You may remember a few weeks ago that Wes made a joke about how I start crying after I’ve reached the fifteen mile mark on a run. Given my accomplishment of refraining from sobbing until mile nineteen of our one and only (so far) marathon, I told him he was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! I laugh in the face of fifteen miles.
Until, you know, I can’t laugh because I’m crying. Which is exactly what happened at mile fifteen of a sixteen mile run a couple of weeks ago. When the helpful Nike GPS lady told me I had one mile to go, I switched to walking in an effort to abate the pain, then switched back to running because walking felt ten times worse, as if that was even possible. Commence sobbing.
I did manage to get back home where Wes was waiting with some ibuprofen. While I waited for the meds to hit my system, I sobbed and told him all about the evils of long distance running, comparing the 15+ pains to those of natural childbirth. You KNOW it’s going to hurt, and you’re prepared for it to hurt… but then it does, and you’re so completely shocked by how all-encompassing, all-permeating, all-out-BAD the pain is that you can’t help but cry and swear that you will NEVER do this again. (For the record, I kept my promise on the natural childbirth promise. If they had done an epidural, Emma might have had a younger sibling. But not now!)
Anyway, I guess I had forgotten how high mileage feels. I guess my body had forgotten that after a certain point, my bones would feel as though they had been hollowed out and every muscle would shriek with every footfall. I guess my body and I had both forgotten how we said that we would NEVER do this again after the marathon.
Sigh.
Eventually, the ibuprofen kicked in. And would you believe that just two little pills cured my ills and took away all the pain after only fifteen minutes? I was feeling good enough to go back out after that! Not that I did, of course. Because Wes had promised me Chick Fil A in an effort to stop me from crying, and I was cashing in on that deal.
Lesson learned?
I’m taking a bottle of Advil with me on all runs over fifteen miles.
Judge me if you will, but performance-enhancing drugs are the only things that are going to get me through the next five months.
Jenn Faulk 
So after you get to mile 15 its starts to hurt really bad and it does that every time you run that long?? That is crazy?! How do you do it?
LikeLike
I'm thinking there has to be a level of fitness where fifteen miles is no big deal. I haven't reached that point, though, and likely won't. Just glad that ibuprofen does the job! 🙂
LikeLike
Ok, I was wondering if this happened to everyone? How are there so may marathon runners?? You all do so awesome!! I like hearing about the runs and where they take you!!
LikeLike
I don't know that it happens to everyone. I have a friend who's run over twenty marathons, and she told me that she “hits the wall” around the same place every time. Her recovery, I'm guessing, is a lot better than mine because she's more athletic and she has more running experience. But she'd probably tell you that she still hurts, too. The end is worth the pain, though. Especially when we look at how much Wes's blood pressure has improved and what that means in terms of extra years on his life.
LikeLike