Ain't nothin but a hoochie mama

I was so excited to have a running partner this week. As the miles go up it is nice to have someone to share the journey with. Although I run with team in training occasionally, it is also nice to run with a friend I have known for quite some time and somewhere a little different.

That being said, Sunday was an UBER early wake up time of about 6:15am, just giving me enough time to get clothes on, make my protein shake and get out the door. I had to stop on the way to get some gas and then made my way down to York to Amanda’s house. I have run with her a few other times over the summer when our schedules matched up which is sometimes pretty hard to do so between the two of us. I am oh-so-grateful for the times when they have. She pushes me to be my best and push myself (which is something I don’t always do enough of). 

Anyway. I think I can sum up this run by these few points

1.       It is creepy when you don’t see anyone else on the trail for over a mile

2.       The bat cave

3.       11 miles turned into 12.

4.       Ain’t nothing but a hoochie mama.

We got to the trail and started around 7:30AM and there was seriously not a soul in sight. This is interesting to me because over the summer the trail was always well traveled and we saw people pretty quickly into starting. As the fall weather (oh, about 55 degrees in the morning) has set in I guess people take the opportunity to sleep in and start later. Except for us crazy runner folk.  It was seriously at least a mile until we saw some other runners, walkers, and bikers.

With this being our farthest run to date, we got to see some new things.. like this.

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Amanda quickly deemed it the BAT CAVE. There weren’t really bats, but it did have a pretty creepy quality to it. Basically, you get the center where it’s all shadowy and all you can think is man I hope I don’t trip or fall over something. The first time through I did a hop/skip over a certain area because it looked like a step of some sort, but it was really just a shadow. Of course our scenery was a little more fall-esque than this, but I didn’t want to take the time to stop and take a picture.. it was gorgeous though.

It was also around this point that Amanda asked “Do you want to just run to 6 miles and turn around?” instead of the 5.5 needed to give us an 11 miler.. making it a 12 miler. Sure, I said. As long as I can stop and stretch it out. This is exactly what we did, but I kind of wish we hadn’t. After we started back up, we were both cold and it kind of felt like starting all over again. It is weird how quickly your body reverts even by stopping for about 5 minutes. Either way, we both got our groove back and off we went.

Mile 10-12 felt a little brutal because my thighs started to hurt, but we really kept up our pace and finished out nicely. The best part of this time period is Amanda singing “ain’t nothing but a hoochie mama” followed by me saying “hoodrat hoodrat hoochie mama.” Yep, this is what you resort to when you need some entertainment. Pretty sure people probably thought we were off our gourds crazy. So sue me J

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When we were done, we both agreed that those last miles were almost torturous but that we were equally happy we did it. We can’t meet next week which would have been 12 miles, so it worked out. I will probably still try to do 12 miles this Friday anyway just to get a little more used to the distance, but it is nice to have a 12-miler under my belt all the same.

Surprisingly my calves held up well, it was my thighs and hammies that took the brunt of it. It’s cool though, nothing that I couldn’t foam roll which I did do some of last night but I think I have a date with my yoga mat tonight. Right after I run 3 miles.. I realize this is probably not the best decision, but in my defense I get off at 5:30 (instead of 7:30) tonight and I couldn’t miss the opportunity for an evening run. 

Did you have a long run this weekend? What are you training for?