Dear Hoka One One....

I love you.

You complete my feet.

Even though you didn't last very long the first time and I had to get a new pair of you, 

I still love you.

That is all.

Love,

My ankles

First overnight training run

This weekend we had planned on running 26 miles on the Broward Levee on Saturday with friends. On Thursday prior, the weather forecast went from 60% chance of rain to 100% chance so we cancelled.  Of course shortly after cancelling the report went down to 20% chance of rain and there were just a few sprinkles.

Now with no running plans I get the brilliant idea to run home from work in South Miami to the far end of North Broward or around 60 miles.  I asked my co-worker who lives right down the street to give me a ride in to work, and didn't need a ride home.  The second part of the brilliant idea was to do Bikram Yoga (105 degree yoga) right before the run home.

Well here's what happened and some lessons learned:
Meetings ran late and my ride to yoga had to leave so I decided to run 6 miles to the studio.  Did about a 9:10 pace and got there literally 5 minutes prior to class starting.  No time to catch my breath just straight into the 105 degree room.
It wasn't pretty.  I probably did about 30-40% of the poses and just laid there trying to slow my breathing the rest of the time.
Once class was over, I jumped in a cold shower to regulate my body heat and then hit the road.

Leaving from Coconut Grove running up the bike trail on Federal was nice, and cool, and easy going.  I then went up Brickell Avenue and towards downtown to the Ultra Music Festival.  It was about 10:00 or 10:30 at this point and the people watching was definitely worth running through the crowded streets.  There were people selling T-shirts that said "I heart Molly" and I imagine that there were one or two people in the area who were taking it.

After passing through downtown I ran under 395 and out the venetian causeway to South Beach.  I headed north on Collins and stopped at Primo's cafe and store and met up with another Florida Ultra Runner (FUR is a group on Facebook with 1600 or so Ultra Running folks) named Thomas who happened to be in town for spring break with his family.  He met me around Midnight and ran with me for about 2 hours.  It was nice to have company and  we ran from there to 163rd where he made a left to cross back over the intercoastal and head back to where he was staying.

I started feeling sore in the groin area and one of my ankles and stopped to stretch several times, and even took a 15 or 20 minute break stretching.  After that I started running again and picked up the pace a little but was still feeling pain.

Finally it was time to call it a night.  I stopped at a Marriott, hit the ATM and got a cab to the Tri-Rail station and took the first Tri-Rail from Hollywood to Deerfield Beach and another one of my FUR friends ended up taking me home at 6:45 or so in the morning.

All in all it was 33 miles and an hour and a half of 105 degree yoga which is the heat training I'm doing to get ready for the Keys50 in May.  Here is the RunKeeper map:

Lessons learned:
Don't eat like crap.  The burger at lunch didn't help things at yoga or on the run.  I've done that 2 or 3 times prior to long runs and it bit me in the rear each time.

If you are going to run 6 miles to yoga with no break before class starts, it may not be a good idea to try and run 54 more miles after that.

Perpetuem tastes horrible when there is still a bit of soap in your hydration pack.  I almost threw the thing away.

Aside from only getting 33 miles in, I'm happy that I stayed up all night to get used to the overnight running, and also glad to have done the yoga even though it sucked, and it was awesome to have company in the middle of the night.