Bring it on Tulsa!

Ok Tulsa, I am just about ready for you! Did my long run of the week today which ended up being 13 miles. After all the problems I was having with my calf muscle I wasn't sure how this one would turn out but somehow it all worked out. I had rolled, used icy hot, ice, elevation, more rolling and massaging on the calf to get the knots out of it. Thursday I could only take baby steps. Friday was almost back to normal. Today I was ready to go. Rest days do help, especially when your legs are trashed from the long runs. I did decide last night to switch back to my old Brooks Adrenalin 7's and see if the legs felt different.

I started the run at 7am with the Cabot Cruisers at South Side Elementary doing our famous 10.5 mile city loop. Jane needed 13 also so we pretty much ran together the whole way. After starting, probably less than a mile out the fast group took off and of course I was in the slow group. Well, we really were not that slow but I wanted to be very conservative today not knowing how my leg would feel. First mile was an easy 10:01 pace but I told Jane that today, I was going to make sure and take my 1 mile walk breaks every time and we did. Before I hit mile 2 I was having my doubts. i could feel the knot in my calf muscle again. I was afraid it was going to stop me before I even hit three miles. When we took our mile 2 walk break I reached down and massaged it real quick and kept going. I made sure to drink at every break also. By some stroke of luck, it didn't really bother me again until about mile 10.

There was a pretty big group running this morning, along with Jane and I there were two other girls in our group and probably 5 or 6 in the fast group. Then when we were about mile 3.5 we ran into a lady that was having to walk. She had went out with the fast group and then started having knee issues. At about 6 we ran in to about 5 or 6 more ladies that had parked by the mini-mall and had run towards us to meet up. It worked out pretty good as we ended up having about three or four packs of runners. This made it nice in that pretty much there was always someone to talk to.

The miles clipped away, taking a quick walk break at every mile. This seemed to really help my legs. Probably didn't help my pace that much but it was good on the legs and really, I didn't care about pace today. It was just all about finishing. Right at mile 10 I started feeling my calf tightening up again so I really slowed down. Made it back to the school, stretched and refilled. Most of the others left so Jane and I took off on a new route down by the Jr High to add on a couple miles. I was very slow on these last miles but we got it done. When we got back to the parking lot I needed .2 miles to make 13 so we ran around the parking lot a couple times. I was very happy to have made it through this run without stopping or hurting worse. Recovery has seemed pretty good this afternoon too. My calf feels pretty good, almost normal again. My left achilles is still sore but I am used to that. So, I have decided to run the marathon with my old Brooks shoes. They have actually been pretty good to me so whats another 26.2 miles anyway!
Here are my splits and this is one of my slower long runs to date but I am still pretty happy to have times this good with the nagging injuries.

Total miles ran - 13.01
Total run time - 2:35:37
Average pace - 11:58
1-10:01
2-11:32
3-11:51
4-12:00
5-11:53
6-11:31
7-13:04
8-10:52
9-12:22
10-11:41
11-13:34
12-13:30
13-11:39
Average heart rate - 156 81%
1965 Calories