It's all about time on your feet, dummy

I ran the Pilgrim Pacer fun run yesterday. The real race is in two weeks but they did the fun run to drum up support for the race and, well, to just have some fun. There's a 5k, 10k and half marathon option.

I went for the half, and then some. The whole race is on paved biking trails near Shawnee Mission Park. On the way back, around mile 12, I was getting a little bored and my feet started to hurt, so I left the "official" course and headed back behind the mountain bike trails to get an extra muddy hill in. I had a good reason for this - I wanted to get some difficult trail work in after having lots of miles on my legs. The trails were pretty muddy - the big hill along the power lines was essentially unrunable because of the mud. My little jaunt added about 3/4 of a mile. Worth it for some mud.

The good news was that I kept a sub-10:00 pace for the entire run - that's including the walking I did along the power lines.

The sad news is that 13-ish miles is the furthest I've run, non-stop, since...well...

- 10/10: Heartland, 20 miles, walked with John.
- 9/11: Patriot's Run, didn't run 13-straight, I walked a lot.
- 8/23: Leadville with Greg - walked the majority of the time.
- 8/16: Pike's Peak Marathon, walked most of the way up, didn't run all the time on the way down.
- This is getting depressing
- 8/1: The Gary Henry training run...covered 16 miles but walked a bit. This one might count, but we'll keep going.
- 7/27: 14 miles on the sandrat trails. I'd say this counts.

Fer christsakes - it's been almost 3 months since I've knocked off more than a half marathon?!?! I'm teary-eyed right now.

Then I came home and raked leaves for two hours. During this I realized what a great addition to my running workout it was. I was on my feet for 4 hours - that's quality ultra crosstraining right there. So, I might have had 17 on the calendar for yesterday, and I might have only gotten 13.5 of it, but I spent a lot more time on my feet, which makes up for the missed miles.