Of hot runs and early runs and hot, early runs...this week's notes

Cooldown view from the dock...

Random Training Thoughts

It's almost always unpleasant for me to get up and run early. I think running is hard. Period. One of the reasons I love it so much is because it's hard. But, oddly, I also don't think I need to make it any harder than it already is by forcing myself to get up early and run before I've had a chance to have my first cup of coffee. Still, races start early. And I hear that for the Dopey Challenge, I'll need to be out of my hotel room by 3 a.m. (?!?!?) to make it to the start lines on time. Compared to that start time, my 6 a.m. alarm this morning for a 6:30 run was nothing, really. I wonder what the best way is to prepare for those early a.m. wake-up calls. Is it best to go cold turkey? 

Here's my week of training (so far) in Indiana heat (which I get is different from Arizona or Florida heat):

Tuesday p.m. (80+ degrees and humid): Ran 4.27 miles, and it felt like I was in a furnace the whole time. When I slowed to a walk to cool off, I didn't cool off. It felt like blasts of hot air were just hitting me every time I stopped to walk, so I might as well run more. 

Wednesday lunch: SWIM. Yep, I got in the pool. A happy place for me.

Thursday a.m. 6:30 a.m., actually. Ran 3.84 miles. I needed to be home by 7:30. I don't always enjoy having a deadline by which I need to wrap a run, but this morning it helped. My pace was a little bit better than usual. This morning, while not hot, was quite humid.

Disney Planning 

I'm keeping my eye out for cheap fares for flights to Orlando. I started looking for fares on Southwest on Tuesday. Tuesday: $473.96 each. Wednesday: $337.50 each (same flights). Thursday: $349.95 each. Ironically, I found a site that told me that I should buy tickets from Southwest on Tuesdays. Clearly not THIS week Tuesday. The price drop between Tuesday and Wednesday was $140/ticket. That's nuts. Still waiting to see just how low I can get the tickets to go. I get it's a gamble. At the same time, if anyone out there has any secrets for getting a good price, I'm all ears. 

When we went to Disney as a family the first time, we bought a stroller on Amazon and had it shipped to our hotel so that we wouldn't have to take it on the plane. It worked out fantastically well. It was waiting in our room when we got there, and we got to use it for the week and then brought it home and sold it for almost the purchase price. I'm thinking about doing the same thing with some groceries for the race week. I'm kicking around the idea of putting together a grocery order through Amazon or some other site and having it shipped to the hotel. (Not planning on selling the leftovers when I get home, though.) 

Shoes and Miles for the Year

I am switching between two pairs of shoes for training right now. I've always tried to rotate shoes, and I've always based retirement on feel rather than on the number of miles on the shoes. But this time, I'm trying to actually track usage in my log. Four runs in, and it's not a shocker that there's already a big imbalance in use. I tend to go for whichever shoes are closest. Confirmed. Try harder, Kim!

And according to my running log, as of July 13, 2017, I've put in 639.1 miles this year. Definitely on pace to hit my 1,000 mile goal again. On July 13 of last year, I had only run 352.65 miles. I was off pace for my 1,000 mile goal, so I started a run streak that went for 188 days. That won't be the case this year, but I think the Dopey training plan will keep me on pace.

Not much to see here, today. Just some rambling thoughts of a runner. 

Dopey Challenge Travel Planning--Hotels, Flights, Parks, Dining

My initial plan for Dopey was to go with my partner-in-crime, Jen. But she can't make it. So my Plan B was to go by myself. Then my mom cooked up an idea to turn this into a mother-daughter trip because she doesn't want me to go to Florida and run 48.6 miles without someone there to cringe as I lower myself in an ice bath each night. (Plus, she hasn't been to Disney in, oh, maybe 30 years, so the prospect of getting to ride It's a Small World probably appeals to her a little bit, too). So we're on to plan C, but that means some details.

As soon as I bought my race entry, I booked a hotel room at the Pop Century Resort. I did a little bit of kicking around on some running blogs, and I found that as a recommendation among the "economy" resorts. Our family stayed at the Fort Wilderness Campground this last go-round and at the Caribbean Beach Resort on our first trip there together, but I was thinking economy this time (I'm feeling guilty because I'm not taking my husband or daughter with me for this trip...). I think that's going to stick.

