Milestones - 16km AND Matching Outfits!

16km!! YAY.. It might seem weird to most how excited we get at all of our “Longest Run we’ve ever done” comments however for Felic who’s health last year made doing the training not as structured AND for Crystal and I who really haven’t run this far ever.. we feel it IS a big deal, almost as big as all of us wearing our pink outfits on the same day!

Yesterday started with all of us doing our morning “prep”.. Felic and Crystal each got up around 6:30, hydrated, ate some breakie.. then went back to bed before heading out .. as for me, I slept in (stupid Iphone glitch), ate breakfast at 7:40, dressed, then headed to the Running Room for 8:30am or so...

The day was a balmy -4 and a little windy (-11 with the windchill) but the good news was that we were with the wind on the way out, bad news.. against on the way back. Shannon decided that we would run to the Pumphouse at the Reservoir and return on a flatter path back, the whole run being 16km on the nose. Seemed like a great route to us!

The three of us really enjoyed the run itself for the most part though we did catch ourselves a few times feeling ‘not fantastic’ .. like when we were running up the overpass at 12km after running up a slight incline for what seemed like forever OR the wind in our faces when turning around at the pumphouse. Overall though, we felt so much better than we had the previous long run. We kept a pretty even pace, a constant conversation (we’re sure much to the chagrin of poor Bob who had to listen to us until he decided to drop back) and finished feeling like ‘ha, whatever, we could do another 5km to finish a half marathon!” with a total time was 1 hr 49minutes!

After the run though and since Felicity and I both had episodes of the “hitting the wall/world coming in on us/I’m going to die” after the previous long run (we’ve since learned that you must eat the equivalent of 8 pieces of toast carb-wise immediately after the run.. who knew?) we all felt it VERY necessary to get as many carbohydrates as we could as soon as possible. Crystal headed to her ‘Friends Brunch’ that they do quite often, Felic and I to the Pfanntastic Pannenkoek House to fill up on as many carbs as we could shove in our gullets!

Now, as always there was a line up to get in, but the stars seemed to align and using our wait to consider our options, the time seemed to fly and our wait wasn’t long at all to get a table. Once there, decisions needed to be made quickly and with the help of our server, who Felicity referred warmly as our ‘Angel’. This did seem accurate considering our ‘angel’ did bring us a huge glass of what she called “the best chocolate milk in Calgary”, followed soon after by tea (with a biscuit) and timed perfectly both our savory selection of Pannenkoek with shredded potatoes, cheddar cheese, bacon and onion (split into two plates AND with a side of sour cream.. yes, I said it sour cream) and our sweet selection of the cinnamon roll with brown sugar and lemon, cream cheese icing. Has to be said that our calorie intake might just have been a little more than our output... but we did feel a LOT better than we did the last long run.