33km!

today was tough. I really wanted to run with the group - 32km to Jerusalem - but I knew I am not yet ready for that. It is really a fabulous and fun run. But, besides for much of it being on a trail in the dark, and I once before twisted my ankle on this run, I am also way too slow right now, and I would be running 32km in the dark all by myself, on a route that I might also make a wrong turn on and not have enough water at the water stops (it has happened before)...so I decided to run local instead.

I planned to run a few cycles of Kishon, up to Dolev with a few cycles of Dolev and then out on the Highways 10 and 375 to finish the distance I needed.

For water on these local long runs, I put out a couple of small bottles near my house, which I pass on my Kishon sections. Then when I go up and out, I carry them with me and drop them where I want to for the way back and for other cycles.

Today, as I was running Kishon I decided to just keep doing that. Why bother dealing with figuring out distances and where to put water - just keep running cycles of Kishon. It gives good distance, and I could mix it up a bit by running on opposite sides of streets on different cycles, and I had water at a perfect spot. So I did that. I ran 9 cycles of Kishon, giving my about 28km, and then decided to go up and finish with a run up Hayarqon, Hayarden Dolev and back, finishing at 32.5km.

It was tough, and slow, but I made it all the way through pretty well.

The one problem was my Runkeeper got messed up. Right after I started my run I had to stop for something and Runkeeper auto-paused, as it is supposed to. Unfortunately it did no restart, and I only noticed it about 1+km in when I checked to see why it was not alerting me. Still a bit later, in the range of about 2.5km in, it still had not alerted me so I checked it again and saw that it had not advanced at all. So, I turned it off and switched to Endomondo which did a good job. So, my run concluded on the clock at 30.5, but adding about 2.5km to that gives me 33km or so for the run. All the stats are worthless because of the lost 2.5km and for whatever reason (I have to check the settings) Endomondo did not auto-pause when I stopped for water or pee breaks.

added: I forgot to include the calculation of the week's total mileage. I ran about 71km in total last week. insane