Holidays

It's been awhile...a long while.

When last I was with you I was gearing up for the Wild Hare 25k. I can report that it went horribly. That's right, it was BAD. I am not sure what happened but I finally hit a road block (ok a trail block) and had my first DNF. I am really still not sure how I feel about it. In fact up until now I have pretty much blocked it out of my mind. The race itself was good. The trails were fantastic! The course was nice and the weather was not so bad. It was a little muddy but nothing too terrible. The Tejas Trail group put on a well organized race, good support, not a thing I could complain about. It just wasn't my day. After the first lap I fell apart and just plainly dropped myself from the race. 

How do you come back from that? I did what came naturally...I signed up for the Katy YMCA's Turkey Dash. Why not, I mean I had to get back at it. The inconsistency in my training had finally caught up to me. Running on Thanksgiving is/has always been a hard thing for me to do. Every year I'm the one who makes dinner. In fact this is the only holiday that I normally am in the kitchen from breakfast until dessert. I normally spend the entire day running a cooking marathon. Well this year, I tried to turn that marathon into a sprint and got bitten on the ass for it BUT... I PR'd my 10k time. LOL! Turkey dinner be damned. The Y's race is the 2nd biggest turkey day 10k in the Houston area. This year it was around 6000 people for all events.

 

I ran into a runner friend right before the start and we hit the parking lot for a lap to warm up a bit. And by warm up I mean it was 45 degrees out, chilly for Houston. I needed a 30 minute tempo run so I kept my intervals to average about 12m/m for the first few miles. When I came up to the 5k flag I decided to go to 3 1/2 then, 4 and then before I knew it, I was 5 miles in and feeling really fierce. My 3 minute interval times had dropped to 9:45-10 m/m and I couldn't believe how good I felt. My last interval time before the finish was at 8:34. Not too freaking shabby for this 12m/m runner. I crossed the finish line with a 1:36 PR. It was a good day, it was the run I needed to get back on track. 

 Sometimes you have to hit bottom before you can see how good the good things are.

I ran my furthest training run yet this past weekend, 19 miles. No issues. 6 weeks to GEAUX! 

Coming up:

FLS Sugarland 30k 12/14.

KatyFit Cookie run 21 miles 12/20.

And then one last long run just to see how far I can go before I start tapering.