When I look at the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon finisher’s medal that is hanging on my bulletin board, I fondly remember the race, particularly the part where I got to stop running. While I enjoyed the cinnamon crunch bagels and the thrill of accomplishment, I’ve decided not to run the race again this year. I wiffled and waffled for awhile, but I knew if I ran it again it would just be for show since my heart is not in it. Been there, done that, got the medal.

I greatly admire people who take up long distance running, but it is not necessary to run half-marathons to stay in shape, nor is it the best possible way to lose pounds. I actually gained weight when I was training last year. Right now I’d rather focus on maintaining my current weight and perhaps losing another 10-20 pounds, so half-marathon training is not consistent with those goals. I know some people do lose weight when training, but I’m not one of them.

Instead, my personal health goal for this year is to maintain a level of fitness so I could go out and run a 5K at any time. I just hate it when I’m at the office and they say, “Let’s run a 5K after lunch!” and I have to turn them down. At my running speed, that goal would mean being able to run for about 35 minutes constantly, which is doable.

In memory of my past running achievements, here’s a slideshow of me crossing the finish line at the Training Series 10K last year, captured by the official documentarian of my life, my mother. Thanks, Mom!

“I don’t know how you do that,” said the 50-or-60-something man who was running on the treadmill next to me in my apartment’s exercise room. In light of the current economic crisis, I’ve decided to ditch my YMCA membership and use my complex’s resources instead. I’ll just have to cross my fingers that no one is using the elliptical machine when I want it and remind myself that a little patience will save hundreds of dollars a year.

“I don’t know how *I* did that,” I replied as I stepped off the treadmill to stretch. I’d interspersed my running with walking and I’d probably faked him out a few times thinking I was done with the good treadmill as he had lifted weights.

“It takes a lot of determination,” he said. “When you get to be my age, you can’t run like that anymore.” It turns out my neighbor ran the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon five times. “I never broke two hours though.”

“I could only DREAM of breaking two hours,” I replied. We had a nice little chat as I finished stretching, which was pleasantly odd because most of my neighbors seem to actively avoid conversation or eye contact. “Well, I’m going to take a shower,” I said as I put on my coat.

“Keep up with it!” He said. I no longer felt disappointed, but proud of myself. I may not be able to run a half-marathon right now, but I can run for over a mile. I’m not in the best shape I’ve ever been in my life, but I’m still in pretty good shape. It was good to be reminded of the positive when it’s so easy to focus only on the negative. And I’m going to keep up with it.

Some days I would look at my training schedule and think, “Oh, dear Lord. I have to run 45 minutes tonight or else I’m going to collapse in a pile of goo at mile 10 on race day.” That was the dreadful thing, knowing that I had to do these long-ass runs or else I might not be able to complete the race. And I’d already told a bazillion people I was running a half-marathon, so I had to do it. The training took up so much of my time, that I eventually stopped doing anything but running for the last month, completely neglecting weight training or core strengthening exercises. My exercise routing became very unbalanced.

I still like to run, but 20-30 minutes a day is enough for me. Here’s a pic of me about halfway through the half-marathon. Does it look like I’m having fun?

I like that I can play things by ear now. I can come home and think, “Hmmmm, haven’t done weights for a couple days. I guess I’ll do some lifting.” Or if it’s been a really long day and I’ve been good about working out earlier in the week, I can just take the day off. It’s more flexible. There’s more variety in my activities. It’s much better all around. And I don’t have to buy gel-packs anymore.

Which is not to say I’ll never run another half-marathon. I’m mulling the possibility of doing the Indy 500 Mini again next year. But it definitely inserted a bit of chaos into my life. It’s nice settling back into my old routines and knowing I don’t have to run 13.1 miles again any time soon.

My mom and I drove downtown and parked in my office’s parking garage, which is conveniently located 4-5 blocks away from the starting line. Thus we avoided any parking nightmares and I felt slightly better about the garage fee they take out of my pay check every month. I felt chilly in my long-sleeved shirt and sweater as we walked towards the starting corral. The sun was still rising, but from what I could see the weather appeared gloomy, though thankfully it wasn’t raining. Thunderstorms had whipped through town the night before and there were still some puddles in the road.

