The 45 Mile Run

I started this blog the day I turned 43 to document a year of daily moves/exercises for 43 reps. Now I’m 45 and in my 3rd year of daily reps – still matching my age.

Even before I did the daily moves, I celebrated my birthday by running my age.

I reverse aged!! Just kidding. This was supposed to be 43 but since I was running with a stress fracture in my left hip this was all I could handle.

This one was brutal – I walked the last 16 miles and it took forever!!!!

I didn’t do my 45 miles on my birthday in September because I had just done the Patriot’s Run 5 days earlier and Chris was in Germany so I didn’t have a full day to devote to the run. I had planned to do it during October but I ended up with some weird leg injury that put a damper on my running for awhile.

On Tuesday I decided that it was time to do my run so I told Chris and the boys at dinner that Wednesday would be the day to run.

The first 6-7 miles were brutally long. It was hard to know that I had well over 6 hours of running still.

I finally got into a groove and broke the time into 10 minute increments by changing the speed from 6.5 up to 7.0 and back down (0.1) each minute.

I celebrated every single mile:

1 mile and a fist pump!

45 fist pumps and numbers followed by a

Hunter asked me before I took him to school what I would do when I needed to refill my water bottles (he didn’t want me to cheat!). I didn’t want to pause the treadmill since it resets quickly from pause so I told him that I would just slow the speed way down. Plenty of motivation not to get off since I had a time goal!!!

There were times when I thought about walking but I knew if I started walking I would have a much harder time running again so I just kept running!!!

Around mile 23 I realized that it was a little overwhelming to say 22 to go so I just focused on one mile at a time. This really helped during the last 10 miles – I told myself that anyone can run 1 mile.

3 movies got me almost to the end of my run. I was on the last mile and a half when my 3rd movie ended and I just let the credits roll until I finished.

The time rolled over 3x – total time was 6 hours 35 min and 18 seconds (it took a second to actually hit pause). I think it averaged out to about 8:45 pace. And, even though I know it’s not accurate, the calories rolled over at 6000.