So that's why I'm so tired and feel like throwing up a lot!

After a fitful night of fretting about today's mileage and basically waiting for the alarm to go off at 6am while having nightmares about being late for today's run, it is done. Michael ran with my group for quite a while (he was slumming it a bit, it would seem). Then he left and joined the faster group ahead of us. Of course I made the leap too... and was able to keep up with them for all of six minutes. Seriously considered throwing up. Fell back with my group and they accepted me with open arms. Ran out of fuel and would have walked from Granville to Arbutus had my fellow runners not all been so encouraging and in good spirits (what's wrong with these people: we just ran 29k - why are they so pleasant?). Got back to the store and all but sucked the vat of sportsdrink dry. Then we hopped in the car back to North Van.
As I was washing a disgusting amount of salt from my body I pondered the speed of my group. We run 8.30 miles on Sundays (Sundays are called "long slow days" or LSDs for marathoners). Unless my math is really off, 26.2 miles at 8.30 gives me a marathon time of about 3.43. The theory is that, given race day conditions, you knock off a chunk of time the day of your marathon. Last year I trained mostly with a 4 hour group and came in at 3.39. So if I'm running my LSDs at what is essentially my race pace, um, what the hell kind of time am I going to end up with? And I guess that would be why I feel so knackered on Sundays and feel like puking often. This running clinic measures everything in miles and I'm a kilometre kind of girl. I just thought 8.30 miles sounded slow (compared to 5 minute kilometres) so I joined up with this particular group. 8.30 isn't slow. No wonder Michael is always congratulating me and looking very surprised. No wonder I almost fell over when we were doing lunges, and inner thigh stretches. And when I was simply trying to walk a straight line.
That's all I have to say. I am going for lunch now and am going to eat a tremendous amount, have two beers and go back to bed.