Slurpee Running

I'm training for the Boston Marathon. Yes, I qualified. I ran a 3:08:41 last May at The Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati. Today's training called for an 18 mile run. I've been doing my long runs on Fridays, as I've had school on Saturdays and Sundays for the past six weeks. This morning, I woke up at 4:30am and took the 5:14 train in to meet my buddy Ray.

Weather.com had listed a 30% chance of snow/sleet this morning. I'm a gambler, I liked those odds. The past four weeks of running in sub-zero weather had me thinking that the weather gods were going to be on my side for once. It was not to be. I stepped outside the station at 48th and Park and it was sleeting. It wasn't that cold, but I was not very excited to run in sleet.

When I saw Ray at the gym where we change into our running gear, we both looked at each other and said, "What the hell are we doing?" Did we reconsider? Nope. We're hardcore and we wanted the respect of the security guards who guard 277 Park as we walked out and when we came in drenched from snow. That's the best part of the run. Walking back into the building and having the 400 lb security guards giving us an attaboy. It makes it all worth it.

So we take off for Central Park, where Ray will be running 8.5 miles (6.1 mile loop, plus the 1.2 miles there and back) and I'll be doing 18 miles(two 6.1 mile loops and two 1.7 mile loops, plus the 1.2 there and back). I brought my trusty fanny pack, with the 24 ounce water bottle (which happened to freeze when I used it two weeks ago), and three Clif-Shots, from here on out known as candy with caffeine, mmmmm.

We get to the park and the roads are closed off. Good for us, no cars to contend with. We make our way to the main road within the park and bam, we're sliding all over the place. It's still sleeting by the way. There are at least two inches of sleet on top of the road. Do we stop. No way. We're hardcore. We're collectively wearing at least $1000 worth of running gear. We keep going, slipping, sliding, all over the place. To make my very long and very boring story shorter, let me just say that I ran at least 9.5 miles. Step, slip, step, slip, step, slip. Oh, you noticed that my 18 mile run turned into technically 8.5 miles? I couldn't take the damn slipping anymore. I'm a wuss. Only 41 miles this week. So much for my sub-3 hour Boston attempt.