Testing your manhood

Run: 14 miles
Time: 2:19:00

First, Brice and I did 14 at the AZ Canal again. For anyone in Phoenix who might ever read this blog, if you are doing a long run in Phoenix, I highly recommend the AZ Canal. I never see anyone out there, and it amazes me.

Brice, was suffering from one of the many tweaks, twinges, and winces that hit you when you train for a marathon. His calf is giving him trouble and he wasn't sure that he thought he'd do 6 and see what happened after that. I was thinking that the total run for me should be around 12 or 13, and then he pops off with the idea to 14, which had me a little scared. And now that my readers are completely confused, let's just say that nothing bad happened to his calf and we did the 14. We did it under 10 minute miles, which is 30 seconds faster than what we've logged in the past. As such, I'm getting a little excited about possibly finishing the marathon closer to the 4 hour mark, as evidenced by me checking out a marathon pace calculator online. Hmmmm. 9:44 minute/miles, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

Testing your manhood

The marathon tests you in many unforeseeable ways. In the never ending pursuit to keep comfortable (see eric's blog about his long run this past Saturday) runners use a bunch of stuff. One of the biggest sources of discomfort for runners is chafing all over: under your arms, between your legs (especially if you have a little extra weight, trust me I know this one), on your chest, etc. So most runners use either petroleum jelly or Glide. We'll put so much of that stuff on us that we could enter ourselves in a greased pig contest before we hit the road for a long run. Recently I ran out of Glide and had to go to the local sports mega store to get some more. I originally thought nothing of this endeavor, but then I couldn't find the stuff in the 5 acres of sports stuff at the store and I was forced to ask a zit faced kid for glide. He tried not to snicker, but was unsucessful and then he needed help. So now I needed to ask two people for body lubrication (and I thought buying tampons for the wife sucked). Finally, we found the Glide and I made my hasty exit. What an ordeal.

Now get back to work...