People on the Facebook group I'm on started talking about dining reservations. That's where things start to get a little tricky for me. The races are Thursday through Sunday. I'm going to get my mom and me tickets to Magic Kingdom for Thursday (the day of the 5K), so I made breakfast reservations for us at Be Our Guest at 10:25 after the 5k; I'm trying to think of places that will be a treat for my mom. I also made a reservation for Epcot on the night of the marathon, but I'm rethinking that now. I'm wondering if I should just play it by ear and see how I feel? I want to get my mom a walk around Epcot, too, and I think the day we would do that would be on the marathon day before heading home on Monday, but I don't know if it is wise to commit to dining reservations. This will be my first Dopey and my ....oh, I don't know how many marathons I've done. But every marathon has a different kind of tired after it. Still, I want my mom to get to experience the parks. Still thinking about this one...

And today I'm looking at flights. I live in NW Indiana. My gut tells me to book flights out of Indianapolis because the weather up here can be bad, and Indianapolis is two hours south. Midway is a two-hour drive, too, so there's not a real advantage in heading in to Chicago. There are so many layers of anxiety around flights for me. I don't like flying. I don't like booking flights because there are so many things that can go not-quite-right with the reservations and the weather at that time of year and... And then there's the whole non-refundable commitment. Kills me. But I found a pretty cheap flight out of Indy; I'm waiting on my mom to call me back and give me the go-ahead.

Planning for a family trip (how people do these both at the same time, I don't know) and this kind of trip are two different beasts. Just need to get some more boxes checked off in the planning process.

Security! (A new path, but we aren't allowed on it...)

In order to get this story right (in my own mind--the other guy has a different version, I am sure), I must state two things that I know to be true about myself. I am, at my core, a rule follower. I don't really think that I blindly follow rules, but unless there seems to be a good reason to challenge the rule, I feel pretty okay doing whatever the rules say. So I show up for meetings because I'm supposed to be there (even if I don't want to be there), or I follow the faculty dress code because it's what I'm supposed to do. I can explore my whole bending-to-authority bent later on, but let me just start out by saying that I follow rules.

The other piece of this running story needs to acknowledge that I don't often set out from my house for a run just letting my feet take me wherever they'd like to go. I'm not a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sort of a person. I don't sit down and map out every run, but in my town I have a 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 mile set of roads I run on. For giggles, I sometimes run the route backwards. So running without a plan is pretty unusual for me.

So I'm visiting my hometown of Holland for a couple of days, helping my parents clean some stuff out of their house. They've lived in the same house since 1965, and they've accumulated some stuff. So the stuff has to be cleaned out. We've made some headway in a closet and a room of the basement in the last two days, but this promises to be a months-long project.

I got up yesterday morning here (Holland, MI) knowing I needed to run 45 minutes on the Dopey Training plan. Normally when I run in Holland, I head out South Shore Drive. There's a bike path out that way that doesn't require as many stops for traffic as the roads in downtown Holland. But yesterday, I thought I'd head over towards Hope College and Holland Municipal Stadium (the site of some of my most triumphant soccer moments twenty-five years ago in high school--cough). My plan was to run out and around the stadium and then make the next plan from there (see paragraph two here, folks. This is living life on the wild side for me.)

I ran the stadium (gorgeous!), and then I decided to head down towards the Holland Energy Park. I had seen someone walking on a new footpath there the day before, and I wanted to see where that path would take me.

As I ran up towards the path, I noticed a small "no trespassing sign" off to my left. I remember registering it in my mind and thinking that it was indicating that I wasn't to be going in this little group of construction trailers to my left. I also remember thinking that it was telling me I wasn't to go into the plant itself. Frankly, the positioning was pretty darn ambiguous, so I ran to the right--away from the no trespassing sign and towards the running path. Here's what I saw as I hit the path:

And then I came to these spots. Gorgeous, right?

And I was thinking to myself, "Man! This is really great! I'm so glad that they've done this. I'm totally going to bring my parents here for a walk. I wish they would connect this path to the downtown path, though..." and then, "I'm so glad I ventured out to find this new path..." (see  paragraph 2 again.) 

And as I was finishing the loop around to the front of the Energy Plant and getting ready to head back out to the main road (it runs right along the railroad tracks there--really gorgeous, honestly), I glanced up to my left and saw a tall, blonde-haired guy wearing dark clothing and a bright yellow vest running towards me from the entrance to the plant. I smiled and stopped and pulled my earbud out. And this interaction happened:

"Just so you know, you are trespassing. That path is closed to the public." (He's out of breath and is a bit agitated.) 

"Oh, there weren't any signs. I didn't see any signs."

