I'll have some humble pie with that...

You know, I'm going to have to go back and look at old training schedules, but I'm pretty sure that none of them included an 18-mile run during the "taper" period.

So last week, we ran 22 miles. It felt great. In fact, for weeks all of my long runs have felt great. So knowing that 22 was the longest put me in this mindset of, "It's all done! Easy from here on out until the race!"

But, honestly, I think in other seasons, my longest run was 3 weeks out from the race - not four. So for this training season, it totally made sense to run one more long one - 18 miles.

Except for the simple fact of thinking I was in a taper meant I treated this long run a lot less seriously - to my detriment.

The last time I did 18 miles, I did go out Friday night (and big, too - Saturday was total recovery from Friday that weekend), but that Saturday during the day I hydrated well, ate properly and went to bed at 8:30 p.m.

This time? Um...well, I had plans to go out last night, and I made the brilliant decision to put my curfew at 3 a.m. - then I decided 3 a.m. was the "start to head home" time, not the "be asleep in bed" time.

In my defense, the run wasn't until 9 a.m. - but I had to bring the kids to their grandma's house for babysitting, so I had to wake up by 7:30 anyway.

I actually woke up at 7:15, before my alarm went off. I felt pretty much okay. Got a bagel and some coffee down, took the kids out to grandma's, came home and finished getting ready. Aleks was on time, as always, and we headed out at 8:59 a.m.

The first five miles was good - even fast. The next three miles were okay. And the next two - now we're five miles away from Nancy's car, who met us at mile 5 - were bordering on torture.

My left knee was doing that thing where it feels like the leg from the knee down had turned around in the knee socket. Because of the knee pain, I was running funny and making my calf tight and sore.

And then I got weird side stitches and pains very low in my belly. So I decided at mile 10 to walk a while.

I told Nancy and Aleks to go on ahead to 6.5 miles before turning around; I thought at worst, I'd walk the five miles back in the time they took to run what they had left (8 miles), and we'd finish together.

And walk I did. Not the entire time - I did go one full mile, just to see how long it took me to walk a mile (14:30, if you're wondering), but the rest of the miles I walked until I felt like running, and then ran until I felt like walking. I timed two of these: one was 11:30, and another was 12:30. I actually found this slightly annoying: If I'm running 10s to 11s, shouldn't my run-walk miles be way slower? Doesn't seem like running is all that efficient for me!

So, I got back to the car, and Nancy and Aleks were not yet in sight, so I ran-walked another mile to get 16 or so, then saw them. I didn't get 18 in, but I am not really beating myself up over it: it's a good lesson for me. How arrogant am I, to think I can party until 3 a.m., sleep a few hours, then go run 18 miles?

I feel good about recognizing my arrogance. It's good to learn from your mistakes, right - and now I see very clearly that I wasn't respecting my run, my running partners, or my body by trying to prove I could do it all.

16 is still nothing to be ashamed of, of course. Next weekend when we run 15 miles, I'll remember what happened today - and not let it happen again.