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.

Our final long run before the Mini-Marathon was uneventful. I came. I ran. I drank Gatorade. It was all so normal it was almost mundane, which is a good thing, because it means I’m prepared for the race. Our group leader said it was common for people to get jitters the week before the race, but I feel as cool as the Gatorade I was drinking. I’ve been doing the running and I know I’ll be able to finish. I’ll probably get anxious-excited the night before the race, but only out of anticipation, not worry.

There was one weird thing about the final run. I was only a block away from the end point at the running store when I had to run past a wooden porch next to a local restaurant. There were half a dozen people standing there who suddenly started cheering and whooping and looking at me as I ran by. Um, was I supposed to know these people? They yelled things like, “Good job!” and “Way to go!” I gave them a confused look, and then they looked confused when I kept running past them. I think they were part of another training group, the Team in Training organization that had a water station right at the bridge. However, it was rather fun having people randomly rooting for me. It made me wonder what it would be like if this happened in other aspects of our lives. You could be walking down the office hallway and suddenly encounter your coworkers yelling, “You rock the copy machine!” or “Way to refill the coffee maker!” It would make life so much more exciting and surprising, if somewhat creepy.

Now that training is almost over, I want to show you what it’s done to my feet. And yes, I know I have no future as a foot model.

The black color is due to dried blood under the nail bed. Consider it organic nail polish. It’s way cheaper and better for the environment. I’ve had the black toenail on my left foot since my 5K two months ago. The half-black toenail on my right foot showed up a few weeks later, and now my long toe on my right foot has turned a bit red. It’s not painful, though if you squeeze those toes, they do hurt a little. This can happen if you don’t keep your nails trimmed or if your shoes don’t fit properly. My shoes feel pretty comfortable, but since I have the gene that makes my second toe longer than my big toe, I think that toe may be brushing my shoe slightly during my runs. As a result, I can now peel that nail halfway off my toe. Cool! If I were a spy, I could hide a microchip of secret documents under there.

As you can see, I also have crossed toes, or bunions. This is another genetic trait that I’ve had since birth, not a condition due to ill-fitting shoes as it can be in many people. For most of my training I wore separators to straighten the toes, but decided to stop a month ago because I thought they might have contributed to my foot injury. As a result, last week I started developing a blister on my long toe, not because of bad socks or poor shoes, but because my toe is now rubbing against…MY TOE! It’s not painful, just rather ridiculous. I’m rather proud of me feet. They’re not as gnarly as a ballerina’s feet (warning, gross foot image), but they show how much I’ve used them. And the blood will go away eventually.

This week the training winds down to only 20-minute and 30-minute runs. I’ll start carbo-loading a couple days before the race, gaining weight in glycogen and water right before my monthly weigh-in. (Oh, fun.) Carbs get converted to glycogen, which is stored in your muscles and liver. Glycogen is instant energy that your muscles can access immediately. However, for every pound of glycogen your body stores it also stores 3-4 pound of water. When people say you’ve lost “water weight” at the beginning of a diet, that’s the weight they’re referring too. I’m going to be gaining water weight, so I’ll just have to remind myself I’m not getting fat, I’m just storing energy – heavy, heavy, energy.

My training group is making pace bracelets for everyone which I’ll pick up at the end of the week. You give them the time you want to finish in and they give you a bracelet that has the time you should hit each mile marker printed on it. I’m aiming for two hours, 30 minutes. I’m planning out what I’m going to wear on race day and I’ll lay it out the night before. It should be all good. The best thing is knowing that a week from now all this running will be over!

ETA: A couple people asked if that last sentence meant I was going to stop running. Nope, I’m still going to run, just not so much. Those 60-minute long runs on the weekend are killer.

Once I got to the running store, we took off down the canal towpath for 60 minutes, our longest run before the half-marathon in two weeks. (Two weeks!) The first 5-10 minutes of running are always the hardest for me. As soon as I start jogging, my body is like, “Hey now, why are you running? We were just sitting down or lying bed. Let’s get back to that, shall we?” At the beginning, I compare how I feel running to how I felt sitting down, which is of course worse. Once I’ve been going to awhile, I compare how I feel to how I felt 5 minutes ago, which is about the same, so it’s easier to accept. After a mile or so, my body started to accept the fact that it was going to be in pain for awhile and I found my groove. I was beginning to enjoy the blooming trees, the ducks, and the much-improved weather conditions.

