Four W’s is all I can come up with, do I sense a feeling of relief? Last night I took my rebif and what started out ok with a painless injection ended up not so ok with a late night fever which kept me up. Eventually I dragged myself out of bed and grabbed some ibuprofen. It must have worked cause next thing I remember I was waking up at 7. I have been thinking about doing a long run with little sleep to test myself out for the Seattle half Marathon since we HAVE to go to my friend Paul’s Sea and Cake concert. This would mean doing the marathon on little sleep. I actually am not as worried about it as I could be, but it certainly isn’t optimum.

So anyway, I woke up on crappy sleep and decided what the hell, I’m gonna try a half marathon distance and see how it goes. I grabbed 2 gels (one of them had 100mg of caffeine (that’s the one I need for Seattle)) and a pack of Wild Cherry Clif Shot Bloks. I like the Bloks cause they are like a giant gummy bear with electrolytes. I grabbed my radio to listen about the Oregon Ducks game and out the door I went heading to Mount Tabor. Tabor is about 2 miles away and is an inactive volcano. My run there is one of my favorites and I have always felt was responsible for how well I did hills at the Portland Marathon. After the first climb you run around the caldera and that is where I took my first gel. I ran to the top, did the circle and headed down past the reservoirs. Now at 4 miles, next stop Laurelhurst Park.

The Park is about 3 miles from Tabor. It has a ton of trees and a great natural area with a path. There is a tree on the path that smells like hash, I think it is a cedar of some sort. I used to live right by the park. I remember thinking the run around the perimeter was always just a bit too short, but twice was too much. Today it becomes the middle point of the run, time to head back. Mile 7.5.

Through the Belmont neighborhood. I spy another sign advertising pit bull poppies for sale. remove it and head on to Hawthorne. I just miss the light and get a break. Next stop is the Cleveland Track, but before that another gel – powerbar caramel which was too sweet. I did a lot of my marathon training at this track. Speed work and 8118s where I start on the outside and work my way inwards moving in one lane each lap. They are trying to raise money to resurface it. I tried to donate, but the donations thing on their site wasn’t working and nobody emailed me or called me back. I should try again. Mile 11.

To finish my half distance I head over to the Reed canyon and run the east portion. I take a walking break on the stairs out of the canyon and make my final potion home. Mile 13.5 (I hit the half distance according to my watch which I think exaggerates my runs (I wonder why I don’t fix it?))

As I neared the house I ran into the mailman. We talked about running and all the walking he does. He paid me a really nice compliment by saying I have good lung control because I wasn’t breathing heavy and I guess I do. I didn’t win the Glen Cove Underwater Breathing Contest in 1971 for nothing…

Overall this run went great. It was warm and it misted most of the time with one downpour. The mildness really helped the run. I felt a steady tiredness, but never to the point that I could go no longer. The gels worked really well to give me a boost and the one blok I had was also good. I think (and I also thought this the last time I did this same run 2 months ago) that I could go the full marathon distance, but I wouldn’t care for it. After today I am fairly confident that Seattle will be ok and I won’t have any problems. I feel tired, but not exhausted.

So I ended up doing 14.67 miles according to the watch, but like I said I think it measures long. The run was probably around the half distance, maybe lightly more.

As I write this my legs feel pretty heavy, they know they did something today.