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I ran 20 miles yesterday.

And boy are my arms tired! I mean legs.

But what about your knee, Sha?? What indeed. I've been going to the chiropractor pretty regularly, and I did a couple of short runs this past week. My knee was feeling all right, but I was fairly sure I wouldn't be able to do the full 20 miles, so I decided to shoot for 10 miles. The course was very similar to our 14-miler, which I was happy about because I really like running around Lake Merced. The weather was beautiful too, and we were all it really good spirits. We knew we were up for a long run, so we tried to amuse ourselves with 20 Questions and I Spy. That lasted all of 5 minutes or so.

So fast forward a couple hours, and we're approaching the 10 mile marker. Up to that point, I had been having a bit of pain in my left knee, but I was really starting to hit my stride (ba dum bum). The pain was occasionally there, but it wasn't intense like it was at the start of the 17 miler. We reached the 10 mile marker and I was still feeling good so I thought, "What the heck" and kept going.

A couple hours after that, my pace group was really starting to struggle. We were starting to get spread out, so we switched to a 3:2 run:walk (from 3:1; we ran 2 minutes slower for this run) but it was getting tough. We were achey, hungry, and oh-so-tired. But as we approched the last mile marker, I got a huge "I-just-ran-20-miles" adrenalin rush and actually sprinted to the finish.

That night I was sore but not "I'm-going-to-die" sore, which I'll take as a good sign. Today I'm pretty sore, but I'm going to ice my knee and do my stretches, and I already have an appointment wtih my chiropractor scheduled for tomorrow morning. Hopefully I'll be as good as new soon.

Yesterday's run really drove home to me how much long distance runs are as much, if not more of, a mental challenge than a physical one. From the weather to encouragement from my awesome pace group to my being so psyched to be running at all, everything was mentally aligned to allow me to finish that run. It's pretty amazing what your mind can fool your body into doing.

On a related note, yesterday I also got a cool AIDS Marathon roll-y luggage for raising over $4000.

Update: Dood. According to some websites, I burned somewhere between 1600 and 1800 calories on Saturday. Crrrazy!