...apparently it's called a "wall." And it hurts and it's not fun. And I think my knee caps are falling off my body. And I think Gmaps is lying.

Time: 1:36:59
Distance: 8.3 miles (but I think Gmaps is lying!)

Let's see what to address first. Well I'll just take them in order.

The Wall: Today I specially prepared so that I wouldn't hit the wall. I usually never eat before my run, but today I had half a PowerBar figuring I wasn't going to mess around with 8 miles. Then I also had a bottle of Propel to take with me to keep me going. I figured I was plenty prepared because last summer I didn't eat anything before my runs until I was running 10 miles. So I was expecting things to go pretty smoothly. WRONG-O! Around mile five I hit the wall and I hit it hard. Hard enough to make me consider calling it quits. But I pushed through and as you can see according to GMaps, I supposedly ran 8.3 miles.

Which I think is a CROCK! I ran slooooooow today. I mean I was okay with that. I told myself I was going to run slow or else I knew my tired legs would never make. I ran the first mile in about 12 minutes and then thought I kept a pretty consistent pace for the rest of the run. I mean I might have picked it up a little bit after the first mile, but not by much. Not enough for me to have run an extra .3 miles I don't think.

The weather gods were half-way decent to me today. When I started they were mean. It was hot and sunny (and had even left a half hour earlier than normal to help avoid this), but then it got windy and cloudy and looked like it was going to storm and it stayed like that from about mile 3 to mile 8, which rocked my world, because there are huge portions of the run where there is absolutely no shade and the sun kills.

My iPod froze when I had a half mile left to run. I was just thanking my lucky stars that it didn't die with 7 miles left. I would have cried. It seems fine now though. Strange.

My knees currently hate me. I tried to take an ice bath when I got home, but the water in the tub was not really cold at all. What gives, plumbing? I had it as cold as it would go. All the ice would have melted in like five seconds. See I tried to ice down, but it just didn't work. And now I won't have time to sit down for another hour or so. Oh well, it'll happen eventually.

Just a quick shout out to the University of Maryland land maintenance crews: Thanks for having the sprinklers on today. You rocked my world at mile 6!

I think that's all for now. I'm going to get Harry Potter 7 tonight. Yea I'm not even lying. I'm stoked. :o)