As we got closer and closer to the starting corrals we encountered more and more people. It felt like I was in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind where everyone is inexplicably drawn to the mountain at the end of the film. I was one of thousands of people converging on a couple blocks of downtown Indianapolis for a shared, unspoken reason. 35,000 people run the half-marathon, so to prevent congestion they divide us into starting corrals from A-Z based on our estimated finishing time. I was in S. As my mom and I sat on the blockades, we read people’s bibs and occasionally I would whisper to her, “Look! That person is a B!” as though I’d just seen a celebrity. I only saw one A and I felt like I should kiss his running shoes in tribute to his superior athletic skill.

About 15 minutes before the gun time, I got into my corral. This is when I started to feel a little self-conscious about the sign I’d taped to my back.

I figured there were 35,000 people in this race, and most of them would be passing me, so I might as well use my back to promote my book. I felt a bit silly about it, but I figured I wouldn’t have to make eye-contact with anyone who read it, saving me some embarrassment. I checked my phone and saw I’d missed a call from Laura, another blogger running the race, and called her back, but we weren’t able to find each other before the race started. Sorry, Laura!

At 7:30, the race started! It looked like this:

Can’t you smell the excitement? As I said, I was in the S corral, meaning thousands of people in the A-R corrals were ahead of me. So, we waited.

And we waited.

Someone threw a beach ball into the crowd which we bounced around. Slowly we started walking in fits and stops to the starting line two blocks ahead of us. As we got within 100 yards of the starting line, people started walking faster, then we were jogging, and then 18 minutes and 15 seconds later I was crossing the starting line thinking, “Oh, hey, I’m running a half-marathon. How weird.” Then I did some mental math and tried not to be discouraged by the fact that the elite runners were already past mile 3 by now.

The race course was very similar to the training series course, except for the pit stops where the asphalt road could barely be seen beneath the trampled paper cups. At first I tried tossing my cup into the trash cans, but they were overflowing by the time us slower runners passed by, so I settled for aiming for the gutter instead. I had brought my headphones and MP3 player along, but was surprised to find I didn’t need them because so much was happening. There were good cover bands and bad cover bands and bagpipes and cloggers and square dancers all along the route. I wouldn’t even be able to plot out the race course on a map because I wasn’t paying attention to the street signs. I just followed everybody else. There were time clocks at each mile marker, so I kept checking my pace bracelet as we ran, mentally trying to add 18 minutes to the time. Mental math is hard when you’re running a mini-marathon.

Near mile 6, I started to think about walking. I kept running anyway. Then we came upon the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As part of the race, the runners do a lap around the Speedway, though I was only going about 2% as fast as the racecars. We ran down a steep ramp to enter the stadium. Awesome! So fast and so easy. Then we had to run up a steep ramp to get on the track. Not awesome! So slow and so hard.

It was at this point that I realized the weather was freaking gorgeous. The sun was shining bright, a cool breeze came across the infield, and I was actually a bit hot. I couldn’t believe I’d thought about wearing my fleece vest this morning. Suddenly all those people in shorts and tank tops that I’d laughed at in the morning cold seemed a lot smarter than me. I rolled up my long-sleeved shirt and kept running around the track.

And kept running around the track.

And kept running around the track some more.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is evidently two and a half miles long, as I now know very well. After we exited the speedway, we passed a family sitting on lawn chairs in their front lawn drinking beer and watching us run by. After I passed through a Gatorade station, my feet started sticking to the pavement. Oh no, how many seconds was that taking off of my time?

At mile 10, I decided I needed the cheesy techno. I put on my headphones and it was only a dance remix of Bryan Adams singing “Run to You” that got me through the next mile. I started wishing the pit stops would come closer and closer together so I’d have a good excuse to slow down and walk. Someone ran past wearing a shirt that said “Are we there yet?” Good question.

