Saturday 12/19 - 15 miles - terrible run

This ended up being one of my worst long runs of the year. I guess I'd rather have a day like this 4 weeks out from the marathon instead of during the marathon. I went into the run planning on doing anywhere from 18 - 24 miles. Sam had emailed me Friday and said he planned on running 24 with the last 6 at marathon pace and was wondering if I would be there. Since I went 23.5 last weekend, I said I'd run at least the first 18 with him and I'd give the last 6 a try if I was feeling ok. I'm planning on doing my last 23 - 24 mile in about 1-1/2 weeks when I get back from our Christmas trip.

I was a little late getting out the door of my house and it was almost 6:00 by the time I was ready to leave so I decided just to run from the house and meet up with the group since the route was heading towards my house. I met up with the lead group, but Sam wasn't there. I don't know if he didn't make it out or if he was well ahead of the group and I missed him. Hopefully he wasn't waiting around the base on me to show up. I was feeling ok through the first 6 miles or so and running with Rob and Jena and couple other guys I didn't recognize. About 6 miles in I knew that I'd only be doing about 18 because my legs weren't feeling the greatest and we'd only been running 7:20 - 7:25 pace. I was wearing my worn out shoes and most of the route was on roads/sidewalk so my legs definitely were getting pounded. A little after 6 miles we stopped at an intersection trying to determine the best route to go since we needed to get across 610 and we either needed to run north or south in the feeder road until we could get across it. As we were stopping, I stepped on the edge of a curb or the road and rolled my ankle. It stung a little, but didn't feel terrible and I decided to keep running towards the next water stop and see how it was feeling. The ankle didn't really bother me the rest of the run, but my legs were aching more, and I was dropping off of the lead group. Between miles 9 - 12 the lead group put some pretty good distance in between the group I was with and themselves. I was doing low 7:00's by this time, but they were probably running sub-7:00's. At the mile 12 water stop, my hamstrings hurt enough that I had to take some extra time to put some Ben-Gay on. I've used it on a couple of long runs, but I've been able to get to 17 or 18 miles before my legs started feeling bad enough that I wanted to use it, and today I was in pain by mile 12. That took away some of the pain, but the group I was left had taken off and I wasn't feeling good enough to try to run them down. I made it to the next water stop at mile 14 and had slowed down to about 7:40 pace. I contemplated running an extra loop of the park before heading home which would get me to 18, but at the pace I was running and the way my legs felt I decided to just head home and call it a day at 15. Since I only did 15, I think my legs should be ok to run a hard hill workout on Monday morning.

I got a massage Saturday afternoon and my massage therapist told me my hamstrings and hips were the tightest that she had seen them. My legs are feeling a lot better today after lots of stretching and a massage, but my ankle is kind of sore. We'll see how it feels on my run this afternoon.