Bungee Cords, Banana PEels and Puke

In the title of this blog are just some examples of things I discover on the shoulder of the busier roads where I run. Please note that really none of these items are actually pleasant.
In fact, it is fair to say that I am sort of an authority on [all things worthy of the side of the road] 'side of the road' things (and I purposefully structured the sentence that way). I travel the roads frequently and pay a good amount of attention to things along my path and it is also fair to report that there is NOTHING pleasant on the side of the road, EVER. I have tried to keep track of some of the items to share with you, let's see: scotch tape (hardly used and I'm tempted to retrieve it with the holidays quickly approaching, but still, this is not pleasant), the innards of a pillow (looks more like dirty snow), empty and bent red bull cans, a paper market bag with a bottle of bleach sticking out of it, a halloween devils cape all mangled (like that devil might have lost a battle with something equal and opposite), a fun size Snickers bar that has been run over like 300 times, a empty GU package (oops, that's mine and I"ll get it tomorrow), a Wendy's bag wtih the contents strewn for 20 feet beyond it (french fry thingy, hamburger wrapper, soda cup, straw, lid, napkins, BBQ sauce and several (5) exploded ketchups), oh and there was the other battle lost between someone's egregious intoxication and finally succumbing to the inevitable purge (which no longer smells, but it has been driven through and tracked for a good 15 feet or so) that's about it, oh yeah there was this tiny chipmunk that has been run over so many times, it now resembles a slice of a medium sized garden tomato (i committed that to memory today so I wouldn't forget to tell you), and there is a single glove near campus and a single glove near the farm, though these would not make a set, they are both left handed (and one is blue).
So there you have it!
These are other examples of roadkill. I am fascinated by the real roadkill. But I am also finding this other kind of roadkill interesting. Sometimes, and only for a very few seconds, I consider what was happening at the time this kind of manmade roadkill occurred. Like take for instance the scotch tape. I mean, what the hell? The red bull can...this is not a mystery in the same way the scotch tape is a mystery. My initial thought was that the woman, that's right I assumed she was a female, was on her way to a party but running a tick late and she pulled off onto the shoulder. She stepped out of the driver's and moved quickly around the front of the car. She the opened the back seat passenger side and retrieved the gift and the wrap. Moving as fast as she could she creased the paper to tear (she forgot the scissors!) and started to fold and tape with moderate precision considering improper wrapping location and, sheeesh, if you don't have the right tools, you might as well go home, take off your party dress and devour a pint of Cherry Garcia. But not this girl; this girl is cool. She did what she could with what she had remembering the sentiment that it's the thought that matters and she tossed the gift on the front seat. Meanwhile, what she didn't know is that the tape had gotten stuck to the cuff of her pea coat and dangled there precariously and if you can imagine when she tossed the gift onto the front seat, it dropped or actually flew a bit and struck the guard rail behind her, to add insult to injury, a W. B. Mason truck happened to pass at the exact same moment making her unaware of the loss (and the littering).
Wow, telling that story kinda made me feel winded.
So probably you know what I've been doing. Toni and talked about a 100 mile ultra marathon and it is obvious that surviving mileage like that takes several weeks or even months actually. There is so much damage done to the muscles that recovery time is absolutely necessary (oh and the fastest guy can usually complete a race like that in 17+ hours or something) so that is a lot of joggin'. Compare that to what I'd like to run my marathon in (26.2 miles) and the time to qualify for Boston is like 3:40 roughly. So there it is. OK. Then we thought that spreading out 100 miles into 10 consecutive days is not as damaging as a 100 mile race. Now there you go, you have the skinny on the experiment. But I will say that there is damage. The overnight of rest doesn't do the trick. My knees are starting to get beat up and where the legs are connected and the groin? They're all set with the miles. I've got aches in my mid back and in my gut. My form is very conservative and is starting to go rigid a bit and I feel like I"m just trying to complete the effort. You know, the romance is gone. I go through the same thing with new songs I really love. If I love a song enough, I'll play it over and over again until I fully understand/get/dig/deconstruct every measure of it. And then I'm done. I've almost done that with running.

Here are my paces from the 8 days I've run 10 milers:

11-5: 8:24
11-6: 8:21---20 mile mark
11-7: 8:42
11-8: 8:35
11-9: 8:24----50 mile mark
11-10: 8:53
11-11: 8:19
11-12: 8:30----80 mile mark
11-13: 8:07----90 mile mark (just added)
11-14: 8:18----100 miles in 10 days.


It's clear that the mental stuff got to me on 11-10, I knew I was halfway and the thinking got heavy about the rest of the miles. I liken it to how I felt when I reached the half way point of my half marathon. I DON'T LIKE MID WAY POINTS. I'm going to have to work on that. BUt the pace was great on the 11th. Maybe I'll try and speed it up a bit tomorrow. I'm feeling fatigued, to be honest, and well, Ms. Achilles is behaving like a 3 year old. I hate that I feel tired. That's one of the reasons I wanted to test this out, see how far I can go and a long run one day is coming and then I will really know what I'm capable of. I am going to run to my mom's house on Thanksgiving. That is about 20 miles. BUt I think I'd like to run for maybe 4 or 5 hours and see what happens.
Does anyone want to do that with me? Seriously. Someone I know who lives around here needs to start running so we can do long runs together and some long races ... think about it.