Twenty Miler

My 70-year old friend Dick Carling, who ran the Boston Marathon for the 29th consecutive time last month, has been pushing me for two years to do the Deseret Morning News Marathon on the 24th of July. To appease him, I told him a few weeks ago that if I could consistently carve out enough training time and remain uninjured, I would consider it, a commitment with enough caveats that I didn't feel committed. Now total strangers stop me in City Creek Canyon to say, "Hey, I hear you are running the Deseret News Marathon!"

So I am on my training schedule and, I think, not yet injured, though the next few hours may result in a different diagnosis. Today that training schedule required the first of 3 runs of at least 20 miles. The good news is I ran 20 miles - 20.22 to be precise. The bad news is Mother has gone to the temple without me as I am pretty well confined to bed and chair at the moment. I thought I was doing pretty well until I saw Wayne Cannon - I was coming down the Canyon at about mile 13 of my run and he was running up the Canyon faster than I was running down... And by mile 18 I had pretty much slowed down to a 12 min/mile pace - about the speed of a leisurely walk.

But I did it, and have the Google Earth map to prove it (the blue line is the 15-miler from two weeks ago, red is today's jaunt)! What did runners do before Chocolate Gu?