Run #15 - June 7th, 2012

Today's run was tough, not to mention a giant wake up call. I hadn't run outside in two weeks because of the conference. Then some post conference crazy at work happened and I needed yoga more than I needed running this week. But when I woke up today and realized it is already June 7th, which means this half marathon is literally 2.5 weeks away. 

It has already been ridiculously hot this June and even the thought of running after work makes me sweat, but I honestly cannot drag myself out of bed to do a morning run before work. So today, I had to do an evening run. 

I wanted to push myself to do another 5 miles and I came close, but ultimately I lost the battle with my feet. I started out on my 5 mile route and was doing good for the first mile, but miles 1-2 was full of side cramps and sweat. At one point I got smacked in the face by a sprinkler, which would have felt good, if it had been a gentler sprinkler, but that one almost knocked me right off balance. Around mile three, my feet began hurting and that little running enemy called blisters, started to form. I kept going, because I had no other way to get home and I wanted to end the pain as quickly as possible, but around mile 3.5 - 4.5 it became a pretty painful run/walk. Thankfully, at mile 4.5 a woman had found a lost dog and needed help locating the street name on his collar, so I sat down with her and we looked it up on my phone. I helped her get the dog to its owner and then took off my shoes and hobbled the last half mile home.

There is no way I am going to be able to pull this off. The furthest I have ever run was 5 miles and that was three weeks prior. How on earth am I going to add another 8 miles to that is 2.5 weeks? This half marathon was really a bad idea. 

Lesson Learned: I need to buy something called 'wicking socks', to keep my feet dry and blister free.  

Distance: 4.51 miles

Time: 50:16

Run #12/13/14 - End of May 2012

Running in Texas sucks. Running on a treadmill also sucks. Trying to cram in a few runs is while also attending a national conference sucks too.

It was way to hot and way to humid to run outside while I was in Houston, so I decided to get a few treadmill runs in at the hotel. I can say with confidence, that I cannot stand running on a treadmill. I could only make it one mile before I thought I might collapse from boredom or suffocate on the stale air blowing into my mouth from the treadmill fan. I made it a point to run as fast as I could for 1 mile, I think I even broke 10 minutes one day! Then I would do some weights and core work but forced myself to end the workout with another painful mile.

I did it, but I didn't like it. I must ask, how do you treadmill folks do it? I know when I started to run outside, it was incredibly hard, but running on a treadmill is sheer brutal torture!

Run #11 - May 26th, 2012

Today was a monumental day. After months, I finally solved a shopping cart mystery & I kept my pace under an 11 minute mile. I didn't think the latter bit was all that exciting, but my friends Bruce & Julia, who are more established runners than myself, are baffled by my consistency to always run an 11:06 ish mile. My pace doesn't seem to wavier. It doesn't seem to matter if am running 1 mile or 5 miles. But, what they are saying, is if I am running just a few miles, I should be going faster. Alas, this is not something I have learned yet in my running experience. At this point I am just trying to run as far as I can, without dying. So today, I was pretty impressed with myself for logging an average pace of 10:52 per mile. 

I have to be completely honest though. The extra speed in today's run did not come from a place of challenging myself, building motivation or even just growing athleticism. It came from a place of anger. 

You see, for the past several months, someone has been shoving empty shopping carts in front of my condo door. I have always suspected it was my upstairs neighbors, but they kept blaming me and my roommates for it, telling us we were junking up the neighborhood. We talked to some other neighbors, left notes asking people to please return their carts, but alas, they kept showing up in front of our door. 

I decided to wake up and go for a morning run today, since I would be packing to leave for Texas and running errands the rest of the day. But I also needed to pay my bills. So I decided to change up my route a bit, so I could run by the post office box in front of the grocery store nearby and drop off my bills. 

As I was crossing the street, I see my upstairs neighbor, pushing a shopping cart across toward our building. This is the same neighbor who blamed me and my roommates for leaving shopping carts around and insisted they never took shopping carts from the store. So right there, as I passed her in the street, I confronted her and said, "If that shopping cart winds up in front of my door, I will know who to blame". She looked a bit shocked at first, because I don't think she realized who I was at first, since the setting was out of context.

I spent the entire run fuming mad and wondering if that damn shopping cart would be there when I returned from my run. Wondering what I would say if it was. And apparently running faster than I had run before. 

When I returned home, the cart was there, but it was actually in front of their staircase and not our door for once. And by the time I had showered, the cart was gone. (And since I am actually writing this post several months later, I am happy to report, there have not been any stray shopping carts in front of my door since, although they are winding up in the parking lot now...)

Lesson Learned: Passionate running = faster running

Distance: 3.55 miles

Time: 38:33