Why does it hurt so much? Or my shoes are too loose.

You know the comedy of errors I mentioned below? Here's a new one. a real error. An Uff-Da. But I was better off for it.

Thanksgiving weekend I went home to San Francisco. I had plans to leave Saturday so as to avoid the traffic hell that I was bound to run into driving south to LA on Sunday. So that means my final SF training run will be on Saturday. Not with my normal group, which bums me out. But I can accept it. I went to bed early on Friday night so I could get up at 6am to get to the site by 7am. Well, I got to the site at 7am and no one was there. I mean no one. Then I realized. Oh yeah. In SF the training runs are at 8am. The 7am runs are only in LA. D'OH!@! Like hell I was gonna sit around for an hour and wait for everyone. Instead I decide to drive to the Marina to go running. I know lots of people go there to run. Might be a nice change of venue. Then I realize I can do the thing that I missed out with the 26 miles group run. I now have an opportunity to run over the Golden Gate bridge. FINALLY!

I start running. All is well, except my ITband starts to hurt early. Then I notice something. My shoes are a little loose. I tighten them some. Hey. That really helped my ITB. You mean I have been running with my shoes too loose? Damn! I doubt that is the only thing going on cuz even now, Sunday night, my knee still hurts. But it certainly helped some. So did the knee brace that I put on. and the ibuprofen and the acupuncture and the massage and the stretching and holistic healer and the Reiki and the Chinese herbs and....Ok. So that list is not completely real. Can you guess which ones I made up and haven't actually used?

I continue running. and run from the marina to Fort Point and up over golden gate bridge and through t he presidio a little bit and back down to the marina and fort Mason. All in all 12 miles. Some pain. All manageable. 120 minutes on the button. That includes piss breaks and stretch breaks too. Which for how I have been training is really good.
it was really interesting running a long run like this by myself. I really learned a lot about running and what I am capable of doing. The group has been great in nurturing me and helping me to build myself up. But running on my own I can spread my wings a little more and do what I am comfortable doing.