Another week in the books, and one week closer to the race.  Actually, now that Week 15 has finished, we’re only three weeks (21 days!) until San Antonio!  As I type that I realize 21 is going to be a theme in this post.  I’ll stay away from cliches like black jack or alcohol and spare you the uncreative juices.  Instead I’ll stick to a more boring professional discussion about how a regular Saturday long run turned into a super fantastic epic trek totaling no less than 21 miles.  Continue reading for some exaggerated details about how it went.  Hint: BOOM!

The week as a whole was uneventful.  As I mentioned last week, I broke my scheduled-runs streak so it was time to begin a new streak.  Well, depending on how you look at it, I got between one and four in a row before breaking my new streak.  Fail.  That’s ok though, as one ex-roommate and long distance training partner put it: “The hay is in the barn.”  What?  It’s supposed to mean the hard work has been done.  Funny enough (as if that saying wasn’t funny enough in itself), if you Google the quote, about half of the first page of results are from running-related sites or blogs.  Let’s try to add this site to the list!  Anyhow…

Saturday called for a 20 mile long run.  Not to be outdone by aforementioned ex-roommate, who said he planned for 21 miles, I decided to add a mile to the schedule too.  Now, I’ve said it before, I’m not intimidated by the distance set forth by my training plan.  But 21 is off the charts and the longest non-race I’ve ever attempted.  You know what I say to that?  nbd*.

I started out at a reasonable 8:15 min/mi or so for the first two miles.  After that, you guessed it, BOOM!  I unconsciously** picked up the pace where 17 of the last 19 miles were under 8 minutes per mile.  The best part?  The fastest mile took 7:34, and it was my final mile.  That definitely bodes well for a successful race.  In order to keep up the trash talk getting stirred up in the more recent running posts, I texted that same ex-roommate:

“BOOM! watch out man, if the race is anything like today, you’re in trouble. 21.00 miles in 2:45:26 = 7:53 min/mile”

Well, that jerk responded: “7:55 for me and I was able to hold a conversation the whole time ;)”.  And with that, we can both look forward to the race coming up in the not too distant future.  Now it’s time for scaling back on the mileage until the race, so, let’s get this tapering over with underway.

* Google it

** Sleep running?