This is when it started to rain.

I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head, but I neglected to wear one that had a drawstring, so it fell back after a minute. I kept going anyway. I’ve run in ice and snow and fog, so I may as well check rain off the list too. It wasn’t a torrential downpour, just a light sprinkle, which actually was kind of nice because it kept me cool. The towpath leads down to the Indianapolis Art Museum. We didn’t run anywhere far enough to get there, but near the 30-minute mark I felt like I’d jogged into the Impressionists gallery and right into a Monet. There was a picturesque wooden bridge spanning the canal with freshly green trees on either side of the water which hid the traffic on the south side. I actually ran an extra minute just to enjoy the beauty of the scene. Then I turned around because I’m not insane. Sixty minutes is looooong enough no matter how pretty the duckies are.

The size of our running group has dwindled a bit as we approach the half-marathon. I think this is a combination of people dropping out and people just not showing up for every session. I had to skip meets when I did my training series runs and when I was injured. However, it does seem to get smaller and smaller and smaller. And it’s the slow people who aren’t showing up anymore. It’s gotten to the point where I’m pretty sure I’m the slowest runner of the bunch. This kind of bummed me out as we headed down the trail. Then at the 30 minute mark we turned around and I suddenly had a half mile lead! Woo-hoo!

The sixty minute run was not as intimidating as it was just a month ago. Now that I’ve finished a 15K, running constantly for 1 hour and 45 minutes, these sixty minute runs seem like cake. Cake that has been sitting on the kitchen counter for a week and is stale and tough and impossible to swallow without a glass of milk, but still, cake.

I’m still waiting for a nice training day for these morning runs. The weather patterns had better get it together, because I have only one Saturday left. But at least I know that if there is snow, ice, fog, or rain on the day of the mini-marathon, I’ll be able to handle it.

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:

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.

Even though we’re approaching mid-March, it is still snowing in Indiana. I’ve lived here for years, but I don’t remember any winter being this long. I’m stuck in a never-ending purgatory where it snows every weekend and the skies are grey for eternity.

Today the trail was covered in an inch of snow, so the group opted to instead run down a lightly-traveled side street that had been plowed. I had to futz with my MP3 player before we started, so I ended up trailing behind the pack. I never caught up with them either because I am slow and the traffic lights were against me. This made me 1) feel like a dork ostracized from the cool kids and 2) fear for my life as I ran down the opposite side of the street on my own while wearing headphones. If I were with the pack there’d be a good chance a rogue SUV would hit someone else and not me. I was glad I was wearing my red shirt because I was easy to see, and if I did get hit you wouldn’t be able to see the blood stains on the fabric.

I knew it was going to be a crappy run when I was outpaced by a 10-year-old in snow boots running down the sidewalk beside me. Of course, 10-year-olds run on sugar and chocolate, whereas I try to eat a nutritionally sound diet, so I was at a disadvantage. Running on plowed pavement was indeed easier than running on snow-covered trail – except when it wasn’t. The trail is basically flat, whereas the street had several hills. Oh God, did it have hills.

I was scheduled to run for 80 minutes, but I stopped to walk three times for three different reasons. The first time, I was tired from the hill and feeling slow anyway because I’d been ditched by the pack. When I got to the water stop I jokingly asked if there was anyone behind me and the waterboy told me no. Ouch! The second time, I slowed down to mess with my MP3 player which…sta..rted..to..ski….p..beac…ause…it…was…froz..en. Did I mention that it was 20 degrees? With a horrible headwind that froze my nose? As much as I hated running the last 40 minutes without music, it was much worse trying to run to the digital era’s equivalent of a skipping record. I tried warming up my player by sticking it inside my vest, but that didn’t work. So I took my headphones off, but at a water stop I rubbed my ear and realized my earlobes were NUMB. So I put the headphones back on as earmuffs. I kept running back up the street and finally saw the traffic light where I’d be able to turn. All I had to do was get to the red light, then I’d be on my way back to the store. Only not. Wrong traffic light. I had to run another 3 blocks. I started walking for the third time out of protest to my demolished hope.