Somewhere before the 12 mile marker I slowed down to walk for a minute. Then I started running again. As we got within a mile of the finish line the signs started telling us how much farther we had to go. 1 mile left. 3/4 of a mile left. At 1/2 mile left I stopped to walk. My lower abs were aching and my toes were starting to hurt.

As we approached the 1/4 mile left sign, I could finally see the finish line. I started running again. A woman on the sidelines yelled, “Go, Jennette!” While I know she just read my name off my bib and had no idea who I was, it was very encouraging. Some people next to me actually started to sprint to the finish line. Jerks. I would have tripped them if I wasn’t so damn exhausted. As I kept running and running, the finish line came closer and closer. It was very unexpected. For the last leg of the race in my training series runs we had to turn a corner and then turn a corner and then turn another corner and BAM! there was the finish line. Now I could actually see the end heading straight towards me.

And then I crossed the finish line. I couldn’t believe it was over. No, really, I didn’t quite believe that it was okay to stop running. For the last three miles I felt like I’d be running forever, that the rest of my life would be spent drudging along, trying to finish an endless race. I imagined that decades from now my relatives would be driving past 10th street, see me and shake their heads sadly as I plodded along trying to finish that damn mini-marathon. “Keep going, keep going, keep going,” I had told myself and now I got to say, “Okay, stop.” It made the race suddenly seem much shorter. A 13.1 mile race is much shorter than an endless race.

I threw my hands up victoriously for the photographer, though I was so tired my palms probably didn’t reach above my head. My official time was 2 hours, 33 minutes, 26 seconds. Then I got lots of free stuff that only cost me $50.00 in registration fees. At the recovery area I grabbed a banana, apple, potato chips and a rather dry, chocolate chip cookie. But no bagels! What was this? All the training series runs had bagels afterwards, but suddenly there were no cinnamon crunch or French toast bagels in sight. Where were you when I needed you, Panera?

People sometimes joke about hobbling after runs, but I literally did hobble to the family reunion area to get a big hug from my mother.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said.

“Thanks. Can I lean on you?” I replied. And then I did. I leaned on her for a whole minute before I felt strong enough to stand up again. Someone must have rearranged the layout of the city in that time because suddenly the parking garage was a lot farther away. Even today, my quads are sore, my toes are sore, my shoulders are sore, and if I breathe in really deeply my lungs are sore.

Before I left, I was standing in line to get my picture taken with my shiny finisher’s medal and I heard a girl in line behind me say, “That’s so awesome.” While she might have been referring to her chocolate chip cookie, I think she was referring to the sign on my back with my book cover which said, “I lost half my weight, now I’m running a half-marathon. I hope this idea isn’t half-baked!” Her comment made me smile a little bit, because while I’m mostly a humble person, it is pretty awesome isn’t it? I really did lose half my weight. And I really did just run a half-marathon. When my mom and I returned to the parking garage, she said there were a lot of things she’d thought I do in life, but never this. “I never thought I’d have an athlete in the family.” And we didn’t even have to adopt the illegitimate child of an NBA superstar to do it. It’s me.

Then we stopped at a bakery and I stood in line, sweaty and gross in my full running gear, to buy a huge cinnamon roll. Because seriously, no bagels?

When I picked up my pace bracelet at the running store yesterday, the clerk asked me, “Got your outfit picked out?”

“Yep,” I replied like I was an A-student proud to be prepared for a pop quiz.

“Is your shirt white?” she asked as she rung up my gel pack purchases.

“Um, yeah it is.” How did she know that?

“Better wear a dark sports bra,” she said as she handed me the receipt. Why would I wear a dark bra with a white shirt? That didn’t sound like an ensemble that would land me on the cover of People’s best-dressed issue. Then my brain made the connection:

White shirt + Rain + Bouncing for 13.1 miles = Girls Gone Wild: Mini-Marathon Edition.

A black bra it is!

