Goal Met!

On January 9th, I told you of my goal to run an elliptical half-marathon to celebrate turning 50 years old this year. Well, I am happy to report that goal has been met as of last night. Here is a log of my progress.



I didn't start out last night with the idea of necessarily doing the whole 13.1 miles. I mean, that thought was in the back of my mind, but not really my plan. As you can see, my previous longest distance was 9.1 miles and I had sort of set 11.1 miles as my next target. I figured if I reached 11.1 and felt really good, I could go for it all. But that, most likely, I would save that for another day.

The first 6 miles or so went very smoothly. Around the 8 mile mark my right knee started hurting and for a little while there, I entertained the thought of stopping at 10.1 miles. After all, that would be a respectable improvement over my previous longest distance and I didn't want to risk further knee injury.

But by the time I got to 10 miles, my knee wasn't really hurting any worse than it had been for the previous couple of miles, so I decided to press on. At mile 11 my quads were burning so badly that I hardly noticed the knee pain anymore. Around that time, the thought of the pain that would be required to get me back to that same point on another day seemed greater than the pain that would be required to just go ahead and wrench it out for 2 more miles right then and there. So that's what I did.

So how hard could 2 more measly miles be? Let me tell you, those last 2 miles seemed to last forever! Every tenth of a mile was like a little milestone. Gruelling is what it was! But around 12.9, I started smiling.

After reaching 13.1 and getting off the machine, all I could say was "Holy cow!" Over and over. "Holy cow!" Because I was hurting! To say my quads were on fire is an understatement. They were in serious pain. I took three ibuprofen and within an hour, the pain had subsided. But the smile remains.

Goal met!