. The plan was to cut off a few spots and end up with close to 19 miles. I knew running for that long would do a good job of clearing my mind, and that’s what I wanted. I took off ahead of the main group in the first few miles, and when I reached the first water stop Gilbert said I should slow down and run with them. I took off again with the group from there, but a few of us split off the front, so it wasn’t much slower than before, if any. I don’t even remember the hills on Exposition. I obviously ran over them, but I was just talking to people and not paying attention to the terrain.
The second water stop was on Bull Creek, and Gilbert said that due to the humidity he was going to move the third one earlier on the route. We had a pretty huge group there at the second one, and soon we were off again. It was nice to run through that section without the heavy rain we had last time. We made our way up Shoal Creek and zipped over to Great Northern. Somewhere along there the group started to split up. I was going to go in the back one, but some folks in there were trying to mess with my head. So, I sped up and never saw them again. There were then just a few of us for the next few miles as we cut over to the east side of the course.
I started to drift back somewhere around the UT IM fields, and that was fine with me. I was doing everything I needed, and this would let me decompress for a bit. I caught up to the others briefly at water stop number four on Duval, but they were leaving right after I arrived. The third water stop was really early, and I thought that meant we might have five instead of four, but it was just a long way to number four, and I really needed it by then.
I ran the rest of the run by myself. Somewhere along there a thought popped into my head. It’s the same thing I always tell people at the start of these runs when they express doubts about finishing. Don’t worry about what’s twenty miles down the road. Just enjoy this part now. I guess that probably applies to more than just my running.
I finished with a strong push down Congress and over to South First and down to Auditorium Shores. It feels really good to be able to do that. I did some strides, and they sure weren’t very graceful. That was a pretty big jump in my distance week over week, so my legs were a bit tired. I did throw in a few sets of pull-ups, though, so that was good. Then I got to lead the stretching session again today, too, so that was fun. I left feeling good, so that’s the way to do it.