All that remains is 26.2

I have officially completed my longest training run: 20 miles! I knew this run was going to be a big obstacle, physically and mentally, so when I saw that there was a 20 miler "race" in Elk Grove, I decided to register. I call it a "race" because it wasn't timed and there were no "winners", but everything else was set up like a race: pace teams, aid stations, etc. I always do better when I'm running in a race setting so I figured this would help my motivation.

After only about 6 hours of sleep last night due to attending a rehearsal dinner, I sleepily drove myself to Elk Grove. It was still dark out when I got there, but I could feel the race atmosphere as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. I love that feeling. Then I started noticing that at least half of the cars there had "26.2" stickers on them. It made me excited, but also a little intimidated. Where were my fellow first timers?? Luckily the running community is a friendly one, so as soon as I got out of my car and the person parked next to me struck up a conversation, I knew I had nothing to worry about. That may be one of my favorite parts of running: how friendly and accepting everyone is. No one cares how long you've been running, no one cares how fast you are, we're all runners and we're all in this together (Ooh... High School Musical idea for playlist... also, what is with my overuse of colons in this post... can you tell I need sleep???)

The race started in waves, and each wave had pace leaders. Except for my wave. Our pace leader was apparently MIA. We were orphans. :( So we set our own pace. With people walking through aid stations and stopping at bathrooms though, most of the groups broke up anyway within the first 5 miles. I was on my own for most of the run, but I was ok with that because there was still a group feeling along the whole course.

Around mile 14 (right before the last turn around), it started to rain a bit, and the sky was pretty dark. And then that little bit turned into A LOT. The rain was literally coming down in sheets, and the thunder and lightning was pretty crazy, but at that point we were no where near a shelter or aid station, so our only choice was to keep going. When we did get to the aid station, they were encouraging everyone to stop and go under the shelter until the lightning past, however I knew that if I did this, physically my legs would cramp up, and mentally I would be out of running mode. So the girl next to me looked at me and said, "The lightning would probably hit a tree before it hit us, right?" I agreed, and we kept going. Needless to say, the last 5 miles of my run involved a lot of sloshing in my shoes, and my shirt and shorts plastered to my skin. FUN!

Other than that, the run overall went very well. I felt great (well, as great as you can when you're running 20 miles), and I only had a couple moments where I really had to battle it out mentally. I'm still not sure how I'm magically supposed to add 6.2 miles to my distance for the marathon, but I know it must work since that's how almost all of the training plan work. If I've learned anything from these long runs though, it's that this is mostly a mental feat, not a physical one. I'm sure that I can physically run 26.2 miles, I just need to get beat the mental aspect of it. I'm sure though that running with 40,000 other people and having over a million people cheering me on will help me get through that.

But for now, I shall enjoy the glory of tapering over the next 3 weeks. Oh, and a pedicure. I get to go have one of those in an hour because of the wedding I'm in tomorrow. It's going to be amazing.

Miles this week: 27 miles (Yes, I am completely slacking on mid-week runs. Whatever, I still did my 20. That's what matters in my mind.)
Weeks of training finished: 26 weeks
Total miles of training: 434 miles