I’ve got my checklist of items to bring. I’m going to lay out my outfit and all my stuff tonight. I’ve got maps to the locations. I’m picking up my packet at the exposition tonight. I’m eating my carbs and drinking my water. I feel prepared.

After the race, you can still come to my book release party at 3pm at The Milano Inn downtown. There will be plenty of food and I’ll be selling books! Hope you can make it. I will try to post about the race and the party as soon as possible, but it might be a couple days after the events because, boy, am I going to be tired.

By the way, for anyone who was wondering, I think my appearance on the local Fox Morning News show went pretty well yesterday. My VHS tape of the show has a big, squiggly stripe of interference halfway through my segment, so I’ll try to rip it off of my Mom’s TiVo sometime later and post it on the book site when I find the time, as well as a post over there about what the experience was like.

The 15K scared me. I’d never run that far or that long before. My training schedule had called for a 1 hour and 45 minute run a couple weeks earlier, but I’d had to bail on it because of a foot injury. I didn’t know what to expect, but in my best case scenario I envisioned long bouts of walking near the end. Worst case? I hoped I wouldn’t start crying like a little girl on the side of the road during the 10-40% chance of rain.

Before the start of the race the announcer on the loudspeaker told us it was a lovely day for a race, which led me to suspect that he was broadcasting from another state. It was not a lovely day for a race. It was 40 degrees, windy, and overcast with a chance of rain. I suspect they must always say it’s a lovely day for a race, just like late night talk show hosts always say they’ve got a great show tonight even when their only guest is a dog that juggles salami. However, I’d paid my money and I’d gotten up at a godawful hour, so I was going to run even if it started raining sulfur. Considering that the temperature on the day of each one of these training series races has just gotten colder and colder, I fully expect it to snow on the day of the Mini-Marathon.

It’s against the rules to wear headphones during the race, but I decided to treat that more like a guideline than an actual rule because there was no way I was going to run for almost two hours in utter silence. Cheesy techno music is as essential for long runs as Gatorade. I don’t know how anyone finished a marathon before the invention of the synthesizer. I noticed several other runners were wearing iPods on their sleeves and had earbuds on and no one bothered busting us. I prefer to wear huge, old-school, headphones hidden under my hat since I worry that earbuds will fall out of my ear lobes. I already had a 60-minute playlist made for my long run two weekends ago, so I listened to that and scrolled back to the middle near the end of the race.

And we were off! After the second mile the race saw its first casualty. There on the sidewalk was a dead turtle. I cringed at its broken shell and the fresh red blood oozing onto the concrete. The poor little snapper couldn’t cross the road fast enough. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d been trampled myself if I’d stumbled on some of the small concrete chunks littered near the gutter.

After 45 minutes it started to sprinkle. I began to zip up my jacket in anticipation of a cold, wet shower, but then the rain stopped and I thanked whatever god is in charge of the weather for having mercy on me. As I continued down the road, I was blasted by an ungodly headwind. I kept plowing forward, but it was difficult to make any progress, like I was running on a treadmill headed the other direction. At mile 7 my hands were so cold I actually put my gloves back on, something I’ve never had to do after my body has warmed up during a race. I kept my hat on for the whole run too.

Despite the cold and the wind and the dead turtle, I had a really good run. At every mile there is an electronic sign that states the mile and the race time. I ran past the 5-mile sign and then the 6-mile sign and later the 7-mile sign and was amazed to find myself thinking, “I’m feeling pretty good.” I credit this feeling to my carbo-loading the day before and my strategically timed ingestion of PowerGels at 45 minutes and 1 hour and 15 minutes into the race. Those things really work. I also drank Gatorade at each station, though I was sorely disappointed with the service at aid station number four. Normally there are about 8 people at each station whose sole purpose in life is to offer you cups of Gatorade and water. Aid station number 4 was woefully understaffed and I had to actually stop and grab a Gatorade off the table myself. It was bizarre and it added at least 10 seconds of time to my run.