"Yes, you did! We have three signs. One there! (pointing at the ambiguous sign that I mentioned), one out there (pointing out towards the train tracks), and one over there (pointing again out towards the train tracks--never saw either of those signs)." 

"I saw that first sign, but I thought it was for the plant entrance, so I ran that way. And then I didn't see any other signs. You really need better signage." 

"No. You were trespassing." (He's clearly agitated now). "And we have signs." 

(Must pause here and point you back to the first paragraph. I'm a rule follower. Had I thought that I was trespassing, I never would have taken another step forward. So there's a part of me that's feeling badly that I've broken a rule at this point, but there's also a part of me that's irritated that 1) this guy is talking to me this way and 2) the signage is so inadequate that it's actually his own darn fault that I didn't know I was trespassing. Seriously, there was not a single sign all the way around the path). 

At this point, the teacher and Challenge Course Manager who thinks about liability ALL THE TIME in me decides to take another angle: "I hope you are open to feedback here because you need better signs... Oh, wait. You are mad!" (I realize as I'm about to tell him that I think that his job would be a lot easier if he would just put up a couple more signs that he really isn't listening to me...). 

He responds, "I'm not mad! But you are!" (Clearly, this is deteriorating quickly...)

At some point, he kind of pats his yellow Security vest and says something like, "This is my job. You trespassed, but you aren't in trouble." 

At that point, I said, "Oh, well you have a great day," and I popped my headphones back in and ran off back out to the main street. 

So that was a sour note. I'm left wondering how that interaction might have been better. Won't run that path again, I guess (or maybe they'll post signs saying that it IS open?). I do have to wonder why, if I was trespassing, they let me get all the way around the back of the plant and waited until I was back heading out to the main road again. Why not chase me down? Why bother telling me as I was leaving anyway? Can't really squeeze that toothpaste back in the tube. But also, what on earth was going on in that Security guard's world that he had to manage that conversation that way? (Simon Sinek might have some insight.) 

Run on, though. Run on. 

Thinking Gear Thoughts...

Thinking gear thoughts this morning out on my run. It was a hot one. And a blister on my little toe from Sunday's run was bugging me, so I decided to pass my mental time by making a list of current favorites. I like the simplicity of running because it really just requires minimal gear (compared to triathlon, for example), but I also do love me some gear.  (Interestingly, I spend more money on running gear than I spend on clothes for work.) So here's my list from this morning's run (and there are links here for your convenience, I make NO money if you click if that's important to you to know):

Shoes:
I'm currently running in Brooks Ghost 9s. From where I'm sitting as I write this, I can see three different pairs of them in my living room. There are another two pairs upstairs in my bedroom closet. So now that they are going to Ghost 10s, I'm watching for sales with dread as the sales indicate that my shoes are going to be gone forever.

Yesterday, I found my $120 pair of running shoes on www.jackrabbit.com for $72.00. Bought two pairs. I'm thinking that two pairs @ three months a pair will get me to the end of the year and Dopey. But then they sent me a coupon for 10% off my next order, so now I'm thinking about ordering two more pairs. With an extra ten percent off, it's nearly two for the price of one, really. (The things I do to justify my thinking...) There's another website that's pretty good about finding shoe deals: www.runrepeat.com.

Bottoms:
Go to the skirtsports website and read Nicole DeBoom's story about wearing her first skirt in her win at Ironman Wisconsin 2004. I was there! I wasn't remotely close to the finish line the she won, but I was lucky enough to see Nicole on race day. The morning of the race, I found a small, quiet room in the convention center to collect my thoughts before the race, and Nicole found the same room. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a cool after-note to know that I had warmed up in a room with the race winner, and she was so nice!

Last year, I bought a couple of the Happy Girl Skirts for running, and I love them. I used to run in shorts all the time, but I always found chafing to be a problem, and they weren't long enough, and they often rode up, and it was just all kinds of awkwardness.

Skirtsports is running a summer sale, so I am picking up another of their Happy Girl Skirts, and then I'm going to try a tights/skirt combo. I'm thinking ahead to Disney, and I know that the weather could be such that I have to wear tights or it could be a skirt day. I want to be prepared either way.

Nutrition:
And it's time to order some more nutrition for while I'm running. My favorite of favorites: Gu Salted Caramel Gel. There's a long and not-all-that-interesting story about why Strawberry Banana gel is my kryptonite, so I haven't had that in quite some time. But I'll also say that I haven't done much in terms of experimentation with nutrition for long runs. Might be time to do some reading.

