Chapter 2 page 289 - TR 100 a dress rehersal

First - let me hold a quick celebration of our 100th training run (that's what the TR stands for in the title in case you forgot).  100 - wow, 51 weeks ago, I would have NEVER dreamed this would be my reality.  A special thanks to "C" and "L" and MGA who have made all of this possible.  No chance this would be my current situation without you girls!  A special heartfelt message to all my readers - thank you!  Thank you for hanging in there with me!  Thank you for your willingness to reach out a hand of support and cheer.  Thank you for so freely and generously offering advice - girls, I seriously couldn't have done this without you!!!!  My heart sings in appreciation for you all! ((hugs))

Second, let me tell you all about today since it was, in fact, my 100th training run.  "C" and I are doing the Geist Half Marathon in exactly one month.  Although "C" has some experience with the area, neither of us knew very much.  So what are 2 gals to do when they have the day off and an upcoming race . . . load up the car and make it a road trip of the ages!!!  We met up at 9:00 and headed down to the Geist reservoir.  Our first mission was to drive the route. . . TWICE.  I'm a bit type A plus having a good understanding of the intricacies of the race will definitely help me on race day (I know most of you aren't like that - it's okay, can't we still be friends? SMILE).  We then opted to do 10 of the 13 miles of the race (the 10 miles were in a loop, but the other 3 were a straight path out of the loop so it would have been 6 miles to go out and back then do the loop = 16 miles . . . .definitely more than we were ready to do).  Click HERE to see the map course. 

Here's how our "dress rehearsal" went:

The good - 

1.  We did it!  We have a great feel for the challenge this course will give us come race day.
2.  We went 2:2 for the entire time NEVER walking through any intervals despite several huge hills (Kelly @ Thisisahorribleidea was right - mile 8 is a hill to remember!.  We did walk the first 4 minutes, ran the last 6 minutes, then walked .5 cool down back to the car.
3.  It is doable. 
4.  The temperature was about 50 degrees, mild winds (5 mph), windchill 47, and overcast.  Pretty ideal in that respect.
5.  Although the run was a challenge, we had a a lot of fun.
6.  Our time - we did 10.06 miles in 2:34.44 (remember we walked SLOWLY the last 1/2 mile + 4 min. warm up walk) and this was very hilly!
7.  I ate a half of a PB sandwich right before we started and had no low blood sugar moments during the run.

The bad - 

1.  It is certainly challenging - seriously!  Our race day time will not be that fast, but we're not going to need to be picked up by the sag wagon either.
2.  My heel KILLED ME!!!!!!  That's seriously disappointing.  I will be seeing a different PT next week, we'll see if he has any other ideas.  While we're on the subject of pain, my right knee (possibly the down hills) and my who ha (also on the right side) hurt.  Terribly disappointing.  I KNOW I would LOVE running if it didn't hurt so much. 
3.  We didn't get to eat our chews at mile 3 and 6 as planned due to traffic (see ugly).  We ended up eating some at a little after mile 4 and that's it.  I tried my very first Gu - mint chocolate . . . okay, but definitely not going to be my future fuel of choice.

The ugly - 

1.  Well, we ran 10 miles of the actual race route today so . . . the roads were open to regular traffic.  Although a significant amount of the route had paths and sidewalks or were on quiet neighborhood streets, there was a total of about a mile (4 different parts of the route) that we ran on a very thin shoulder (or directly on the busy road).  Parts of it were a little dangerous - but fear not . . . I wore my THIS.  Plus, I wore a red firefly on my sun visor that I won in a give-away from Rustbeltrunner back in October.  Completely sexy - sorry no pix!
2.  THE.WEATHER!  With about 4 miles left, it started to rain - every step seemed to bring more and more rain.  It could have been worse, but it got much colder and we ended up soaked!  We were determined to do this no matter what the weather, but the lightening and thunder got bit extreme.

All-in-all, today's dress rehearsal was completely a worth while experience.  Super glad we made the trip!  You'll have to wait a month to hear how the official race turns out . . . fingers crossed!