run a half marathon

Registered last night for the Cleveland Rock & Roll Half Marathon! It’s not until May 20, plenty of time to train and get ready. This time I’m really gonna make it – no excuses!

Between the bad weather, several new jobs, and less than optimal training conditions at the gym, I have not been training anywhere near enough.

Plus, my new jobs didn’t wind up paying nearly as much as they had promised. So, I wound up putting the whole trip on my credit card and now I’m wondering if I should just cancel and get as much of my money back as I can.

To make matters even worse, my husband’s job just assigned him to work up in Ottawa indefinitely. He may not even be able to get the vacation time off, even though it was originally approved when he requested it last summer.

The half marathon may have to wait until Cleveland in May. :-(

I got a job this week, and decided that if I didn’t want the job to forever interfere with my training, I’d have to incorporate them together right from the start. So, on my first and second days of work, the weather was decent enough to get in a couple of 3-milers Monday and Tuesday. Wed was tough, I couldn’t do it, tiredness and frustration with some aspects of the new job took over. Thursday I had off, but spent all day with my hubby trying to set up a new work wardrobe (one of the reasons for Wed’s frustration, I didn’t know that I didn’t own the appropriate clothes for the job).

But then Friday my husband gave me an early birthday gift: a membership to the gym in town! So after work yesterday I went and ran on the treadmill and track for a while. Lots of fun, and the weather was MUCH better inside the gym than it’s been outside. Hurray, I’m back in the saddle for good now!

I live in a very quiet, country farming community where everyone knows each other (well, except me because I just moved here, but my parents know everybody). I felt privileged to have such beautiful country roads to run by myself without fear.

Last Saturday night, our neighbor, an 86-year-old woman who had lived in the same farmhouse her whole life, was beaten to death in her bedroom by an intruder. Her body was then dumped in a ditch about 5 miles away, with all the fingers removed. The police have no suspects thus far. This is just a horrible tragedy for her family and for our whole community. She was a sweet, wonderful, hard-working lady and I just can’t imagine what kind of psychopath would do this.

I am now quite scared to go running by myself. I have no running buddies, and my husband has a knee injury so he can’t go. In addition to being nervous on the road, I also haven’t felt too perky because I’m not sleeping well at night (jumping at every sound and shadow).

I managed to do a mid-day 5k around the block on Friday, and I think every car that went by slowly raised my heart rate more than the actual exercise! The cops better catch this guy!!! Or I’m going to have to just buy a treadmill and some deadbolt locks for the door. And maybe a few rottweilers.

My first 10k! It’s been a summer of milestones. I learned a few lessons today – mainly, that I need to a) train more often and b) not try out a new pair of shoes on race day. I intellectually knew both of those things before, but I didn’t learn them as a hard lesson until today!

Results: 1:09:38 (approx 11:20/mile)
and extremely sore feet and knees!

But, there were free hot dogs, ice cream and pop involved, not to mention free zoo admission and another cool shirt for my Quilt of Racing Pride!

It rained ALL NIGHT and this was a trail run, so it was mud city (not to mention mosquitos). Also quite humid, so much fun for us asthmatics! But somehow I got a new personal best for the 5k = 32:47! Just under 11 min/mile.

Being that it was grey and cold and wet outside, the race was very early, and we were up all night due to our dog freaking out over the thunderstorms, I’m just proud that we managed to get there at all. I may not have talent, but I do have determination!

I just got back from the longest one I’ve done in a long time: 7.3 miles! OUCH, my band-aid slipped around mile 6 and I’ve got a HUGE open blister on my heel! And thigh chafing – yuck AND ouch. But, better to learn how to combat this stuff now than to realize it in the middle of the race, huh?

Slower pace today, the last mile dragged me down due to the blisters and whatnot. 12:15 minutes per mile, about an hour and a half overall. Still on pace for what I was expecting for the half-marathon in January, just need to keep building endurance now. Slow and steady may not come in first, but if I can make it to the finish line on foot, that’s a big win for me!

As of yesterday, my beloved and I have our confirmed race registrations for the Disney half-marathon, and now our hotel reservations as well! We’re staying on Disney property, so I reserved park tickets as well. My hubby has never been there! Even though I’ve been dozens of times (I even worked there for a summer), it’s been years and years. I CAN’T WAIT! I’m so excited, I can barely look at a WDW guidebook without falling to pieces! I’m already dreaming about the parks. Last night I dreamt we were standing in line for Pirates of the Caribbean!

As for training, the new shoes are great but I have mega blisters now. Plus of course, my heels get so sore the day afterward. So, it’s going slowly. Frustrating! But I’m still super excited about the trip!

This morning my husband and I ran an 8K at the Crim Festival of Races in Flint, Michigan. It was cloudy and about 72 degrees (farenheit) with about 84% humidity. The humidity is rough on my asthma, but I coped okay. I’ve also been struggling with plantar fasciitis in my left foot, so I wore a bandage brace and some extra padding in both shoes. I have generic orthotics, but they’re new so I didn’t want to test them out during an actual race.

It turns out, the brace wasn’t the best idea either. After Mile 3 I started to feel it chafing on both my instep and my ankle. If it had been a training run, I’d have walked slow the rest of the way home, but this is the race – what am I saving it for? So, I gutted it out and walked/ran as best I could! I’m ordering new shoes today, and I’ll rest up and do short, slow runs the rest of the week.

The good news is, I made pretty good time (for me). Official results aren’t in yet, but it was just under 55:00 by my estimation. My husband did AWESOME in his FIRST race, right around 47:00! What can I say, for a couple of beer-swilling couch potatoes, we rock!

Next up, the Detroit Zoo 10k on Sept 16!

Just one more comment: the volunteers and the local crowds REALLY made the day fun for everyone! If any race volunteers (for any race) are reading this, you are ROCK STARS! You can’t imagine how much it helps!

The Crim festival of races is tomorrow in Flint (hubby and I are doing the 8K), so today I went over to the Expo to pick up my race packet and see what all the vendors had to offer. As I passed by a table for an upcoming 5K run and walk, a guy staffing it shouted “Here comes a 5K walker now! You look like a 5K walker to me! You don’t have to run at all. You can walk it!” He could not let go of the walking thing, even though they have a 5K run that I had been planning to sign up for.

I felt like screaming “OKAY I don’t look like a runner! I GET IT!!!!” I’m not slender or sleek, I don’t have hamstring muscles visible through my jeans, I look like a slow, pathetic, non-exercising suburban housewife. I work out hard every day, I try to watch what I eat, and this is the friggin ugly fat body God gave me. I’m doing the best I can, GEEZ!

I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way, but he sure knew how to work over an already-insecure nerve. It sucks to work hard and still look fat. I know I’ve built muscle, I know I look better than I used to, I know I’m strong and can do things I never thought possible before. But, what can I say – I’m female. Having someone point out how unfit I look can still really destroy my whole weekend.