to 800 or not...

I haven’t kept up with my long runs too well lately. My last 18-miler was on Nov 9th and I ran 10 miles about a month ago. I’ve been doing mostly 3s and 4s and 5s. At the beginning of this week, with ten days left in the year, I had 42 miles left to make it to 800 miles for the year. It wasn’t looking very promising. Of course, it would have been easy to break it up into 4s every day, but with holiday gatherings and some rain here and there, I just wasn’t sure I could make it. I’d already coasted into 3rd place all time for annual running miles after passing 2005s mark of 755 last Sunday and didn’t really see the point in trying to go for 800. Tuesday night, though, having completed my good American gift buying duties I went out for a run. It was a cool evening (48 degrees and starry) and I suddenly wanted to try to get to 800. It felt pretty good through 8 miles and then I started getting pretty tired. I still had 4 miles to get home, though, so I kept at it and made it home okay, although a little dehydrated (same old story) and then forgot to drink water as I got home because I got a phone call from a friend who was coming to stay with us and then he arrived and it wasn’t till an hour later or so when my body was like, “Dude! I’m thirsty, here!” It may be the season of giving, but you still need to take care of yourself, too. Anyway, I snapped back from the threshold of “an episode” with the help of some gator-aide and some dinner. Went out again this morning for a 4-mile recovery run through town with Hilary (about 48 degrees again and cloudy). So, that puts me at -26 miles with seven days to go and I think I can pull it off now – I’m hoping to anyway and I’ll give it some effort.