There's other stuff I love: Tifosi Sunglasses, Bodyglide (how does anyone live without it?), my Road ID, and Swiftwick socks. But I am not feeling all that inspired to write about them this morning. Just wanted to get this up in the blogosphere and ask if anyone out there has favorites, too. What are they? Any great stories?

Sunday--Long run day--Secret Service Fun Day

Galloway's training plan called for a three-mile long run this week. And heaven knows I love a plan! Somehow, if it's on paper, I feel justified in doing it regardless of whether or not I'm already ahead of that mileage. But then my best friend shot me a text last night, and she asked me to run the lake. Yep! It's the foundation of our friendship--yep! We get into so much fun because one of us is willing to ask the question (whatever the question might be) and the other one always answers, "Yep!"

The lake is 10 point something miles around depending on which roads we choose. Last week, Jen's knee was bothering her, so we walked the whole lake. Plenty to talk about. And we were both sore for two-three days afterwards because walking is a different kind of a workout.

Today's numbers: 10.37 mile run, 2:30:53, 14:32 pace. We were really solid through the end of mile 7, and then the heat and the distance started to get to us, and we slowed down quite a bit. For most of the first seven miles, we were running two minutes, walking one. And I hit mile six or so and said, "Oh, I feel really good!" But within a mile, I was no longer feeling good. I never felt rotten, but my legs were just weary.

Today's bit of excitement on the run was realizing that the Vice President is still in town. In our town of 1500 or so, this is big news (although also somewhat irritating given the hassles it causes). We got two miles into our run this morning and encountered this sign:

It says, "Check point ahead." And then we noticed a bunch of cars lined up, and a bomb-sniffing dog, and we realized we had come up on the house where the Veep is staying this weekend. They actually blocked off about a mile of road for this. The checkpoint was a half mile before we got to the house where he was staying, and they had a checkpoint a half mile on the other end, as well. They eyeballed us as we ran by, but they didn't bother to check us out in any other way. The nice part? There was next to no traffic on that stretch of road for once. Normally, on 4th of July weekend, we'd be dodging vacationers all day long. So that was a bit of a treat. 

And then this was on the other end. It's not a great picture. I wasn't sure if they would let me take pictures or not, so I felt like I was being a bit sneaky.

Great run day today. Perfect temps. Perfect company. And just one little blister on my toe from the seam of my sock. Dopeying onward. 

Looking for the shade--a "long"ish run

Found this while I was out on my run this morning. The local Boys' and Girls' Club posted on their Facebook page a few days back that they had planted these around town after painting them on a rainy day. I thought the idea was cute, but I also remember thinking that I'd never see one. And yet, I was out running this morning, and there one was. Just sitting in the grass on a street corner. Coolness. 

It wasn't raining this morning, though. And it wasn't dark. It was HOT. Okay, it was 70 degrees and a bit humid, but it felt like I was running in the 90s. The Dopey Challenge Training Program calls for a three-mile "long" run today. That feels a bit to me like a punt considering my base is already greater than that, so I decided to run longer. But about 30 minutes in, I was just hot. 

I came up on a friend mowing his lawn, and I used that as an excuse for a chat break. If you can't stop  a run to chat with a friend who is mowing his lawn, you shouldn't live in a small town. After a few minutes, I headed back out, but I had a hard time running longer than five or six minutes without needing another walk break. The heat was getting to me.

I was still a mile from home when I knew I needed to do much more walking than running. I found myself looking for the shade. I always know that I'm on the edge of something that might not be so great when I find myself looking for the shade and choosing my streets based on how the trees are covering the street. I can be pretty stubborn about keeping up a run even when I shouldn't, but when I stepped off into the shade of a tree, and I felt a chill, I knew I was in the hole on hydration. Ended up walking more than running the last mile home. 

Coffee, saying good-bye to a friend, and running...

This morning, I couldn't pick up my coffee cup. I didn't sleep well last night, either. Something in the right shoulder/neck/upper right quadrant area of my body was off enough that when I rolled over in bed, the pain woke me up. I'm a right-side sleeper, generally, and trying to sleep on my back was hard. And then I got up this morning, and I could get my coffee cup about four inches from my mouth, but not all the way there because of a pull in my neck. Haven't had this kind of soreness in quite some time. What on earth?

A few weeks ago, a close family friend passed away. She was in hospice care when my mom called to    tell me that it wouldn't be long. Our friend and I had fallen out of touch. But I imagine it's like many friendships--people weave their way in and out of life. At the point that my mother called, our friend was not really in my life. And I didn't get to talk to her before she died. By the time I was ready to make the call, she was already gone. 

