I asked a lot of my feet and legs this weekend and they didn’t let me down!

I started the weekend with a 10-mile run on Saturday morning. Since I’m marathon training with a running club, and our club’s big 10-mile race was the next day, they scheduled a cutback week for people that were racing.

Well technically, I wasn’t racing. But I still ran the course!

Back to that in a minute … Saturday was a great day. Sunny and pretty comfortable for late August! Due to vacation and Iron Girl, I hadn’t run with the group in a while and it was nice to have company on my long run. I was able to find a few women running my pace and we stuck together for the first five miles out. We split up after that — those not racing the next day kept going for a longer run, but two of us turned back. We both seemed pretty comfortable with the pace and ended up averaging 10:26 for 10.4 miles.

After a post-run breakfast and a few errands, I had a couple hours of downtime at home. But I still had a lot more time on my feet that day! I was a volunteer at a music festival that pretty much ran all day. I took two four-hour shifts to help out my friends — one was in charge of the event and another was coordinating volunteers. I worked in a beer tent for a while, sold band merchandise, took tickets, manned the VIP tent and did some clean-up at the end of the night. I was beat!

I was in bed soon after I got home — I had another early morning wake-up scheduled!

The Annapolis 10 Mile Run is a very popular race held annually the last Sunday of August. I’ve only ever raced it once — I usually have scheduling issues. Sometimes it is the same day as Iron Girl (it likely will be again next year since there will be only four weeks in August), but when it’s not it falls between Iron Girl and the Virginia Beach Half Marathon (another  favorite race).

I don’t want to risk injury by racing three events in a row, but I still like to be a part of this race! Last year I joined a group of people on bike as we followed the last runners. The race directors request all runners to be able to maintain a 12-minute pace so the can re-open the roads. We are pretty lenient enforcing this, though, and will let people stay on the course as long as they move to the sidewalks later in the morning.

The last two runners last year averaged over 15-minute miles. That was tough on bike! I was happy to be on foot this year, it’s a lot easier to slow down!

We were doing run/walk intervals to keep our pace down. We started off running 12-minute miles and started passing people early on, and eventually slowed it down a little more, averaging just under 13:30 for 10 miles.  There were a few costume changes, too —  our group leader wore several hats, and I ended up with one too at the end.

We ended up passing quite a few people. One girl was scared and thought she had to stay ahead of us. No, even though we were course sweepers (they made  ‘Grim Sweeper’ signs), we weren’t kicking anybody off!

It was quite enjoyable taking my time on this course. It’s hilly, and August temperatures usually make it brutal. We were lucky for a nice day. The sun was warm, but there was a lot of shade on the course. And in one section of the course, the neighbors always put out sprinklers to run through. Refreshing!

The hills didn’t even seem too hard at our pace. Or maybe I was just distracted chatting with my sweeper crew.

It wasn’t until after mile eight that I started to feel all my mileage (and time on my feet!) from the previous day. I also added a little mileage that morning by running to the start line — only 1.8 miles from home. My legs weren’t  too bad, but my feet were getting sore!

Post race I still had to run that 1.8 miles back home, but I took a little break. I got some food, chatted with friends and enjoyed a beer (10am doesn’t feel too early for a drink when you get up at 5:30!). The run home surprisingly wasn’t  bad, but after all those slow miles I wasn’t moving much faster!

I was lucky to find Jess in the crowd — not once, but twice. She was pretty easy to spot with her gorilla feet! I’m glad I found her again post-race because I didn’t have time to chat pre-race as runners were lining up. Great to meet her — she seemed to have a good race!

Between Saturday and Sunday, I ended up running 24 miles. I was glad to have the double long runs! Next weekend I’ll be running the Virginia Beach Half Marathon while the rest of my training group is running their first 20-miler. If the weather cooperates, I’m going to try to run it fast. I doubt I’ll feel like going for seven more miles after I cross the finish line!

After this weekend, I feel a little better if I miss that run. I’m pretty sure my body can handle it!