22 Miles/3:22: War of the Worlds

The HAT Run 50K (31.1 Miles) is coming up on 21 March 2009 and I'm signed up for it.  It will be my first (and perhaps last) ultramarathon.  I say it might be my last because Sònia's just made it clear that she doesn't want me to disappear for an entire day while I'm running a race.  Sigh.  I can still run my 22 milers on the weekends, which I love doing.

Except that the last 22 miler I ran was the one I ran right at the beginning of December, a week after the Northern Central Trail Marathon.  So I was due to run another.  I finally made it work-- I got out of bed at 4:30 am this morning after DVD marathoning with Sònia until almost 1 am.  Yipee.

I normally do not like to run with an MP3 player.  It's all part of my drive towards experiencing the moment I'm in, "when running only running" etc.  But for some reason I strapped my MP3 player on my wrist and listened to stuff while I was running.  Most of the run I ended up listening to Jeff Wayne's musical version of "War of the Worlds".  This thing is a classic-- it came out in '82, but I only heard about it when I was in my Junior year at the Academy.  I bought it on cassette tape at Harrod's in London just prior to spending a semester at Edinburgh University.  It brought back memories of that time-- my first time overseas, smoking Dunhills and dating this French girl from Centrón named Gabrielle Jouet-Pastre.  We spent the summer skipping class and knocking the cork into wine bottles with a ballpoint pen.  It never occured to us to buy a corkscrew.  Frankie Goes to Hollywood had just brought out "Welcome to the Pleasure Dome" and we had matching "FRANKIE SAY RELAX" t-shirts.  I read Alasdair Grey's Lanark for the first time and found it to be pretty disturbing.

All of this was swirling through my head when my cell phone rang and Sònia told me I had to be home in an hour.  I was at mile 15 now... I had to make seven miles in an hour and my legs were pretty dang beat by then.  Reality hurts sometimes.  So I tucked my chin in and ran as hard as I could.  And I made it.  It was actually pretty good, I need that ability to find some speed when my legs are really pounded.  But I'm not sure where I found the speed.

Overall I felt good about getting my long run going again.  I'll try and extend it a bit next week, maybe to 24 miles.  I want to have a 26 miler under my belt at least before the HAT run.