The Hunt for Red October

Have I mentioned that I love the movie The Hunt for Red October? Well, I do. I normally don't like to put a lot of non-running related stuff on my blog, so you may be wondering why I am talking about movies all of a sudden. Hopefully, it will all make sense before I'm done.

I knew we needed to run 5 miles on Sunday, and since Aaron thinks we are regressing if we run slower than 12 minute miles, I was planning for a tough evening. I have been fighting off little nagging aches and pains (slight groin pain, left knee and hamstring pain, and general soreness), so I wanted to prepare as well as possible hoping to make the 5 miles as easy as possible. As I mentioned in my last post, I took Thursday off to recuperate, and I continued that on Friday. I felt better on Saturday, so I thought I might do a little cross training just to loosen up. I know Aaron has been really getting after the cross training, and I'm pretty sure that is why he isn't having the soreness issues I am, and why I still outweigh him by almost 20 pounds. I wasn't looking to work out hard, so I decided to do a little biking with a little running. I rode my bike from downtown Guthrie to the track at the high school, and ended up running 200 meter intervals 4 or 5 times. I probably ran them at a 9 minute or so pace, which is a little faster than race pace. Pretty much right where I wanted to be. This was about 11 in the morning, and since I hadn't eaten anything else, I didn't really feel like I had a lot of energy. To be honest, though, I just wanted to work out all of the kinks before Sunday.

Sunday I did a pretty good job of eating all day, and didn't spend too much time on my feet, so by run time I really felt pretty good. My groin would still hurt a little when I stood up or sat down, but it normally doesn't bother me too much while running. We had a relatively flat course mapped out with a downhill finish, so I really felt pretty confident about a good run. I wasn't sure that I could run 12's all night, but who knows?

We started out running pretty well, if not comfortably. One of the problems with running 5 miles as opposed to a shorter 2 or 3, is that the warm up can't be quite as strenuous. If I am only running the shorter distance, I can afford to run a quarter to a half mile as a warm up to really get my body temp up and get the joints loosened, but if I am running 5, I need to make sure I warm up easy to save as much gas as possible. Consequently, the first quarter to half never feels very good. By the time we made it up the first hill, though, everything was working smoothly, and I commented to Aaron that I probably wouldn't feel as good for the rest of the night as I did right at that moment. It was one of those rare moments when running seems like one of the greatest things in the world, and everything is right.

Turns out, I was right, I didn't feel that good for the rest of the run. Around mile 2, my groin was really starting to hurt everytime I lifted my right leg, and then my left knee was hurting everytime my left foot hit the ground. The one, two, one, two, of pain I was feeling was like a musical version of the Inquisition (without the dancing from The History of the World, Part One). Once the third mile came, my right knee also started to bother me, and if I was running by myself, there was a good chance I may have stopped. But stubborn pride wouldn't allow that. Eventually, my right knee started to feel better, just in time for some new pain (!) in my left leg. It was right behind whatever that bone on the inside of your ankle is. At this point in the run, I just referred to it in my head as the "Ow, what the fuck is that pain??" bone. Probably not how it is listed in Grey's Anatomy, but put yourself in my place for the sake of continuity.

After a short pit stop for water at the 4 mile mark, we buckled down and tried to really push the last mile. The first half mile of the run we picked is pretty much uphill all of the way, so it was pretty much survival all of the way up the hill. Instead of the left turn we normally take at the Masonic Temple when doing our 2 mile loop, the one mile loop we finished with Sunday made a right turn. I kept thinking Aaron was going to start veering right (he was probably 20 yards ahead of me at the time) as he came up to the corner, but instead he started to turn left. I was tired enough at the time to have flashes of letting him go about a half a block before yelling at him so I could slow up to wait, but he was having a tremendous run and I couldn't do it.

Since we had started picking up the pace while running uphill, my lungs were really starting to burn. I had accepted the pain in my legs, which is all tendon and ligament ligament pain right now, and kept running strong. My muscles felt really good, and my lungs were holding up as well as could be accepted. I knew that the last half mile needed to be strong, just to prove to myself that I could run through all of the discomfort. Here is where the Hunt for Red October came into my mind. (Thought I forgot, huh??)

Hopefully, everyone knows the plot to the movie, because this post has been long enough. At one point in the movie, Ramius (Sean Connery) is heading South, trying to figure out a way to defect to the US with his Russian sub (Red October), instead of playing war games with his countrymen and their subs. One of his fellow Captains (Capt Tupolov), finds out that Ramius is defecting and figures out that he has been sitting still for hours while Ramius is moving away from him. So, to make a short story long, Tupolov asks his Chief of the Boat if 105% on the reactor is possible.

He is told that it is possible, but not recommended.

Go to 105% on the reactor, he orders.

Where are we going, he is asked?

To kill a friend.

That is how it felt in my chest for the 4 1/2 or so minutes it took to run that half. I feel like I asked for more than 100% from my lungs, and while maybe not recommended, that is what I got. I felt strong running the last quarter or so, but my lungs felt like they were about to explode. I was gasping and sucking in huge breaths of air, trying to get the oxygen I needed to keep from killing myself.

I thought I had a chance to catch Aaron coming down the stretch, but he held me off by a half block or so, which is fine, because I thought we both had a really good run. Painful, but good. I ended up running 5.03 miles in 58:18, for an 11:35 pace. Still pretty fast for me. I am curious to see how long we can stretch our runs while still running 12's. So far, we are up to 5 and still going strong.

I will be running solo this week while Aaron is in Austin, and then we are running a 5K on Saturday. I'm curious to see how my legs hold up this week while getting ready for the race. The more pain I feel, the less likely a sub-30 gets. I need to keep the ultimate goal in mind, though. I need to stay healthy for the half marathon, and not hurt myself in the smaller races. I guess I will see how I feel come Saturday....