But run I did, for essentially the whole race, only walking to drink Gatorade at aid stations. The cruelest part of the route was near the end when I was plodding down the Canal Walk and finally came upon the State Museum where the finish line was. “Wow, that last mile really breezed by!” I thought…only not. Someone with a cruel sense of humor charted the route so we’d have to run a block around the building even though we could see the bagels and cookies and chips being offered by 500 Festival princesses in tiaras only yards away. Not only that, we also had to run right past a bicycle rental stand.

Yet I made it, all 9.3 miles, in 1 hour 45 minutes and 14 seconds, which is a frakking awesome time for me. That’s a 11:18 minute per mile pace. I was amazed. I really thought I’d have to stop and walk parts of the race, but I ran essentially the whole thing. I rock! It made me confident that I can finish the Mini-Marathon in 3 weeks. That will be another 4 miles, but if I’d really had to I could have done that. It wouldn’t have been pleasant, but I could have handled it, though I would have demanded more bagels at the end. As it was I grabbed two cookies and a French Toast bagel and a banana for my mom, who waited diligently for almost two hours for me to run a big circle.

I’ve updated the sidebar with my 15K time and my weight for this month. A couple eagle-eyed readers noticed I hadn’t weighed in at the beginning of the month like usual. I admit, I knew I’d have to update the sidebar with my 15K time today so I was hoping my weight would go down a little by then too, but it’s at 182, so I may as well post it. I’d of course prefer it was 178 like last month, but then I thought about the fact that I ran 9 miles this morning and decided 182 is nothing to be ashamed of. Nine miles, people! I ran nine miles! Four years ago I was so fat that I injured myself walking up the stairs and this morning I ran nine miles!

Which is why I am exhausted and I hobbled up the stairs to my apartment like an old woman with arthritis. Back to the couch for me so I can work on my favorite part of my training program – rest and recovery.

Freezing fog?! That sounds like something I’d have to face in a video game after crossing the river of lava and fighting off flying monkeys. If I went for my scheduled run, would I be flash frozen in a cube of ice, becoming a PastaQueen popsicle? I imagined myself only being discovered centuries later by archeologists who would say, “This early 21st century humanoid was part of a bizarre cult known as ‘runners.’ You can tell by her overpriced shoes and the abundance of cheesy techno music on her MP3 player.”

I looked up “freezing fog” on Wikipedia only to learn that there are eleventy-billion different types of fog: freezing fog, Garua fog, radiation fog, hail fog, upslope fog, advection fog and more. Freezing fog “occurs when liquid fog droplets freeze to surfaces, forming white rime ice.” I decided I could survive being coated in rime ice and drove down to the running store. The only part that felt like a video game was when I drove through the fog, which always reminds me of the Atari racing game Enduro. This in turn reminds me that I am old.

Today we ran for 60 minutes down the towpath next to the canal. It’s odd how fog makes everything mysterious, like a fantasy film, as if elves might pop out of the bushes at any moment. It also motivated me to run pretty quickly across intersections for fear of being hit by an unseen SUV only 30 yards away. The towpath is the home to lots of ducks and geese, who unlike me don’t mind to dunk their heads in 30-degree water. I passed a couple white ducks and lots of green duck poo. Lots of green duck poo.

For the most part, the waterfowl contributed to the picturesque atmosphere. Then I ran into the Gatekeeper Goose. This goose stood in the middle of the crushed limestone path, staring me down on my return trip. Its beady black eyes revealed nothing of its thoughts, if indeed its brain was large enough to have thoughts. As I dared to bolt past it, I thought of the old family tale of the time my Aunt L. was chased around my grandparent’s farm by a freshly butchered, headless chicken, squirting blood. If dead, headless poultry could terrorize a child like that, what could a bird with its beak still attached do? Thankfully, the goose didn’t make a move and my fantasy film did not suddenly morph into an old Hitchcock thriller.

