oh, the pain

So, I'm training for the St. Louis Marathon and wow, it hurts after a while. I did sixteen miles today, more or less. I've been trying to figure out exactly how long the Forest Park perimeter loop is, now that it's been remodeled. I think it's 6.5 miles, although the numbers 7.5 and 5.7 also came up. After reading all the literature, I suspect the 7.5 number includes the internal trails and the 5.7 is just for the new dual path, which doesn't go all the way around the perimeter. I tried out the dual path today - apparently, the traffic on the bike path was getting so bad, the city decided to install a second 'walkers/runners' only path - but I really didn't like it. It reminded me of running on the cinder track I had in high school and I see no reason to run on it when there's a perfectly nice, paved track running parallel to it. Maybe if the bike path was busy, but that wasn't the case today.

Anyway, back to the pain. Oh, my legs hurt at the end. After a while, the pounding just aches. I think I'm going to be able to do this - my first loop around Forest park clocked at about 50 minutes, the second at 52 minutes. Running the last two miles home was the worst part, really.

I do have iPod envy though. I think it's an overpriced toy, but it looks very lightweight and easy to run with. I bet you could just shove one of those suckers into your pocket and run with it. Plus, I could stuff a lot of cds on there without worrying about skipping. It's still not worth the price tag, but I am a little wistful. Ah well, maybe in 20 years when I've paid off all the upcoming loans and actually have a real job.

NOTE: I fixed the link in the last post. Apparently blogger inserts it's own set of "http://" into a link and it is unnecessary to do that bit yourself. Oops.