I ran twenty miles on Saturday. TWENTY! 10+10=20 4×5=20 TWENTY!

I’m still in shock a bit. None of my long runs over 13 miles have gone as well as the 20 miler did. The 14 miler sucked. It was HOT. I walked the last two miles. The 16 miler was better, but it got HOT at the end, and we ran a route that we somehow have a mental block about. We walked a lot during the last 3-4 miles.

So ask me how much we walked during the 20 miler? Just go ahead…ASK! NONE! Well, no walking when we don’t normally walk. We take 30sec to 1min walk breaks at every mile beep to take our salt and/or eat. But that was it. We RAN 20 miles!

Notice anything else about this pace graph? NEGATIVE SPLIT! Yeah…who negative splits their first 20 mile run?! Apparently Mr. Neon and I do. I will give the weather some credit. It was beautiful out…perfect 55-60 degrees, a light breeze. Just wonderful!

In other news, I might have found a solution for my shoe issue. For the last 18+ months, I have worn Brooks PureCadence 2s. I fell in love with them and stockpiled what I could when they went on BIG sale. $50 for my favorite running shoe…I bought four pairs! The last two pairs that I have been rotating now have 300+ miles on each of them. No good. I found a pair of PureCadence 3s on sale, but Brooks changed the fabric on the heel to this ribbed baloney. It gave me a wicked heel blister no matter what I did. No good again. I got a pair of PureCadence 4s and took the run shoe person’s advice and went up another half size. There were ultimately too big and the tongue isn’t attached and doesn’t have a loop, so it slides ALL THE WAY over to the side within minutes of me wearing them while walking around my house. No good times three.

After the 20 miler, I exchanged the 4s for Saucony Mirage 5s. I started my run journey in Sauconys. I used to wear the Guide and I did try one pair of the Mirages…I think the 3 series. The Mirage seems to do the trick for my slight overpronation, but it’s a stiffer feeling shoe which tends to give me shin splints…like the ones I’m currently dealing with after doing 8×800 yesterday. It could be the shoe or just my legs continuing to recover from the TWENTY miles I ran on Saturday.

Yeah…that runner’s high is gonna last all week!

So now begins the taper. The remaining track workouts and tempo runs are still at a pretty intense level, but the long runs are only 13 this week and 8 the next. Of course, they are faster, both at flat MP pace (10:09). And then there’s the other part of taper I have to think about…getting nutrition back in line, trimming down the 4ish lbs I’ve added in the last couple of weeks, and getting plenty of sleep.

18 days out. And then comes the fun part of completing the tattoo. (And getting another one…)

The 26.2 is missing, but not for long!!