I finally got back to the store after 83 minutes and 6.8 miles. That’s a 12:13 pace, which is total crap for me, but somewhat reasonable when you factor in all the walking. I’m just glad I didn’t get frostbite. Even after I sat in the warm store for 15 minutes for the nutrition seminar, my arms were still cold. I really should have worn another layer, but I didn’t account for the wind when I got dressed. During the seminar I got to do free taste-testing of recovery drinks, jelly beans, and chewy stuff that has a name that I can’t remember. It was like candy packaged with a good excuse to eat it. I also scored a free gel pack that I’ll try during my next long run. Hopefully it won’t FREEZE.

Headache Update

Good news: On a scale of 1-10, my headache has dropped from a 5 to a 2.

Bad news: I haven’t had caffeine since Wednesday.

I never realized how much I depend on caffeine to keep me awake until I felt like taking a nap under my desk at the end of the week. However, if I’ve got to be one of the seven dwarves, I’ll take Sleepy over Grumpy any day.

My headache is still here, but it’s died down to a level where it’s not hindering my ability to live. It’s like having a neighbor turn down the stereo so the subwoofer is no longer making my couch vibrate, but I can still here some noise through the walls even if I can’t make out the lyrics.

I’ve had a problem with headaches since I was 21. My first month-long headache was triggered when I was driving to South Bend to visit a friend, but was detoured by a chemical spill on the highway and got lost on the back roads of Indiana before everyone and their dog had a cell phone. When I did make it back to the main road, I started speeding to make up lost time and got pulled over by the state police.

I was kind of stressed out.

I got a tension headache. It didn’t go away for a month. I went to my doctor and she gave me some magic pills that made the headache go away. I’ve been taking them ever since. Whenever I’ve tried going off the pills, the headaches come back. I probably should have mentioned this before y’all e-mailed me telling me I had Lyme disease, bad vision, and a mutant staph infection on my lip.

ETA: A couple people have asked what medication I’m on. I think it’s best that you consult with your doctor about starting any medication. I’m not going to say what I’m on so I don’t influence anyone to take something that is not appropriate for them.

To enter, sign up for my email list here. That’s it. You don’t have to leave a comment on this entry, just sign up for the list and be sure to click on the link in the confirmation e-mail to finish the subscription process. You’ll get a free muffin recipe regardless and you’ll also get any news related to the book sent to your inbox. I promise not to sell or give your e-mail to anyone, nor will I barter it for low-fat cupcakes. I also promise not to spam you or try to sell you Viagra. On Monday, March 3rd, I will randomly pick 10 members of the list as winners. So, if you sign up for the list and then unsubscribe two minutes later, you will not be included in the drawing. You can always unsubscribe at any time you wish, though I have no idea why you’d want to do that, even if someone baked you a dozen low-fat cupcakes. I would also be really, really, grateful if you wrote a review of the book on Amazon/your blog/MySpace/Facebook/in the dirt on your windshield. Share the love! Get the word out! Just don’t spoil the ending! Oh, okay, you can spoil the ending. I lose the weight. Sorry to ruin it for you.

ETA: I forgot to mention this, but sadly the contest is only open to residents of the US and Canada. Sorry!

I have also set up an official web site for the book at halfassedbook.com (I wrote a half-assed book! I am a half-assed author! I have a half-assed site! How many half-assed jokes can I make?) From now on, I’ll be posting most of the book-related news over there, but I’ll also cross-post entries that are relevant here too. I don’t want to deluge people with book info unless they’re interested in it. I’m also writing a series of posts called “Blog to Book” over there which will chronicle the process of writing a book based on a blog. And while we’re at it, I set up a Facebook group you can join too!

Book release party

I also have two poll questions for you. First, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this a zillion times already, but I’m running the Indianapolis 500 Mini-Marathon on Saturday, May 3rd. I want to have a book-release party the night before the race where we can all meet-up and carbo-load together. You don’t have to run the race to eat the carbs. I need to know how many people would show up so I can figure out where to hold it. If you think you would attend a book release party in Indianapolis (probably downtown, but that’s negotiable) on the evening of Friday, May 2, 2008, please respond to the poll below. You bring yourself and I’ll bring my fat pants!

