Road - 1, Me - 0

Some days you own the road. Some days the road owns you. Some days the road chews you up, spits you out, runs over you, and then turns around and laughs in your face. Today was definitely a chewed up, spit out, run over, and laughed at kind of day for me.

Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful day to run. Temperature in the 60's, beautiful blue, sunny sky, no wind. The kind of day we rarely have in Kansas, especially in early February. Exactly the opposite of the 18 degree, windy day we had for my last long run. I got a good night's sleep last night. I felt strangely optimistic about today's twelve miles. I was excited to run with my running buddies Beka, Katie, and Jessica. The first three miles went pretty well, I felt good, and was even surprised that I was running faster than my normal training pace. After three miles, Katie and Jessica peeled off, and Beka and I set out to do a four mile loop before taking another water break.

Beka runs faster than me. If you ask her about that, she might pass it off and try to tell you that I'm a good runner, but it's true. So off we are on our four mile loop, and I'm keeping up with Beka fairly well for the first mile or so. Then, Beka slowly starts to jet out in front of me, leaving me schlepping along behind in what is quickly becoming a state of misery. Even though I feel like crap, I'm still running faster than my normal training pace. I figure at least I've got that going for me. The feeling doesn't last for long though - by mile 6, I'm contemplating sitting down on the edge of the path to cry, and think about just going home as soon as I get back to my car. I realize that I'm close to having a mental breakdown, and only hope that Beka will stop to wait for me in the parking lot so that she can talk me out of quitting. Since sitting down to cry won't exactly accomplish anything, I keep going, and finally meet up with Beka in the parking lot. She gives me some Gatorade, which doesn't exactly make me feel better, and tries to cheer me up by telling me that we only have five miles left - which also does not make me feel better. My stomach has staged a full-on military coup of my body at this point.

Not much good happened during the last five miles of our run, except for this exchange somewhere after mile 10:

Beka (extremely chipper): "We've got less than 2 miles left! -pause- "Are you feeling any better?"

Me: "Nope."

Beka: "Do you still want to smack me?"

Me: "Yep." -pause- "Actually, I think I want to push you down and beat the crap out of you. Can I do that?"

Beka: "I think you could take me."

And this exchange, after we'd just hit 11 miles:

Beka: "I'm going to be a nazi now...we only have a mile left."

Me: "You're very small and annoying."

As annoying chipper as Beka was for the last five miles of our run, I never would have finished them without her. On my own, I would have let the road and my stomach defeat me and would have gone home extremely upset with myself for such a poor performance. Beka is a truly good friend and running buddy...she could easily have decided to go off on her own, and finished the twelve miles much faster than I did. But she stuck with me when I was having an extremely bad day, even though that meant that she had to give up what could have been a really good run. And she did her best to cheer me up the whole time and make sure that I didn't get down on myself for having a bad run.

Then she semi-talked me into taking an ice bath after my run. I'm not really sure what was the worse experience, the run or the ice bath. But at least the horror of the ice bath took my mind off the awful experience of the run.

I get another shot at the road next weekend, with a 14 mile run...and I will have my revenge.