200 and then some!

I made it to 200 miles in July. For kicks, I actually made it to 210.7 miles. I believe this is the most miles I have ever run in a month. I may be wrong as I don't have all my records from my college days when I was on the track team, but I seem to remember those miles were usually around 40 per week. I was a middle distance runner back then, half mile.

I woke up this morning at a little after 4 to the sound of rain. Not the way I wanted to start out a long run. I did my usual morning routine before a long run but waited a little longer as the radar showed the rain was close to ending. Finally at about 5:40, I got out there to a misty drizzle. It was this way for about 5 miles and then stopped.

I had run out of Gu and AccelGel so I planned on stopping at a grocery store and buy a banana at about mile 7. This helped. I also stopped by a hotel at mile 16 and bummed another banana off them since Walgreens across the street did not have any bananas. I needed these to keep going as the oatmeal I had before the run was not going to cut it.

We have had a lot of rain here over the past few weeks and the rivers are running high so I was worried at certain point if I needed to go a different way on some bike paths I was running on because the water could high. At one point, I needed to climb an embankment to a road to avoid the water and then at about mile 21, I came to a place where water was completely over the bike path. It looked like it was just a shallow flow over so I decided to go for it. I was a little wrong as I got major soakers. No worries, I have run with worse.

I finally finished in 3 hours and 43 minutes for just over 24 miles. An average pace of 9:16 which is good for me on a long run. The legs have had enough and the knee was bothering me quite a bit on the run. It needs a rest and conveniently, I have a camping trip planned for the girls next week so that means not so many miles.

And for those of you interested, I spoke to Mike today and he and his family are back from San Fran. The rest of the trip went really good for them.