Otherwise, it was a pretty good run, or at least as “good” as a 60-minute, 5-mile run can be. About 25-minutes in, I spied a park bench that looked like a great resting spot. Except it was on the other side of the canal. At that same moment two runners passed me in the other direction and I momentarily envisioned myself tossing one of them in the water and floating on his back to the other side. Instead, I abstained from committing assault and kept running. It was cold enough that there wasn’t much mud. I ran past the Butler University woman’s track team in both directions. I admire those girls for voluntarily running on a Saturday morning, especially considering I spent most of my Saturday mornings in college laying comatose in a bunk bed with Twinkies within an arm’s reach.

I also finally tried the free Raspberry Cream PowerBar Power Gel I got at the taste-testing session a month ago. I’d heard these could be rather nasty, but it was fairly good, or as “good” as a 100-calorie carbohydrate gel can be. It tasted like someone mixed the center of a Cadbury Crème egg with raspberry flavored cough medicine. You need to refuel your body with carbs during longer runs or else you can literally run out of energy to finish the race. I needed to test it to make sure I wouldn’t barf it up when I use a couple during my 15K next week.

Yes, the 15K is next week.

And the mini-marathon is in 4 weeks.

I realized it was getting pretty close when I flipped over the fourth and final page of the training schedule today. After today’s run, I have now run approximately 100 miles in preparation for these races. Wow. It makes me wonder if The Proclaimers had ever trained for a marathon when they wrote that song, “I Would Walk 500 Miles.” Because, damn, that’s really far to walk. I’ve only gone 1/5 of that in a little over two months. I can only think of a handful of people I would actually walk 500 miles for, and like the song says I would definitely “fall down at your door” if I did.

Hopefully the weather will be nicer next week for the race. However, given the recent history, I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up Saturday morning to see this in my system tray:

There is a surprisingly large amount of people at the YMCA on a Saturday morning. I spent most of my life asleep on Saturday mornings, so it’s odd to think there are thousands of people around the world who get up that early on purpose to take part in painful exercise, and that I am now one of them. Today the schedule called for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Which is why it’s more of a “guideline” than a schedule. My left foot has been feeling great, but going for a run longer than many major motion pictures would be an easy way to make it feel not great again. Overuse is probably how I damaged it in the first place, and I can’t afford to be injured again before my race. This also provided an excellent rationalization for ditching my training group, because I would be able to stop running at any time if my foot began to hurt. Instead, I only ran for an hour, hopping off after 45 minutes to walk across the gym to refill my water bottle and then get back on the treadmill. The morning sun pounds down through the gym’s eastern wall of windows in the morning, so ironically I was hot at the end of my run instead of trying to warm numb earlobes.

It was damn exhausting. I am trying not to think about the fact that I’m running a 15K in two weeks, which will take almost twice as long as today’s run. That’s 9.2 miles, farther than I’ve ever run at once in my life. It will probably take me a little under two hours, longer than I’ve ever run at once in my life. And then, oh yeah, the Mini-Marathon is only a month away now. This is going to be painful. I’m really going to have to stick to my training schedule if I have any hope of making it to the finish line in a reasonable time.

But at least I have an MP3 player that works! I may be a techie, but I have never been into gadgets. They’re expensive and I’m the type of person who keeps something until it completely breaks. Last week, when I left the gym in an angry rage because my old MP3 player died halfway through a workout, I decided it was time to cough up the cash for a new one. I thought about getting an iPod, but you have to buy an extra doohickie to listen to the radio on it. Instead I purchased a competing device with a built-in radio that was much cheaper, giving up any attempt to be trendy. I’m rapidly approaching age 30 and it’s time to accept that I will probably never be trendy again (not that I ever was).

I wanted a radio because now I can listen to the audio on the TVs at the gym. Those little signs that say “Tune to 90.1 FM to listen” have been taunting me for weeks. I really want to listen to Ellen live instead of reading the captioning 20 seconds after the dialogue has been spoken. And now I can. That’s at least one good reason to keep training.