So yesterday, when I headed out on the bike, I found myself in conversation with my friend. And by the time our conversation ended, it was 45 minutes later, and I had ridden really hard without noticing...until last night when I was laying in bed and kept having weird, stiff pains in my neck. And then there was the coffee cup this morning. Clearly, an excuse to skip a scheduled run--day 2 of the Galloway training program for Dopey.

(Spoiler, I didn't skip...) So I went and got my running shoes on. My neck was stiff enough that I couldn't really negotiate putting on my shirt and bra, so that was my first adventure. And I set out planning to walk as much as I wanted to. But then I started running. And I hit the hill pictured above, and it felt pretty darn good. Galloway calls for a couple of 45 minute runs during the week, so that's what I set out to do. Ran 4 minutes, walked 1 in the heat and humidity of this fine Indiana morning. And then came back home to another cup of coffee. This one, I could drink. 

The Dopey Challenge--Re-entry to the blogosphere

First Run Selfie

Happy Cross-Training Day Selfie (in an Oberon Jersey!)

Imagine my surprise when I signed on to my running blog this morning and realized it has been four years since I have posted. Fear not, I've been running for the last four years. I just haven't been writing much about it. No time like the present, though, to kick off a new round of entries with a cliche and everything! 

I have signed up for (and plunked down a good chunk of change for) the Dopey Challenge at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida taking place in January of 2018. I will be running a 5k on January 4, a 10K on January 5, a half marathon on January 6, and a full marathon on January 7.  Why? Bucket list, of course. But also because it just sounds badass and hard, and I like doing things that sound badass and hard. 

There are all kinds of logistics things running through my head as I write this first entry. I'm a teacher, and I'm supposed to be back in class on January 8. I'm not going to make it. But I'll be in class on the 9th! My best friend usually goes on these adventures with me, and I'm still trying to convince her to at least join me for the full (the Dopey Challenge closed pretty soon after registration opened). My mom has offered to come to Florida with me so that I'm not down there alone, and now I want to run around the parks with her, but that isn't in the race plan.

But the training plan really should be the focus of this first entry. So I'm using the Galloway training plan for right now. It started yesterday. And he lists the goal for the plan as something like, "To finish upright." That seems like a reasonable goal. But in September, I'll be switching to what I perceive to be a slightly more rigorous program--the Hal Higdon training plan.  Galloway sticks with a three-day per week training plan early on. It doesn't feel like enough given how much I have to get done between now and then (much getting in shape to happen), but I like it for the summer months of July and August so that I can get in some biking. I just finished up a Hal Higdon training program to run a marathon in April, and I was feeling pretty burnt out by the time I was done. Hoping that cross training will help me maintain some sanity.

On that note, I took a day 1 selfie for the run (look at that happy smile!). And a day 2 selfie for my first cross-training ride (look at that jersey!). I am a runner who loves a plan, and I've got the next several months of training runs mapped out. 

Transitions.

I have 34 teaching days left in the school year, and I am on the tail end of my Spring Break. And we are about to make a major transition. Major. We are moving the family up to northwest Indiana to settle in at a new job, new school, new house, and new community. Except it isn't all that new (for me). I worked there for six years before moving to Kentucky, and I feel like I'm moving home. That being said, moving when you have a husband and child is a whole different ball game, and we're in about the bottom of the fifth inning. The house is on the market (ever tried to sell a house with a 3 year old living in it?), and we are trying to figure out the logistics of closing up one house/job and starting another. 

My best friend (who lives there) and I were texting the other day, and she said, "I saw two women getting ready for a run together, and I didn't even get jealous because I knew you were coming back." We ran a 10-mile run around the lake there nearly every Sunday for about four years. I'm realizing that I can't even write about it here because I don't know what to say. However, I will say this. I lived downstairs from her in a two-story apartment building, and we got to the point where we wouldn't even talk on Sunday mornings before the run. CBS Sunday morning would end on the television, and I would hear her door open and her feet on the stairs, and we'd meet in the parking lot outside and head out. I moved away in 2005, and I haven't lived in a building with a second story since, but there are Sunday mornings when I'd swear I'm still listening for the sound of her door. 

And now we get to run again. 

"Hmmm, but I'm a distance runner."

I was home in Michigan during this last week, and we were bopping around to various kid-friendly venues over the course of the week to keep our daughter entertained and to maintain our sanity. We ended up at an awesome play space for kids--$5.00 for 15,000 square feet of fun: kid cars, a kid's Meijer's, a bank, a playhouse, a stage with costumes, a spaceship...all kinds of fun. And I started chatting it up with another mom while my daughter was taking her first shot at using Elmer's glue in public.

