might wanna skip this one.

i did my last long training run today. the next long run i do will be 26.2 miles. i did 20 today relatively pain-free and i've never felt so good in my entire life.

yeah.

kinda like that.

so maybe i'll expand a bit. and also, guess what! only three weeks left of training and then I WILL BE DONE TALKING ABOUT MARATHONING! hall lay fvkcing loo yah.

ok, so aaron is shooting a film this weekend (the one he had to drop 10 lbs. for, making him extra scrawny and sickly-looking) so he opted out of the final training run (which is fine, he's good to go for the 'thon.) so i arranged to run with heather & brian, which is great because they tend to pace slower than me and i was hoping to do this last big one slow and stready indeed. oh and also? a much-needed change of scenery.

so we started in hermosa and the plan was to turn around at the marina. they even "hid" refreshments in the bushes to give us something to look forward to at 10.2 miles.

honestly, most of the run was pretty uneventful. it was BLISSFULLY uneventful because my knee pain that normally kicks in around 12-13 miles was dormant until 19.2. NINETEEN POINT TWO. i have never run more than 14 miles without having the onset of pain, and therefore, this will go down as MY BEST RUN EVER. im guessing the marathon will BE EVEN BETTER, but we will bask in the glow of this one for the next three weeks, won't we? OH YES WE WILL.

so anyway, i ran the slower pace with them most of the time. i would take my walk breaks and then have no problem catching back up to them. once we hit the turnaround point, i was feeling pretty awesome. i had my powergel and refilled my water bottle with powerade and we made our way.

we hit 11 and then 12 and then 13 miles and i was still pain-free, so somewhere around 13, i decided to run my regular pace. except, instead of averaging 10.5-11 minute miles, i was hovering around 9 minute miles for the final 7 miles. it felt so amazing. when i hit 16, 17 and 18 and was still pain-free, i realized i had been running with a high for about 5 miles and it was honestly, the best feeling ive ever known while running. i felt powerful and i felt energized.

by the time my knee pain set in, i was so close to the end it didn't even matter. i powered through and hit the 20-mile marker at 3 hours and 27 minutes (average of 10:22 per mile). heather and brian rolled in about 11 minutes later. yeah.

so what did i do different? well, last night i hung out at borders while aaron & eddie filmed the movie at our place (a story for another day). i just happened to pick up a book called "CHI RUNNING" it's AWESOME. it literally changed the way i ran today. i also got new shoes on tuesday (asics gel kayanos, my FAVORITE), i broke them in by running a 10-mile and a 4-mile run this past week, and they were probably to blame for a mostly pain-free run as well.

what i didn't do: pop ibruprofen the whole time. thank god. doing that scares me.

so there you have it. i just got done getting an hour-long deep tissue massage and i have a date for fat fish FATTY HOUR in a few hours and im going to drink some sake and CELEBRATE with heather & brian.

i am glowing.