Autographed copies

Second question: I will be ordering books to sell and personally sign at the book release party. I’m going to sell autographed copies of the book on my web site too. I need to know how many to order so I’m not also selling them out of the back of my trunk for the next 10 years. If you’ve already pre-ordered the book from Amazon, you can cancel your order any time before it is actually shipped and your credit card will not be charged. Would you buy an autographed copy of the book from me? You would have to pay shipping and handling costs and I’d probably sell it at or slightly above the suggested retail price ($15.95) since I have to take the time and effort to run the whole business off of my kitchen counter. I do not know if you would get the book before or after it is available in stores. Just know that I would ship it as soon as I could. Please let me know if you’re interested via the poll below.

ETA: I WILL ship books overseas if you pay for the shipping costs.

If you are using an RSS reader to read this entry, you’ll probably need to visit the blog to actually see the polls. If for some reason you still can’t see the polls, visit them here. Thanks! And don’t forget to sign up for the email list for your chance to win an advance copy!

I can tell that the training program is working because I ran for three-quarters of an hour today like it ain’t no thang. It was work, but it wasn’t impossible and at no point did I feel like collapsing or stopping at my apartment on the way back. However, running conditions could have only been crappier if I’d stumbled in dog doo. The trail was covered in so much snow that other people’s footprints were the only proof that it was there. I couldn’t see the road at all. It was like driving in a downpour by following the taillights of the car in front of me, hoping it didn’t drive into a ditch because I’d be following right after it. Every step my foot fell on an uneven surface, as if I was running around in the woods, making me worried that I might fall. I suppose it was good for exercising the muscles in my legs that provide stability, but I honestly would have preferred to run in the 9 degree weather of our first run if I could have done it on a flat surface. I even preferred running on the snow-covered, ice two weeks ago because at least that was smooth.

I was also irked by drivers at the crosswalks. They try to be nice by stopping and waving me across, but that just pisses me off. I’m not a masochist. It’s just that the rules of the trail (thoughtfully posted on signs at every crossing) state that pedestrians must yield to cars. If everyone followed the rules, we’d all know what to expect. Instead, some people follow the rules and some people try to be nice, so I never know what to expect. I have to stop at every crosswalk and then observe every car to see if they’re going to stop or keep going. It’s annoying. I’m equally annoyed when I am the driver because I never know if the pedestrians are going to wait or if they’re going to fling themselves on my hood because they think I’m going to stop. So, if you ever see me from your car as you’re crossing the trail, just keep driving. I’ll appreciate it more than if you stop.

I’ve broken my promise to talk to two people every week for the past two weeks. I should get over it and make annoying small talk about the weather. It’s just hard for me. In all fairness only half of the group showed up today, scared off by the snow most likely. I did hover on the edges of a conversation some women were having about how they used to run track in high school and jump hurdles. This reminded me of a girl who lived across the street from me in Louisville who would line up her friends’ bikes like hurdles and jump over them. It was totally awesome. I wish I’d been into cross-country and track when I was in high school. Instead I was just the fat girl who went home every day to watch TV.

There was also a seminar after the run about functional stretching. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the concept of stretching. It turns out, it’s not very helpful to do static stretching before you exercise. Your muscles are not warmed up yet, so holding a stretch doesn’t do them much good. Static stretching is really only helpful after you’ve exercised or after you’ve warmed up for about 5 minutes. If you don’t want to wait until you’ve warmed up, you can do functional stretching, which means you do certain movements that warm-up your muscles and stretch them at the same time. Different movements are tailored to whatever exercise you are preparing for. He demonstrated some stretches for us, and as you would expect, you look totally ridiculous doing them. But as he said, we run so early in the morning no one’s going to see us. And if you’re dressed like a runner, everyone knows you’re weird anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

Next week I run a 10K. That’s 6.2 miles. I’ve never run that far continuously in my life. I’ve run two 5K’s, but I had a five month break in between them. I hope the Panera people are at the race again with their Cinnamon Crunch bagels, because I looked them up online and they look really tasty. I’ve been trying to figure out how much I should eat now that I’m running so much, but it’s tricky. As I learned on the NOVA Marathon special, training for a race isn’t the best way to lose weight. In fact, some people actually gain weight. I don’t want to use running as an excuse to pig out, but I don’t want to starve myself either. Wish me luck!

Today my half-marathon training group ran for 60 minutes. I have only run for that long once before. It was a Sunday in September. I ran 5 miles and I developed Achilles tendonitis shortly thereafter because I had increased my mileage too rapidly. Sixty minutes. The cast of Law and Order can investigate a crime, arrest a perp, and send him to jail in that time with an extra 16 minutes left dedicated to selling you erectile dysfunction pills. It’s a long time. It’s a long run. Looking at it coming up on the calendar freaked me out a little.

The only thing that freaked me out more was seeing my 10K run coming up in two weeks. Since my 5K and 10K were a month apart, I figured I had 4 weeks between them to prepare, but it’s actually only 3 weeks. I prefer to think of it as a 10K and not a 6.2 mile race because I’m American and we have no real concept of how far a kilometer is. Six point two miles, however, is scary. I know that’s a long run.

I ate a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast to fuel me and then I grabbed two Reese’s peanut butter cups from the bag I bought half-price after Valentine’s Day. I finally got down to my pre-Christmas weight this week and I decided to celebrate with chocolate. So now I get to do it all over again! While I’m all about healthy eating and fitness most of the time, I still like to eat recreationally the other part of the time. Last night I wanted chocolate, so I got myself some. After I finished two pieces, I decided to have two more. And then another three. And then some more until I’d eaten half the bag, at which point I thought, “Holy crap, I’m going to have to run for an hour while I’m digesting half a bag of peanut butter cups. Is there anyone stupider than me in a 5-mile radius? Probably only the pea-brained squirrels who will inevitably feed on my potential peanut butter puke, right?”

Luckily I did not vomit. I did have an urge to check my watch after the first minute, which is never a good sign. I forced myself to wait until I’d listened to 4 songs before checking the time. Dido started singing, “If you’re cold, I’ll keep you warm” in my headphones, the lying bitch. It was about 20 degrees out and I didn’t see her British ass on the Happy Fun and Fitness Trail holding an electric blanket for me. I got into a good pace and ended up running with about four people. We all had headphones on, so we didn’t chat. We went south on the trail. After about 10-15 minutes it gets less pretty and adopts a more urban, don’t-run-here-at-night atmosphere. As I got close to the thirty-minute turnaround point, I noticed a parking lot and a brick building behind a chain link fence on the left. “Hmmm, that looks really familiar,” I thought. “Have I been here before? Holy crap! That’s the roller derby!” I was running past the state fairgrounds where I attended the roller derby with my brother last weekend. We’d joked that I could run home on the trail if the car stalled. And now here I was, actually running to the roller derby and back (to the running store). It only took an hour. I wonder how long it would take on roller skates?

The run back was harder, as expected, particularly because my music player died right as my techno tunes were about to kick in and help me kick it up a notch. I ran past a pay phone that had a sign reading “Long Distance” on it. Well, no shit, AT&T. I didn’t need your big sign to figure that one out. I didn’t really need the big, red stop signs at every intersection urging me to stop either. Where are the “Keep going!” signs when you need them? I almost stopped to walk, but I kept running, only stopping for a short water break on the way back.

When I got home, I looked up the distance I’d run on Gmap Pedometer. I was aiming for a 12:00 per mile pace. This is called an “easy” pace because it’s 2:00 per mile slower than my goal for race day. It’s not actually “easy” to do. I ran for an hour, so I was expecting the distance to be 5 miles. In reality? 5.85 miles. Whoops! I was running about 10:15 per mile. While that speaks well of my athletic prowess and my body’s ability to run while digesting milk chocolate and peanut butter, it also means my concept of a 12:00 per mile pace needs some work. I’ve been running mostly on treadmills, which regulate pace for me. I need to get a better grasp of how fast I’m running or else I could run too fast on race day and wear myself out early.

Thank goodness for Internet-based mileage tools! I’m a lot less scared of my 10K knowing that I ran 5.85 miles today. I can throw another third of a mile on top of that and survive. Later on I went to the grocery store. As I was carrying heavy bags of two-liter sodas and boxes of yogurt up the stairs fairly easily, I remembered how hard it was for me to carry groceries into my old first-floor apartment when I was morbidly obese. The only steps I had to take then were the two up the front stoop, but I would be breathing heavily after carrying all my purchases inside. And now, I can run 5.85 miles in the morning and carry four loads of groceries to the second floor in the afternoon without collapsing. I only ran a whole mile continuously for the first time about two years ago. The human body is amazing. I’ve come a long way, and not just the 5.85 miles I travelled this morning.