Breaking the 15 mile "black box"

When I was a swimmer, I had a mental block at the 25K distance.  I didn't know how the heck I was ever going to survive the 25K when I swam it.  20K? Absolutely fine.  23K? No problem. 25K? Impossible.  It was just one of those mental blocks, that while being completely irrational, was very real at the time.  I fretted for the entire month before my coaches took me on my first 25K training swim - everything from cold sweats when "25K" got mentioned, to staying up late at night worrying about it.  The 25K didn't turn out to be that bad - in fact, it turned out to be the event I swam (and won) at Nationals for years thereafter, and was/is one of my favorite swimming events.

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that almost a decade (Ah?!) later, I had (notice the past tense!) a similar mental block with running.  The distance - 15 miles.  Half marathon?  No problem.  14 miles - sure I did it once.  15 miles - absolutely not happening.  I knew my 15 mile day would have to come in preparing for the marathon, but I was somehow hoping I could put it off for a little while and hang out at the 14 mile distance.

Ken provided the "tough love" as he calls it - just the catalyst I needed to make the conscious choice to run the full 15 miles.  In a nice way, he basically told me to suck it up and get it over with.  Mark and I were already planning a 14 mile run, and in a moment of temporary insanity, I asked him to make it into a 15 mile loop (he's really good at that!), and I gave him explicit instructions not to let me chicken out.  And we didn't... We ran a total of 15.3 miles (didn't walk a step!), and then I broke down and we walked/jogged the last 0.4 miles back to Mark's house, for a grand total of 15.7 miles on our feet for the day!  Mark even admitted at one point during the run that I was pacing him!!

Thanks to Ken and Mark, the little black box around 15 miles has been broken ... well, at least I thought it had.  According to Ken (dishing out more tough love, which I secretly love, and as soon as I post a statement like that on my blog it's no longer a secret), 2 more 15-mile barriers remain: 

 

"No, I think those were Horton miles (1 HM = 1.1 statute mile).  And 15.3 miles = only 13.3 nautical miles, which, you as a swimmer, are obligated to use."

It seems like a challenge has been issued ... 15 nautical miles = 17.3 statute miles.  I have to run 17.3 miles to really break the little black box around "15."  Sounds like my next long run (in 2 weeks) is going to be 15 nautical miles, and you know the best thing about that ... I'm not scared of it!

Check out Mark's report for all of the gory details. :)

With that, 15.3 miles down.  Ken, thank you for the kick-in-the-butt motivation.  Mark, as always, thank you for being an amazing running partner and for not letting me cheat myself today!  Oh yeah, and the post-run Fritos and root beer were amazing!