Sweet Sixteen

Minneapolis calls itself the "City of Lakes" and for the long run Saturday we ran around three of them--Isles, Calhoun, and Harriet. That's my old training ground and part of the route for the Twin Cities Marathon, so I felt quite comfortable running there. My running club was meeting at 8 a.m., and I ran 3.4 miles before hooking up with them. The reason I started early was that there was a potluck at Coach Jan's house and I wanted to be finished running at the same time as everyone else. No sense in showing up with my food after everyone's left. :-)

The problem with the city lakes is that they're a popular destination. On a nice day, which Saturday was, bikers, runners, roller-bladers, dog walkers, and suburbanites all descend on the scene like papparazzi to Brad and Angelina. There are three lakes, each about 3 miles around with separate paved bike and walking paths, and they're interconnected, so you can run as few or as many as you want. Plus, now that winter's gone, the water fountains are turned on and the bathrooms(!) are open. Yay, running water.

We were supposed to cut back on the miles today, but since I'm going to be out of town next week, I wanted to cut back next weekend instead. So my goal was to run 16 miles. I was kind of mad that I didn't make it to 16 last week, so I had something to prove. Although my legs started to fatigue at around mile 12, I did manage to go the full 16 and I was able to finish strong. We had candied orange slices along with the Powerade at the water stops. The candies kept the hunger pangs at bay, but messed up my gel schedule, which I think contributed to the fatigue.

I ran in my Adidas. I've only run in my new Asics once since I bought them, and that was a 5K on the treadmill Friday. They didn't feel as cushy as I expected, but I'll keep them anyway. I wanted to test them indoors first to keep from getting them dirty in case I needed to return them. I'll run in them next week.