Week 13 Complete - 38 miles!!!

Wrapping up our 13th week with a final double digit run!

Mirna and Andrea

We wrapped up our training this week with a 20 miler - the final of our double digit training runs. I can't tell you what relief I felt after completing this run! And for many reasons, this run was hard for both Mirna and I, so we were truly thankful to finish it.

First of all, Mirna was kind enough to run with me on Thursday afternoon instead of our normal Saturday morning time slot. I was leaving out of town with my girls to visit my mom for the Easter holiday weekend and knew I wouldn't get 20 miles in alone in Pendleton, Oregon. It was wonderful of Mirna to join me a couple of days early. However, we didn't know how challenging this run was going to be. We had completed the River Run on Sunday, which had been a grueling trail run for us (see previous post!) The weather was completely awful - wind, snow, rain, hail, sun at times...you name it, we pretty much had it. And just mentally running on a different day and completely different time probably messed up our heads a bit.

We started out on the Centennial Trail across the river from Spokane Community College. We ran a little over 6 miles to the Fish Lake Trail head. We were going to run out 4 miles and back and then head back to where we started but instead changed our minds and decided to just run out 7 miles and back and drive back to our starting location. We struggled to make it back to the trail head...we were just done! Thankfully, we were able to finish the run on our own two feet (and not crawling or on a stretcher!) I really felt like we accomplished something - however, it does play with your mind. With a couple more days of rest and better weather, might we have felt truly amazing after completing 20 miles, like our other mamas did on Saturday? Maybe so, but I guess we can chalk this one up as a learning experience and a good mental and physical test (that we passed!) for our upcoming "M" day!

Or...maybe we were so traumatized by it that neither of us even wanted to post about it! :) Notice, it's been awhile since we posted! :)

We heard that Sarah (who ran 20 miles with her husband at sub-10 minute miles), Bethany, and Ashley had great runs for their final double digit training - hope they post on here about it! We want to know all the details on why they felt so great after they completed theirs!

Finally, it seems like a long ways from the 20 miler to the marathon...I think we are on a 3 week taper plan. The two weekend runs between this one and the marathon are only 9 and 8 miles so the doubt starts to creep in...is this too long to go without a really long run? Can we really run 26.2 miles in a few weeks? And after feeling not so great about our 20 miler, we are really trying to build up our inspiration in the next few weeks. Thankfully, we still know that anything is possible!

~ posted by Andrea