Not crowing about how I ended this 40-plus mile week

Still haven't figured out my race schedule this year (a lot depends on where I'll be living. My job is thinking of sending me to Austin to cover the Legislature this year).

I may not know the major races I'll be running, I do know what I've got to do this year: build my muscular endurance. (I'm fast, I just can't run fast very far - at least not farther than a half marathon). I need more midweek runs of an hour or more (most of my midweek runs last year were 4 to 7 miles, lasting anywhere from 35 to 55 minutes) and I need to do more weekend long runs of at least two hours (I only ran that long during marathon training).

So this week was the first week I let myself run as many miles as I wanted to since marathon training. I went 14.5 miles in 2 hours flat Saturday in unseasonably warm temperatures in Texas. The run capped a 41.62-mile week. And I think if I can keep a base of about 45 miles a week, I'll be that much more advanced when it comes time to training for my next marathon.

This morning's run was supposed to be a 13-miler, with a group of about 10 of us following the route of the Cowtown Marathon. At about 6 a.m., we started in downtown Fort Worth, across the street from the Starbucks on Houston Street and went north, past the old courthouse, across the Main Street Bridge, and into north Fort Worth _ a gritty part of town that has seen more than its share of gang shootings.

Well, me and another guy, Bob, were feeling pretty good (Bob is actually running Cowtown on Feb. 28) so we sped away from the pack. He had the directions, but three miles in and we were already lost. (One of the turns we were supposed to make didn't have a street sign). So Bob (a 6-foot tall, 50-something white guy) and me (a wanna be 6-foot tall,, 40-something black guy) are running around north Fort Worth in the dark and we can hear dogs barking (ohhh, they sounded like pit bulls) and roosters crowing.

I'm cursing because I wish I had run with some other guys on a route I knew, and I'm praying that we don't run into any gang-bangers. (Alas, if there were any in that neighborhood we were running in, they probably wouldn't have been up at 6 in the morning!)

Bob and I finally figured out where we were going and actually caught up to the other runners, only to get lost again (this time in a neighborhood where home values start at 300k). We caught up and passed the other runners again and finally made it back to the finish. We took so many wrong turns that we ended up adding another 1.5 miles to the route.

All in all, a good run (8:20 pace - I didnt take any GUs or jells), but next time, I'm going to know where I'm going before I decide to get adventurous.