ETA: I originally avoided saying what MP3 player I bought because I didn’t want y’all to think the purpose of this post was to sell you electronics. But, a couple people asked so I’m adding the info here to quell curiosity, not to make big bucks. I got the Creative Zen V Plus 4 GB Portable Media Player. It’s got a radio, I can organize music into playlists, it supports Audible files so I can listen to audio books, and 4GB holds enough music for me to run across the state without any duplicates. It’s not dependent on any software to work, meaning you can plug it into a USB drive and transfer files on basically any computer. It also recharges through the USB port, which is handy because I don’t have to fumble with two different plugs. Also, it is a standard USB connection, so if I lose the plug I can buy a new one very easily. The sound quality is good and I’ve been happy with it so far. I’ll let you know if I have any problems. It’s very small and lightweight, so my biggest fear is simply losing it or dropping the thing.

I was a bit worried on Sunday because my left knee felt weird. At the rate these things were happening, I thought I’d soon be reporting that the left side of my body had fallen off and I was going to rename this blog “A Fourth of Me.” Thankfully the knee feels fine today too, so we’re back in business.

All this means I didn’t go for my training run with my group on Saturday morning, but I’ll hopefully be back out there this Saturday. Just in time for the 1 hour 45 minute run! Um, yay? I doubt I’ll do that whole distance. I’ll see how my foot’s feeling and go with that. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but even though I’ve missed several group runs I still haven’t missed a Saturday morning with lovely weather. Even though it’s warmer, it’s still been gloomy or rainy. Before that it was always snowy or icy. There has yet to be one really nice morning for a run. This is a city where I had to scrape frost off of my car on Easter morning. I’ve lived here for several years, but I can’t remember a winter this long. I don’t know if my memory is just bad or if the cold starts to grate on you after several years or if this is indeed a really, long winter. I do know that it is officially spring now and I’d like to see some God damn roses on the side of the trail that I can stop to smell.

So, of course, this is the week I injure my left foot.

Some days I might be happy to use an injury as an excuse to avoid a long run. Instead, I’d been looking forward to using a long run as an excuse to have a Coco Loco, a chocolate truffle surrounded by coconut cake and glazed with caramel. No 90-minute run for me. No Coco Loco either :(

It’s all been rather tragic. Last Wednesday it was 50 degrees out and I came home 90 minutes before sunset, leaving plenty of time to run on the trail without three layers of insulation. Only I couldn’t, because I’ve developed a sharp pain on the underside of my foot when I walk, not always, just sometimes when I distribute my weight in certain ways. I suspect it’s an overuse injury, a strained ligament or tendon or something. The best way to attack an injury is to catch it early, ice it and rest it, which is what I’ve been doing. This weekend I tried not to leave my apartment, which wasn’t too hard since that’s how I spent most of my college years. Ha, ha, ha…how I wish I was kidding.

It seems to be helping because the pain has receded, though it doesn’t yet feel healed. It’s happened in a fairly good spot in my training schedule since next week calls for a cutback in running. (30 minute runs instead of 45!) However, it effing sucks. It’s beyond frustrating when my body cannot keep up with my mind. I’ve been using the elliptical machine at the gym instead of the treadmill, but it’s such a letdown. I don’t want to ellipticize, I want to run! I also find it difficult to push myself hard on the elliptical. If I stop on the treadmill, in the best case scenario it sands the zit off my face. If I stop on the elliptical, the machine turns off. Oh my God, how horrible.

However, I am reminded of Deena Kastor, a featured marathon runner in the film Spirit of the Marathon which I saw recently. During the film, she injured her leg or foot or some appendage, and could only run in a pool for several months. When she talked about recovering from the injury, you could tell she was upset that she couldn’t run for real, but she kept a positive attitude and worked out in the gym as best she could. (And damn, she lifted weights so rapidly it SCARED me.)

So, I will ellipitcize and I will pray that my foot heals. And no matter what, I’m completing the damn half-marathon in six and a half weeks. If the bus trailing behind at an eighteen minute per mile pace tries to pick me up off the course, I will beat them off with my crutches if need be. Hopefully my foot will just heal itself, I’ll try not to increase my mileage too rapidly, and all will end well – including me at the finish line.