My last Long Run was Sunday.  Bill dropped me off at a friend’s house in Boulder so that my circuitous 22-mile route would end at home. I broke the 22 miles into three distinct sections; 1. house to Bobolink Trailhead on Baseline – 7.5 miles, 2. Bobolink Trailhead to “Archie” (the bridge crossing Hwy 36 in Louisville) via Cherryvale and Marshall Road – 7.0 miles, and 3. “Archie” to my house via Davidson Mesa – 7.0 miles.

Saturday night I loaded the kids into the car and we drove three portions of the route so that I could get a mileage tally while I looked over the route to solidify each portion.  Connor was very quiet in the backseat and finally piped up, in a concerned and wavering voice, “This is too far Mom.”

“Too far for what, honey?”

“Too far to run.  We’re in Boulder and that’s a long way from Louisville.  I don’t think you should be running this far.”

Say it with me now:  “Awwww….” That’s my little 8-year-old boy.  He was silently watching out the window, seeing familiar landmarks float by, and decided right then and there that running from Boulder to Louisville was a LONG WAY, particularly since I wasn’t going in a straight line.  Too far.  End of story.

We talked again about how I’ve been practicing for this, that I’ve been running longer and longer.  Then we talked about Time; from the time he wakes up, has breakfast, gets dressed and makes his bed, listens to a chapter of Harry Potter on CD, rakes some leave, irritated his sister, ridden his bike and had a few snacks, I will have run twenty two miles. He can’t fathom how far a mile is, or five or twenty and for sure not twenty-six point two miles.  That’s like telling him I’m going to run to New York.  Cool.  Can I ride my bike?  He has no perspective.

Back at home I kissed and tucked him into bed.  He clung to my neck and made his point again:  Twenty-two miles is a long way and maybe I shouldn’t be going so far from home.  I solemnly swore and crossed my heart that I would be okay.

Twelve hours later I stood on a sidewalk in Boulder, glad for my hat, jacket and gloves as I munched a pack of Clif Chews.  Twenty-six degrees outside, and weather.com was predicting that the temps over the next four hours would rise only about 6-8 degrees.  It was cold, and would stay cold.

My iPod Shuffle was turned down low, the Garmin was on and synced, and I waved goodbye to my family as I took off down Greenbriar in South Boulder.  The sun was shining and the body felt good.  With any luck, this would be a relatively pain-free endurance run, with food waiting at the other end.

This being Boulder in the winter, there were already a few other runners out, dressed in Ninja outfits similar to mine.  Same black pants with the fleece lining, skull cap, gloves and wicking jacket.  Boulder is a microcosm, with so many elite and above-average athletes living next door to each other, that it’s hard to get any perspective on the average Joe’s performance (namely mine).  The waiter at the sushi place just biked across North America.  An acquaintance from the elementary school runs Ultras; he’s a self-made millionaire selling real estate.  My running buddy is taking returning to training after winning 10^th place in her age division at Kona.  The lady getting a blessing at the Catholic Church just won the ING New York Marathon.  These are the people that live, work and train in Boulder.  I’m just an average, 37-year-old Mom our running around, training for my first marathon.  No big deal.

After looping across the south Boulder neighborhood and heading south on Marshall Road I jumped onto Bobolink Trail.  The ground was stiff but not fully frozen this early in the season.  Even though the temp was below freezing, I couldn’t see my breath and a quick swipe of my forehead told me that frost wasn’t forming on my eyebrows.  The air wasn’t moist enough to stick to my sweaty body, which was good because it meant that I wouldn’t be sweat-soaked until much later in the run.

My pace was consistent; nothing outrageous, just an easy 9:15/mile average.  I passed three groups of runners and waved as they ran by.  The male foursome looked pretty hard-core, but the female party of nine looked fun.  I was struck by how closely the members of each group stayed to each other; an image of a wolf-pack came to mind.  These groups were running together to accomplish a certain time and pace, so different from the group of women I run with on Saturday mornings.  My group is all about the social aspect; anyone can run with us, at any pace.  These groups appeared to be constructed of athletes bent on achieving whatever pace their coach or logbook instructed.  Hardcore athletes.  They didn’t even smile at me.

Bobolink slid by and at the end of the 7.5 mile leg, I stopped at a porto-potty on a construction site to prep for the next leg.  A minute later I was off and running again, headed due south on Cherryvale for the next 3.2 miles.

Let me interrupt for a second to note that the trade-off of running so close to home was the elevation gain and loss.  There is nothing flat in the area, so once I hit Cherryvale I was headed into a nine mile climb, grossing an overall 600 feet of elevation interspersed with loss, which totaled over 3000 feet of ascent and descent over 22 miles.  Some sections were mild climbing while others caused a little more huffing.  The terrain was definitely varied, something I really like about a good, long run.

Back to Cherryvale though; it was easy to get through the light at South Boulder Road.   There was no traffic at 9:20 on Sunday morning.  The road was sandwiched between fields of dead, yellow grasses, and empty of cars.  As I came up the road I saw the female pack runners heading north on Cherryvale, looping back to Bobolink.  Again, I raised my hand in a wave and offered a smile.  Again, no friendly wave of acknowledgement.  Lame.

