I ran 24.3 miles this morning!

This was a new before work distance PR - one I doubt I will ever beat!  My title for this run on Strava was "Achieving a new level of crazy".  In the final miles, I heard "Holler Back Girl" by Gwen Stefani, and the lyric "This sh*t is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S" made me laugh out loud, because it pretty much was nuts to run this on a Wednesday morning!

This run was scheduled as 24 miles, and I wanted it to take 3 hours so my body had run for 3 hours before marathon day.  7:30 pace exactly is 3 hours exactly for 24 miles, so I planned to stay right around that pace and did for the most part.  I was feeling good towards the end so picked it up some without really meaning to - and I certainly couldn't have done that 7:19, 7:18, 7:17, 7:16 thing on miles 20-23 had I tried!  I'd decided beforehand that if I felt strong at the end I would try to run the final mile at goal marathon pace (6:50), and I ended up bringing it in a little faster with a 6:36, so felt good about that.  I ended up running 24.3 to get to 3 hours.

New levels of crazy!

Splits

Elevation

My legs weren't as fresh on this one as they had been on my 22 miler two weeks ago, and I expected that because last week was intense (whereas my week before my 22 miler was all base pace mileage due to having a cold), but overall I have no complaints about this one.  24 miles is serious stuff - and the farthest I've ever run in training

Missy ran with me for most of miles 2.5-12.5, which I really appreciated and which really broke up the distance.  We looped by my house at mile 8 and I grabbed my Osmo and Accel gel that I'd set on top of my mailbox while on the run (no watch stopping).  I drank the small bottle of Osmo and took half the gel while running around my neighborhood loop, then dropped the bottle and stuck the other half of the gel in my sports bra.  I also picked up my headphones off my mailbox when I dropped the bottle since Missy was going to leave me soon after.  I later grabbed a bottle of water Missy left me in a church parking lot around mile 15, and drank it with the rest of the gel between 15-17, then dropped the bottle back in the parking lot (I picked up the bottle and gel wrapper trash on my drive to work, along with my headlamp that I also dropped in the parking lot around 15!).  So overall I didn't have a whole lot of fuel or fluids, but I feel like I can stomach more and probably don't need a TON more since it was 68-70 degrees on this run and will hopefully be cooler for my marathon!  I had Generation Ucan mixed with almond milk about 40 minutes before I started, and I always eat something substantial right before bed, which seems to help with my morning runs (most of which are fasted). 

The run was on one of the flattest routes I can run from my house, but had 630 feet elevation gain.  So Prairie Fire will feel really flat!  I was pretty tempted to run 1.9 more miles to get in 26.2 just to say I did it, but I knew my coach would say that was a horrible idea, so I didn't.  I'm 3.5 weeks out from my goal race, and all of my really long runs are in the books now.  It's getting real!