20 Miler With Brian and Steve S.

The day after the 30K, my wife left for Boston, not returning until late Wednesday night. That worked out well because I couldn't run while she was out of town due to Daddy duty, but needed the recovery time anyway. I got in 11 miles with Steve Schroeder on Thursday evening at about a 7:45 pace then was too busy to run Friday. My wife had some things to do Saturday AM and told me that if I was going to run I needed to be done by 8 AM. Brian King, Steve S. and I had already talked about a 20 miler that morning but having to be home by 8 AM was going to mean an early start. I calculated that if we started from my house at 5:15 and ran a 7:45 pace (including stops), we'd be done by 7:50 AM. So the guys met me at 5:15 and we set out on the great out-and-back course we have here in Sugar Land. We start at my house, run about two miles to get out of New Territory, then another two miles to get through Telfair, then it's under 59 and over to University for about a 1.3 mile run on a huge sidewalk until we get to the park over there. The park has water fountains and a bathroom, and is 5.43 miles from my house. Then it's a left onto Commonwealth and into First Colony, going right by the fire station at the finish of the Fired Up 5K. We can follow Commonwealth for some distance and until Saturday morning had not gotten to the end of it, even though we'd come close when we'd done 18 miles before.

Steve was having issues with some soreness on his foot and there were also some bathroom needs that snuck up on us near the park so we made a pit stop there. There's an elementary school at about 7 miles out that has water fountains. We declined to stop, having gotten a drink at the park. At about 8.5 miles out Steve, dealing with increasing pain in his foot, turned back. Brian and I continued on and actually got to the end of Commonwealth - a dead end into a T. We turned right, then turned to go back when we were 10 miles from the house. Knowing that we were on the way back in, and knowing that cold Gatorade that I had put out in an ice chest the night before was awaiting us at the school, caused us to pick up the pace a bit. We hit the Gatorade, which was really too cold to chug, then put on our game faces for the final 7 miles. As we finished our break and got back on the course, we'd averaged a 7:45 pace for 13 miles, with stops included. I figured we could probably chip away at that. We almost always run negative splits in our training runs and Brian is running well lately so I knew we'd cruise in for the final 7. Over the course of the final 7 miles we never exceeded a 7:16 pace.

In those final miles I had a long discussion with Brian about not giving in to adversity late in a race without realizing that we were on the brink of giving Brian an opportunity to try it. At about 18.25 miles I was coming close to real fatigue and could sense Brian wanting to pull back on the pace. I talked to him about being in the latter stages of a marathon and hitting the wall, getting a cramp, developing a major blister, being totally exhausted, etc. I told him that it's at that point that you have to ask yourself which can are you going to open, the can of quit or the can of whoop ass. Knowing that he was running out of gas I felt like it was a real chance for me to "talk him in", even though I was on fumes too. Mile 19 was a 7:10 and I kept Brian on my shoulder through the final mile as we clocked a 7:12. We were both whipped but it was a good strong finish. We'd averaged a 7:10 pace over the final 7 miles, and brought our overall pace down to 7:33 for the full 20.

It's my hope that Brian had a mini breakthrough. He'll need to draw on this experience if he wants to BQ, which I fully expect him to do in Jan.