Saturday 19 April 2014

Back-to-back, part two

My legs were inexplicably fresh this morning. I was a bit worried about how my knee would like running another two-hour session only a day after the first one, but I was otherwise quite positive that I would have the strength to do another 20 km today.

Yes, of course I made a promise to myself to ”only” run 20 km. And, yes, of course I didn't keep my promise. Keeping the running-related promises I make to myself would not be like me. As not-like-me, in fact, as managing to keep any plants I buy alive for more than a month (my personal kill-a-plant record is a week. A week. I can't believe the cats are still alive)

A sane person might have taken the car up to the arena to the AIK meeting point, but a lot of people have questioned my sanity when it comes to running, and not without good reason. It's 4 km to run there from home, so just the run there and back was going to be 8 km, leaving a margin of only 12 km for the AIK long run itself. I had already created a problem for myself, in other words. I blame not paying attention during maths lessons at school. Then, to add to the problem, our coach said that we were going to run a bit longer today than our usual 1,5 hours, maybe a total of 2 hours.


A sane person might have arranged to get a post-run a lift home after that revelation, or cut their run short. A sane person has the common sense to realise that a knee that's already cruising for a bruising is only going to become more aggressive the more you poke it. An insane person (me) smiled a huge smile on the inside. An even longer run than I had planned. I liked it!


Because here's the thing. It's way too much fun to run long runs. Especially with AIK. Maybe because they, or at least some of them, don't think I'm insane. They get my crazy. Some people might say that none of us are quite sane, getting up early on a Saturday morning to go for a 2-hour run. That's why I can get drunk-person-at 3am sentimental about them sometimes.

I LURVE YOU GUYS! *hick*


We ran down by the river and through some areas on the west parts of town that were new to me. The sun only made some intermittent appearances. A persistent headwind whipped us almost constantly on our way out, but helped us along on the way back. My knee got grumpy now and then but it never got so bad that it hurt.


My two hour run lasted for more than two hours and a half. It went well, much better than I had dared hope for. I got off easy. Again. Now, two rest days to let my body heal before my first ”Around the bridges” for the year on Tuesday.

2 comments: