Sunday, April 15, 2007

Sixteen Miles v. The Trottin' Bitches

Jo and I are a running club of two. We are the Trottin' Bitches. That name was penned last year during marathon training and fits us to a 't'. We sort of are bitches...and we certainly bitch our way through our long runs...bitch about what hurts and how hard it is...bitch about our husbands....bitch about work....yadda yadda yadda. As for the 'trottin' part, well...there are a couple of reasons for that. We do trot. We are not fast nor slow--we sort of trot along. It also references the phenomenon that runners call the 'runners trots', something not completely foreign to us gals. We really want to have shirts printed with our running club name. We'd also like to recruit more members. We'd be like a running coffee klatch.
Today the Trottin' Bitches took on the weekly long run together. Jo ran four on her treadmill before joining me and setting off to conquer 16 more. I did my 20 miler a couple of weeks ago, but she did not--so she was going to get it in today while I did my scheduled 16 miler. We run 20 together in two weeks, the last really long run before the marathon. In the end Jo ran fifteen more while I finished one mile on my own to complete my 16.
We both started out rough, with a lot of fatigue and tightness in the muscles and lungs, but seemed to improve at about mile 4. For me it just got better from there, but Jo struggled the whole way. She did it, though, and I'm proud of her.
I turned my ankle badly on some big clumps of mud at mile 3.5 and thought the run was over for me. I shook it off and walked a touch, then just got mad and ran. It gave me some pain throughout the run but after my ice bath has been feeling much better, thank God. Then there was the psychotic blonde lady in the fancy SUV who tried to run us down at an intersection.... and the rabbid cat stalking us along the trail....
But we survived.
And I feel great. It was a relatively easy run for me after the first four miles, and I definitely could have gone further. My last mile was very strong, with a pace of 10:15.
The Trottin' Bitches rock out.

1 comment:

Jo said...

What rabid cat? What trail? Was that around Mile 6? Because that would explain why I don't remember. All I remember about Mile 6 is hunger and thirst.