I’ve been mentally trying to prepare for all the lonely miles ahead. Last time, two years ago, I trained with my two oldest sons. But, they have grown up and are a lot busier and have their own athletic endeavors to conquer. So, I go out alone this time.

Running alone presents me with a few challenges:

I’m afraid of snakes. I really don’t enjoy running into them, seeing them from afar, or even finding a dead one. They creep me out big time. This by far is the biggest hurdle for me to leap.

Last time, the boys kept me going out the door. We would decide on doing a big run and they were always waiting at the door in the mornings, ready to go. So it was a lot harder to tell them no. But alone, I’m easy to convince on why I don’t need to go that day.

It’s not that I haven’t done long runs alone before. I’ve gone on a 16-miler, a 12 mile jog, and a few shorter runs alone, and the 16 miler had two or three miles of super tall grass at that. So, I can push through. It’s just going to be a little lonely seeing as during the last few long runs that I did last time were 18 to 23 miles, I had one or two sons with me and they were a big encouragement for pushing me forward mid run. They also love snakes, so they volunteered to run lead most days.

I did my first “long run” on Saturday and it was fine. It was just a practice run of six miles. I’ve been doing a lot of my training on the treadmill this time to cut down on some forces against my feet to prevent injury, but I wasn’t sure my long runs on the treadmill would transfer to running on the road, but all was well. 

So now, I have two weeks to prepare for my first longer, long run. I’ll be going out on my first attempt in 2 years to go around 13 miles.

Hopefully, I’ll make it, even if I have to crawl. 

-Nate