I commented on how dreamy it is for me to come home and run in my hometown. It seems that I run fast every time I run there. It could have something to do that my hometown is on a lake, but the air doesn't make me feel like I'm running in one. In Kentucky, the heat and humidity can be so oppressive that a run on country roads feels like a slog through a swamp.

Me: Every time I come home, I drop a minute off my mile time. It's awesome.
New Friend: Oh, but I'm a distance runner.
Me: Me, too. I mean my pace. I'm faster here.
New Friend: Yeah, see I run distance.

At this point, I'm not really sure where the disconnect is. We're chatting, though, and it's nice to find a fellow runner. She tells me she hasn't run a race since before the birth of her daughter 22 months ago. I totally get this. I tell her that I ran the Flying Pig in May; it is my first marathon since, um, the marathon at Ironman in 2007.

New Friend: See, I like running the half.
Me: Me, too! It's my favorite distance. It's much easier for recovery!
New Friend: But the half is so competitive!

Now I've got it. We're two different types of runners. My friend is actually one of those folks who looks at the competition when she shows up at the line. I am one of those folks who looks at every step of the route I run as the competition. Me versus the road. There are other people there? I seldom notice (except in the case of the end-of-marathon nuttiness if you read my previous post on the Pig).

I don't know at what point I fell into this camp. I was competitive when I was doing sprint distance triathlons and could pull off a place in my age group. I liked that feeling. But I have somehow always, always known that the only person I was competing against on a run was myself. In the triathlon world, I am a strong swimmer. And given enough time on the bike, I can pull together a decent leg on the bike. On the run, I'm always just holding on for dear life.

So since making the switch primarily to running post-baby, I haven't really thought much about being competitive. I've just run. Run. Run.

I'm reading a book right now. "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" by Haruki Marukami,  and I was really struck by his definitions of running seriously or running rigorously, and it made me ache a little bit for the kind of training schedule I had when I was "competitive." And while I realized at  the time that I was with my new friend that we were different, I didn't realize until I read this book that I  have been in both camps at one point in my life and that I miss that feeling, too. I miss recognizing two different sides to my athletic self. So I've got to head back a bit more rigor in running.

PowerGel 2008--the vintage version

I went out on my long run today with PowerGels from 2008. Well, they expired in 2008. So that probably means that they were made in 2006. For some reason, this doesn't bother me. Odd because I won't eat most food that is a single day past its expiration date. My friend got this great deal at a discount store on boxes of gels, and I have been carting them around ever since. I'm not training enough, clearly. They should be gone by now. I even swore I'd throw them all away after the marathon last May and start fresh. But I'm cheap. They are my everyday gels. And then, on race day, I get to have my dress-up gel that I buy at the race expo. I will never eat Strawberry Banana anything again. Ever.

The school year started. My schedule got out of control. Blah, blah, blah. No posting here. So what did I need gels for today? A 10 mile long run. And what was I doing a ten-mile long run for? The Indianapolis half marathon that is happening in about a month. And at what point in my adulthood did I stop understanding when to hyphenate and to stop asking questions that I was going to immediately answer in my writing?

On to the running. I feel like the kid in class who works really, really, really hard but is still going to be a "C" student no matter what. You know the kid. There are a couple of pieces to kill the metaphor, though. I only have been working sorta really hard on my running (I actually started doing "speed" workouts, for crying out loud). And if my performance is anything like it was at the Flying Pig, then I'm really more of a "D" student.

So I'll throw this out there. Last year, my goal at the Indianapolis half was to go sub 2:30. I think my official time was a 2:29 something. So I did it. And I set out at the start of my training to train for a pace that would put me closer to 2:20 (I think that's 10:40 miles or so). I successfully ran a solid 5-miler at race pace on Tuesday of this week. On my long run today, though, I didn't even come close to that pace. I know I wasn't supposed to. But sometimes it's kinda nice when the pace just magically comes together. Today wasn't so magical. Still, I've got a super-secret time goal of 2:20 for this race. A not-so-secret time goal of 2:25.

What I'd really like, though, is to be running the times that I was pulling off in 2008 when my vintage Powergels weren't yet expired. We'll get there. I posted this quote this week on my facebook page because of last week's long run: "Of course it's hard. The hard is what makes it great. If it weren't hard, everyone would be doing it." Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own. The hard really is what makes it great.