An accidental 10 miler.

So I ran 10 miles today, on accident. It was a bad idea. Let me repeat, a BAD idea. My lower extremities are in exquisite pain and I reek of icy-hot. And yet, I’m strangely content.

Let me explain. This morning H told me that she was going to run 8 miles later on, if I wanted to join. While I wanted to do a longer run, I thought that 8 miles might be a bit extreme since my longest run recently was the 10k last weekend. She did promise she’d be going really slowly, but still I wasn’t certain. By the afternoon I had decided, “why the hell not?” and sent her a text saying I was game.

We set off on our run around 4:45 or so with E in tow on roller blades. We made it out to the St. Pete beach yacht club, which was nearly our turn around point and H realized that we were at the place where she does boot camp. We ran to the little park and she found a hair clip she had lost this past Wednesday. Now as part of the boot camp they do a mile warm up run to the park, then run a mile back to the meeting spot (at a gym on the beach). H and E swear that the warm up is more like a mile and a half or two. Well since I was there with my garmin, we decided to run to the gym to see just how far the warm up is. As we were running the additional two miles (because it is in fact a one mile warm up) we didn’t intend on running, we ran past both the husband and the wife who helped us in our TNT endeavors, which was pretty neat.

After our minor detour, we ran back home, dreaming of food and sweets. It was torture smelling all the delicious dinners that people were making and being starved. It was also getting fairly cold for my liking and dark. I’m really not a fan of running in the dark unless I’m running in the company of a strong man to protect me. But I have to say that our route is probably one of the safest routes for us to be running in the dark.

Anyway, the aftermath of our run is that my knees hate me. I severely hope that I didn’t do any lasting damage, but I can’t walk up and down the stairs at the moment. I had to have H drive me to target tonight, since the knee that is in the most pain happens to be my driving leg. Great.

While I am in pain, it’s somewhat enjoyable. I like knowing that I worked my body and that I earned the right to eat all the sinful chocolate that I crave. The run would just not be as rewarding if I WASN’T in pain. Also, not advisable, I’m happy to know that I can pull 10 miles out of my ass, if need be. Hah. I guess I will end up doing the Gasparilla half after all.

I was going to run tomorrow, but perhaps I’ll have to walk it out, instead.