The major highlight of this week is of course the 14 mile run on the schedule which is the farthest I have ever run! To date I’ve “only” done a 13.1 mile run in the half marathons I’ve done. I felt like I was going to die after all of them, so needless to say I was nervous. Add in that I wouldn’t have the excitement of 10,000 people around to entertain me and I was more nervous.

For the second week in a row I ran 3 days straight during the week. I know that Wednesday run is really short for now, but not having a rest day for at leaset sleeping in a bit longer is rough! I survived though..

On to the grand finale… my 14 mile run! Seriously I won’t sugar coat this. It was haunting me in the back of my mind all week. I was not excited for this. All I could think of was how I had to run for 2.5 hours straight. 14 miles of just me and my endurance (mental and physical). Even the morning of was not fun. We had a yard sale that day scheduled to start at 10am and I had to be done in time to help set up. So a time limit, which always sucks. And then the whole time getting ready all I could think about (at 5am on a SATURDAY) was how long this would take. I mapped out a new route that would run me through downtown which should be exciting. But no. Nothing was fun. Nothing was exciting. I just wanted to be in bed. And by mile 2 I was already harassing myself.

“Why the hell am I doing this?”
“This is the stupidest thing ever, wtf was I thinking?”
“This is such a waste of time.”
“It’s time to just give this ridiculous thing up… I can live my life withOUT running a full marathon.”

This continued for the next 5 miles. Almost an hour of hating life and kicking myself for my big ideas of marathon glory. BUT then something changed. I felt strong. I was having fun!!

I was excited as I came to the Hawthorne Bridge… I’d never been on the Eastbank Esplanade before and was always curious. As I started up the bridge I saw a sign for a suicide hotline and thought that was hilarious. How stereotypical to expect people to dramatically throw themselves over the edge of a bridge as a final grand gesture of sadness. Oh Portland. But then as I hit the halfway point of the bridge I realized there were police, and fire, and ambulance trucks everywhere. And then I saw them down on the pier with a guy on a stretcher. Holy shit they had pulled him out of the water!! Suddenly that sign wasn’t so funny. Crazy the stuff you see at 7am on a Saturday. And as a side note it turns out that guy was ok, but the news didn’t say how he ended up in the water. Yikes.

In the end I overshot my route and ended up running an extra 0.29 miles. Of course I got home and then had to run around like a crazy person preparing for the yard sale. We had people waiting outside the house 45 minutes before it was supposed to start! Talk about stress. I didn’t have any down time for stretching or even a shower. Luckily it ended at 3pm because I was completely exhausted.  24.07 miles run this week!