the weekend of my idiocy

Soooo the Rock n' Sole Half Marathon is Sunday. I feel wildly unprepared for this race. Work sucks and I am bad at running in the mornings, so the past few weeks have just been sucko for my training. At this point I am looking at the half as a big kick in the butt to re-jumpstart things. Because I am NOT going to be standing at the starting line in Chicago in October feeling the way I do now. Which is a lot like this:



That being said I really do think, in the very small part of my brain that is logical, that this race will be okay for me. I will finish it. I did two long runs last weekend, each about 7.5 miles, and they were both hot and gross and I wanted to die, but I didn't stop and I finished both of them, and I think I'm going to feel much better than that on Sunday.

I also twisted my ankle again, then fell down, skinned my knee and got lost. All in the same run. I'm pretty sure the ankle is now a bonafide sprain because it's still pretty swollen; if you look at my right leg from the outside I look semi-obese with a huge cankle. ASK ME IF I CARE ABOUT ANY OF THIS. I went running on it again two days later; I taped it first to make sure it was more stable and it was fine. MY POINT IS THIS: I am nervous and I have slacked off the past few weeks and I am beating myself up for that, but I'm also owning it and changing it. SO THERE HALF MARATHON.

I still want to beat my tumor time. Unfortunately because my one and only half marathon was run in Virginia, they of course don't keep past-year times online. (Why would they? That would make my life easy. At least you are consistent in your suckitude, Virginia.*) From what I remember my official time was around 2:13 and that included bathroom breaks. Just as a recap, I was ordered to stop training for that race by my doctor, so when I lined up on race day my longest training run was 4.5 miles. It hurt like hell but I finished that thing without walking once. That course was beautiful but it was also hilly as a mofo. My point is this, if I can do those hills on little training I SURE AS HELL KNOW that I can finish this one too.

I'm equal parts pep-talking and berating myself here, can you tell? The "I can do it" part is the most important and the bigger part of me, for sure, I just like to surround it with a nice candy shell of WTF KATE-ness.



Anyway. The race starts at 8 am, is almost two hours away and I have yet to pick up my race packet so I'm probably going to be hitting the road at like 4:30 Sunday morning. I know you all are jealous. My dad and stepmom live about a half hour closer to Milwaukee than I do so I'm staying there tomorrow night and my AWFULLY GENEROUS father has offered to drive me there in the morning. This is amazing for many reasons, including the obvious ones like it means I don't have to be super-awake at 4:30, but also because the likelihood of me getting lost and missing either the packet pick-up window or the start is about 110 percent if I have to deal with any of this alone. THANKS DAD! (He totally doesn't read this blog.)



Here's my running to-do list between then and now:
- Laundry. All of my wifebeaters are dirty. Obviously this will not do.
- Run an easy 4 miles in my new shoes to see if the horrible quad pain I'm having in every run is a result of them. If quads hurt during run, run in old shoes on Sunday then deal with taking new shoes back next week.
- Go to the running store for a spibelt. I want to eat some chomps during this race, and I also want the option to listen to my iPod. Y'all, I used to judge music-listening runners; now I just think they're all training for marathons and need the music for sanity, because long runs start to become awfully boring when you're doing them 4 days a week. I've never run outside with music and I have DEFINITELY never listened to it during a race, but I don't know what the crowd support is going to be like in Milwaukee and if I'm dying, you better believe my bad pop music is going to help. Ke$ha understands my pain, probably because she hasn't showered since 2008.
- Carbs carbs carbs!

I also want you to know that I recently started seeing this guy who is pretty great, but unfortunately lives in Chicago, which is a good 2.5 hours from me. He told me this morning he is going to come spend tonight and tomorrow with me which is SO HAPPY. I will force him to give me many running pep talks, join me in my carb-fest and accompany me to the running store; he is a lucky one, for sure. He is an astrophysicist. For the purposes of this blog, I shall refer to him as Elroy. (Note: I sometimes refer to him as Elroy in real life too.) Oh my god, NEVER MIND. If I ever start another blog detailing the adventures of my dating life I will let you all know, but suffice to say that people are freaks and I am likely to remain the spinster of the running blog world until the end of time. (Seriously, have you all noticed that every running blogger is married, engaged or in a relationship? DON'T WORRY SINGLE PEOPLE, I'M STILL HERE, GOTTA GO GET MY CAT FROM THE VET NOW.)

