New Month, New Time, New Run

I can't believe November is already here! Time really does fly by... Sunday marked another long run for Tom, Stacey, and I with a 17 miler, and we are now just 5 short weeks away from the SB International Marathon! That means our long runs are getting up there in mileage, but it's also great to see us getting closer to the peak of out training.

I think I deserve a bit of credit for making it out there early Sunday morning, however. Here in Santa Barbara, or in the college town of Isla Vista specifically, we are famous for our Halloween celebration. I'm talking about 25,000 crazy drunk people dressed in barely there or ridiculous costumes, all crowded into a square mile. It truly is madness, and must be seen to believed. I made the smart (and obvious) choice not to go out Saturday night, but thanks to the unbelievable and unceasing noise, still didn't make it to sleep until about 1am. I lucked out and got another hour of sleep thanks to the end of daylight savings time.

Early Sunday we headed south toward Carpinteria to a place at the base of the Santa Ynez mountains called Lune Point, about 30 minutes away. Since we were running in a somewhat rural place, we drove the route and stashed fluids and gels at mile 7. By the time we got started, and partly due to the time change, it was nearly 2 hours later than when we usually start our runs. This made for a very warm run. It felt like 75 degrees, and this was just in the morning! I don't do well in the heat at all, and much of the route going out didn't have any shade, so it was tough. Other than that, the route was great. As we started out we passed the upscale polo fields, then headed along some lovely quaint roads. A few rolling hills, but mostly flat up to that point. When we reached our stash, I was definitely lagging from the heat and lack of energy. We had about 1.5 miles to go past the stash to the turnaround. This last little stretch was absolutely gorgeous, looking out on orchards and rolling, green hills. Tom snapped a couple pics with his phone, I just wish I had brought my camera! This part also happened to be a pretty drastic downhill, which was great, except that it meant a drastic uphill on the way back! We walked what we needed to get back to flat ground and made another quick stop at the stash to reload and grab everything.

Thankfully on the way back there was much more shade which revived me a bit. With about 2.5 miles to go, Stacey started hurting so she and Tom started to walk a great deal. At that point I was feeling much better and all I wanted to do was finish, so I went ahead on my own, only to realize after losing sight of them that I didn't really remember my way back! I made guess after guess, hoping something would look familiar, and lucky for me I eventually spotted the car! The run was definitely challenging, but when I was done I felt good. We shouldn't be dealing with any heat for SBIM in December, which is a relief. This next weekend we're doing "just" 13 miles as a recovery run, then I have the Big Sur Half on the 15th. Then finally we reach the peak of our training on the following weekend with 20 miles!