Running 31 miles hurts...

in case you have ever questioned that fact.

My husband and I are training for the marathon (for anyone who hasn't kept up with me lately). Normally when you do the training for a marathon, there is one long run that occurs approximately 4 weeks before marathon day. Unfortunately I told my brother to come into town from San Francisco that weekend not even thinking about what we would do to make up for that run.

We decided to run the Sunmart 50k/50mile trail run this past weekend instead. For the non-runners in the house, 50k = 31 miles (give or take a tenth).

I had been told in the past that Sunmart was WAAAAAAY easier than the marathon. "You see it's soft ground the whole way rather than the concrete that the marathon is run on. Oh and they have these really awesome rest stops where there is all kinds of good food to eat. You get lots of cool stuff just from signing up and a neat jacket or afghan for finishing!! Besides, no one really runs it that hard anyway so go ahead and give it a try", they said! My husband got the same pitch from everyone so we signed up.

Stupidly, I believed all these so called friends who gave me those many lines of BS. I really think that they had suffered so much that they felt everyone should suffer this evil run with them.

There were some good things about the run. I like to start on a positive note so here is goes. There were a lot of really cool things that you get for signing up. My favorites were the long sleeve running shirt (probably worth about $40) and the running hat (another $20 or so). We only paid $90 to enter and there were other goodies too so I figured we pretty much broke even on the cost. Then there was the fact that this is run up in the piney woods in Huntsville, Texas around a lovely little lake. And I DID get a medal and the neat afghan at the end. This is where the good things end!

I mentioned the lovely scenery? Well... couldn't really pay attention to any of it because I was too busy watching for roots to trip over. I observed 31 miles of dirt and tree roots. All the good food? I have found that I really don't tolerate M&M's and PB&J sandwiches too well when running. Apparently the food wants to try to make a reappearance. Fortunately I managed to avoid that situation. Then there are the hills... I was told not to really run the hills. OK... that's great but it seemed to me like the course was one freaking big hill that never stopped. So not running them made the day oh so much longer than expected. Did I mention that it took 7.5 hours to finish. 7.5 hours of torture! No one should have to suffer through that. At the point that I hit about 26/27 miles I didn't want to run anymore so I started walking. Walking hurt too but I was in the middle of nowhere in the woods with almost no one near me so I had to get back somehow. Yay! What fun!

This is what pain looks like. This is akin to childbirth in that people do it more than once because they forget the pain. I am posting the picture so I can gaze on my pain anytime I forget!



In the end, everything from my neck down hurt. I cried at the finish partially because I was in so much pain and partially because my husband was nowhere to be found. (In his defense, he thought he had time to go to the truck to get a camera and take a picture of me finishing... he didn't have that much time). We drove home and I immediately went to bed only about an hour later around 6:30. I tried to stay awake but my body was having none of that. It was better to sleep too because I didn't feel the pain so much while I was sleeping.

It's hard to say whether I'm glad I did it. I swore after it was done I would never, ever do that again. I have a sort of twisted sense of accomplishment so I suppose that is good. I can tell people that I "run" 31 miles. The quotes are due to the fact that there was a lot of walking involved almost to the point of feeling like I was on some evil hiking expedition.

The husband told me last night that he wanted to do it again. I'm pretty sure he has gone completely insane and I am certain he means to drag me with him on his trip through insanity. Wish me luck!