I continued down the road, huffing and puffing up the hill.  Finally it dawned on me that I was having a hard time getting a really deep breath because of the heart rate monitor strapped to my chest.  I stopped running, detached the thing and stuffed it into my Nathan hydration pack.  Oh, deep breath, so much better.  Up ahead about 50 yards a car had pulled over on my side of the road.  As I started running again she got out of her car and walked back up the road a few feet to something behind her.  As I approached she bent over and pulled something flat from the road.  A dead rabbit.  I offered to help her get it into her car; apparently she wanted to take it home and bury it in her backyard.  We chatted for a minute before I waved goodbye and continued up the road.

Twenty minutes later the road was still going up.  I was on Marshall Road now, heading east toward Superior.  A few cyclists were on the road now, dressed in several layers with every inch of their faces covered.  The riders were friendlier than the runners were and offered a head nod or a finger wave in greeting, which I happily returned.

A dead squirrel lay belly-up on the road, frozen in place.  He wasn’t smooshed and still had his innards.  I picked him up by his tail and moved him into the tall weeds bordering the road.  I hate to see animals dead on the road, and the lady and I were in agreement that whenever possible, we moved dead animals from the asphalt.  It doesn’t seem a fitting end to their life to end up flat.  The animal removal cost me all of 10 seconds, and I easily resumed running.

The Garmin readout still read 9:15/mile average, even though I was running uphill (still).  I checked the distance readout to make sure it was ticking away; I thought for sure it had stopped working because the pace never changed.  The technology was still working though, so I stopped glancing at it and just ran.

Finally I crested the hill and cruised into the shopping center in Superior that borders Highway 36.  “Archie” (the clever moniker of the walking bridge spanning the highway) was big and beautiful.  On the other side of the bridge my friend Wonder Woman was waiting to run the last 7.5 miles with me.  I was 2/3 done, 14.5 miles completed, and still feeling good.

I stopped for a quick pee in the bushes before we headed out of the parking lot.  The final leg consisted of 1.5 miles of climbing on McCaslin, 3 miles of flat on Davidson Mesa, 2 miles of mostly steady downhill, and the final mile was a gently rolling hill to the house.  The home stretch, my familiar stomping grounds.

We chatted briefly as we started out, then Wonder Woman took over the conversation and I listened a lot, commenting a little.  We both knew what a pacer was for, and she was doing her job.  Her kids were at my house playing with my kids, my husband was watching the four of them, and we were getting the job done.

The sun had finally warmed the air a little, and it was a bubbly 32 degrees.  She looked fresh and springy, while I felt a little damp under my pink jacket.  My SmartWool gloves had started on my hands when I left her house, then had ridden in my pocket from miles 8-10, then had warmed my hands when the northwesterly wind had buffeted me on Marshall Road.  Now that we were heading into the northwesterly wind, I could feel the sweat in my hat, gloves and shirt.  I had briefly thought about ditching my jacket in her car at mile 14.5, but decided better of it because I didn’t want to get chilled from the wetness of my fleece wicking shirt.

Wonder Woman talked all the way up the hill (she has good breath control!) and I navigated us onto the trail.  Several people were in the fenced dog park area, throwing tennis balls to happy pooches that bounded up and down through the tall grasses of the field.  My mind drifted a little to the scenery that surrounded me.  I have a massive crush on Davidson Mesa.  We’ve seen each other in the wee hours of the morning so many times you’d think we were lovers.  This place holds a good-sized chunk of my soul, and I can’t run here without feeling the energy of the place.

As we commenced the last mile of the mesa Wonder Woman stopped to stretch for a moment.  I automatically slowed when she did, but started running again when she said to keep going; she would catch up.  My legs had that funny feeling they get when they’ve been going a long time; kind of like a low-current stream of electricity is running through them.  It felt weird to slow the pace and was easier to keep going, even when I felt tired.  A quick body scan told me that my muscles were still in good shape, my fuel was good, and the only thing about it is that my feet were tired.  Given the distance I figured that was pretty darn good.

She caught up to me with a tiny burst of speed and we crossed McCaslin into the parking lot across the street so I could visit the toilet one last time.  The exercise loosened my bowels and there was a wonderful cleansing that left me feeling oh-so-light.

The last three miles were easy.  Our pace picked up with the natural downhill pull, and we cruised into my cul-de-sac 63 minutes after we met at the bridge.  I did a final loop around the street to tick off a few more hundreths of the mile on my Garmin while Wonder Woman did a Happy Dance, cheering me on.  I had done it.  Twenty two miles in 3:27.

We sat on the cold concrete in front of my house, stretching and talking.  “Could you have run four more miles?” she asked.

Yes.  I could have.  I was tired, but could have kept running.  And that was the moment I knew that I was ready to run this marathon.  Three weeks until I line up on a chilly morning in Sacramento, three weeks until I toe the line to see what I can do.  I’m ready.