The ican

Every time I think my little ipod has sputtered its last song it gets another revival. I'm thus changing it's name to the ican, because it's the little pod that could. I could learn a few lessons from it. If running is a mental game than I am an infant learning to crawl! 21.7km again today. The river is open (finally!) so we got to run along the nice flat footpath on the river rather than through hilly back streets. Hooray! I ran with the "medium" group. Not the fast group, not the slow group. But the medium group went from 4 to 2 of us by the 8k mark. We were going to go 25k with the rest of the squad but decided that 21k was long enough! It's funny; it's not the way out that gets you, but the way back! I was fine until the 14k mark and then - guess what! - that darned ITB reminded me how unhappy it was. I pushed on (it only hurt if I stopped and started again).
Total running time was just under 2h20min. I couldn't say for sure as I forgot to time part of the distance (so my watch came out showing under 2h14min). But there was a lot less stopping this time - just one longish stop for a drink rather than the 5+ we normally have (it's always longer stops when the group is larger). Hmmm. Not sure how this bodes for Melbourne. 5 weeks to go!
Oh, and on a side note I've signed up for a 500k relay in November. This running season just keeps getting longer and longer...I guess that's my fault!