Labour of Love

Today I started my day at 4:00 am to get my long run in before the day really heated up. I was out the door at 4:36 am. Let me tell you about the streets of Ramat Bet Shemesh at this hour. Cats, cats, and more cats. It's like a sub-world of creatures that only come out when the human population is at rest. Seriously, so many cats I could count one every 20 steps! Now, I realize Israel has a "cat problem" on par with the "rat problem" in the rest of the world, and yes, we see a lot of cats around the neighbourhood in the daylight hours, but this night time business is weird. Cats and vampires truly rule the night!

I think I have been hitting that mysterious "wall" often talked about in blogs, and articles on marathon running. And fortunate for me, I've been able to push through it and finish my runs. For me the "wall" seems to be happening around 20 km. Today's run was 29 km, (which I rocked out at 3:08:25!) and again at 20 km I had to play the mental game and argue all the reasons I shouldn't stop, and push through to finish. It's amazing that once you win the argument, the rest of the run goes okay. Once I made the decision to finish, the stress of the run seemed to be behind me, and I was able to focus on the end. Kind of like labour.... Once you get past the really difficult part, you sort of forget the rest.

Speaking of labour...

In the middle of my run, my son called to tell me that grandchild number 5 (his third) was on the way. All week I have been requesting that my daughter in law NOT go into labour until my long run was finished, so he called to tell me that I got my wish. This baby's sex will be a surprise as they didn't find out before hand. Either way, very exciting!

What types of arguments do you make when you hit your wall?