Another Very Early Morning

I couldn’t sleep well last night. 

Perhaps it was the lack of exercise for three days in a row after the triathlon last weekend that had my feet itching or perhaps it may have been my excitement stemming from committing to run the easy leg of the Blue Ridge Relay with Alex and 4 other runners.  It is a 208 mile race that will take 30 hours or so to complete.  And I say easy leg because I don’t think I could do the harder legs.  My leg will consist of 6 different runs over the 30 hour timeframe that will total more than 25 miles.  Call me crazy, but I can’t wait.  It is also the weekend before a triathlon I already have scheduled, so it should be an interesting couple of weeks.

So at around 2:45 this morning, I woke up and could not get back to sleep.  I tried, but when I decided it wasn’t going to happen, what else is a guy to do but run?

I fiddled with my IPod a bit to get it to work, but failed.  I think the battery is having some issues.  Oh well.  So I loaded the last Podcast of the Freeway to 10K mix onto Jenn’s IPod and got dressed.  I leashed up Althea, let Diego come in the house so he could do something special too and set out.

The temperature was comfortable in the dark morning and I was feeling good.  Traffic was very light so there were no issues with the cars.  I did a sort of out and back for a total of 7.1 miles.  I was very pleased with my pace of 9:24 minutes per mile.  See the stats here.

On the cool down walk back to the house I suddenly realized something was wrong.  MY NIPPLES ARE ON FIRE!  I have heard guys talk about running marathons with band aids on their nipples to keep them from chaffing, but I didn’t realize it could happen after just 7 miles.  But it did.  I feel like I have sort of graduated the next step in my running career now that I have sore nipples.  Today it has been a sort of reminder that I went the distance this morning.  I was lucky enough to not have a severe case; I have heard they can get so bad they bleed.  I have nothing like that and I don’t want to know what that feels like.  I will plan to use some Aquaphor (thanks Jeff!) or something before I go out running in the future!