THE END. PLEASE WISH ME LUCK AND LEAVE ME MANY ENCOURAGING COMMENTS, LIKE MAYBE ABOUT MY ANKLE OR ABOUT HOW I AM NOT GOING TO DIE OR ABOUT HOW I SHOULD STOP BEATING MYSELF UP BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY, WITH THE FALLING DOWN AND THE TWISTING OF LIMBS, I AM ALREADY DOING A GOOD ENOUGH JOB OF THAT.

* Dear Melissa, I know that you are from Virginia and I hope that you know that my constant berating of the Commonwealth is not personal and I hope also that it doesn't piss you off because I think about it sometimes and if you were always being all, "OMG WISCONSIN IS THE WORST STATE EVER, BLARGH" I would probably be cranky, basically you are great and I heart you. Plus I bet your Virginia hometown doesn't smell like kibble even some of the time. Harrisonburg = worst. LOVE KATE

in which I am salty

My 10K is in six days. I feel both prepared for this and unprepared for this.

PREPARED: I have run more than six miles and I know that I can race that distance comfortably.

UNPREPARED: Y'all, I don't know why, but the 10K is kind of intimidating me a little bit. It shouldn't, logically, because I know I can run the distance without problems and I've raced a half marathon before, so it's not even close to the longest race I've ever run. I think I'm intimidated because I've actually trained and am in shape and ready to race it, whereas with my half marathon I had to stop training halfway through due to a potential injury. THE TOOMAH, YOU KNOW.

The thing also starts at 7:45 am and there is NO pre-race-day packet pickup, so I have to get out of bed super early and haul my ass over there to make sure I can get my packet and still have time to warm up. I'm annoyed. Who doesn't even give you the OPTION to pick your packet up ahead of time? Apparently I keep registering for the world's most ghetto and unorganized races. The Summerfest half-marathon seems less so, though they refuse to mail my packet to me even though I don't live in Milwaukee so picking it up is going to be a road trip extravaganza.


Road trip rage, booyah.
Source

Anyway, so that's that. I had a good week of running last week until Friday, when I got to spend 10.5 hours covering a Joint Finance Committee hearing at the Capitol. They were passing the budget, and because politics is nasty these days it was basically 10 hours of Democrats and Republicans bickering and being rude to each other. It was also about five hours of protesters standing up, singing and being carried out of the room by police. Those type of shenanigans are ongoing at the Capitol today, where I was covering a Supreme Court hearing:


Source

It's fascinating to be reporting on this stuff but it's also a little hard to watch sometimes. Anyway, I was stuck there Friday night (Saturday morning?) until 1 am, so obviously running didn't happen.

I left Saturday to go up north and visit my grandparents, and I went running there Sunday morning. I had mapped out a route before I left home, but I got RIDICULOUSLY lost and ended up running all over their town; I had meant to do around 7-8 miles but instead did just over 9. I was pretty pumped about the distance but exhausted by the end because it was hot and sunny and my legs were hurting and hating me. And I walked in the door and my grandma immediately said, "Okay! How about some fresh coffee!" Since my core temperature at that point was roughly the same as the core temperature of the earth, I declined and instead went into the kitchen and guzzled about 14 gallons of water. All in all it was a stellar running day. My quads still hurt.

So, my plan this week is to do one more long run (well "long," you know, at least six miles) and one speed or hill session. The speed/hill thing has eluded me thus far because my hours at work have been f-ing ridiculous, and I have sucked at getting up to go running before work. The hill I want to use for repeats is a good 10 minute drive from my house; I figure I'll be running up and down it for 45 minutes to an hour; factor in a warm-up and cool-down and I think I have to be out the door by 5:30 am to get the whole thing done and still get to work on time. And come on. That is ridiculous. (Never mind that in Virginia I consistently left my apartment at 4:50 to get to the gym before work. WHATEVER THIS IS WISCONSIN, RULES ARE DIFFERENT.)

It's also disgusting, balls-hot here. It's 95 outside right now but with the humidity, the channel 3 meteorologist informs me, it feels like 108. I disagree because it really feels like about 193,343,090. Tomorrow is supposed to be more of the same, which is actually really good motivation to get my workout done in the morning because I am definitely not going to be pumped to go run if I walk out of work tomorrow evening and it feels even remotely like it does now. I saw a girl running while I was driving home; she was wearing black shorts and a black tank top and I legit wanted to roll down the window and yell "WHY, SERIOUSLY, WHY?!"

The end. This entry was kind of salty. Like my sweat will be tomorrow. Appropriate!!