Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Flash Forward

Like my regular blog, this one has been neglected over the past few weeks! Sorry about that.

Training hit a small snag when I bashed my knee and wasn't able to run one weekend. It's fine now, but as far as I had progressed over a few weeks, I quickly lost and feel like I'm rebuilding my stamina.

This morning, however, was a good run. On my solo maintenance runs I will pick a spot to run to when I first feel fatigue, run there, then walk to the next spot I see, and start running at the next spot I pick. This morning my mind was elsewhere and before I knew it I had ran without stopping nearly half of my track. Again... my mind is my biggest enemy.

My last group run was our timed run and I was placed in my pace group. I had been out briefly the night before, eaten crap and had 2 glasses of wine. Not a terrible meal, but I ran for $hite that day and was in a slower pace group than I may have. Not a bad thing, don't get me wrong. I think it's better to be in a slower group that I can pace out of than to be in a faster group that I can't keep up with.

However, the week following I got a call from sweet Beth at the marathon training office trying her best to be nice about essentially saying "you know, you're a slowpoke and Amsterdam has a time requirement so what's your plan? Chicago or Hawaii?" Neither of these options were viable for me. Hawaii is only a full marathon and that's RIGHT out. Besides.. have you been to Honolulu? It should be called "Hill"alulu. I couldn't run a full marathon on flat land much less hilly land. And Chicago? Please. I do love my hometown, but I'm not going through all this pain of training and begging for bucks and run a half marathon in Chicago. I do that trying to catch the X80 bus on Irving Park when I'm late for work!

I assured Beth that my time would improve and I'd be OK for Amsterdam. And if they have to come sweep me up because I'm too slow for their pace in Amsterdam... don't forget... I'm IN Amsterdam!

Back when I worked for AIDS Foundation of Chicago I was trying to get my friend Stephen Rader to form an AIDS Run/Walk team with his Season of Concern folks. He was hemming and hawing and I knew why. People want to raise money, but not all of them want to be physical for it. I told him in a nice, but slightly conspiratorial voice "just raise money... I don't need you to actually run..." I know, that sounds like you're defeating the purpose. But, he had such a laugh about it that he used the same tack with his people and each year their team gets bigger and raises more and more money.

SO, Emily... I'm going to do my damnedest to improve my running time, and I really really really want to cross that finish line in Amsterdam... but... I don't need to actually run....

Kidding of course... it's the humor side of me

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