Seriously!

It is never a good thing when your coach's email to you is titled "Luck Runs Out". Yes, he was speaking of the weather, which I often do in my blog. It is supposed to be 91 degrees on Saturday with tons of humidity. It is also a 17 mile run for me. Yuck. I will start hydrating NOW.

I must say, I am getting used to running in this heat. But I do hate all of the sweat. It is really really gross.

Anyway, on a completely different subject...Sometimes I have to laugh at people when I am running with the group because I think we overwhelm onlookers. I mean, I guess it is kind of funny. You're walking out of Dewey's Pizza to your car on Oakley Square and ZAM a big rush of 100+ runners comes by. Or, you're on a little side street in your car, trying to turn right and ZOW an endless line of runners. Everyone always looks like they are just waiting for the camera crew from Candid Camera to come out from around the corner.

It was really crazy this one time when we were running in Oakley Square and I saw 4 people I knew! One was my swimteam coach from high school who I didn't even know still lived in Cincinnati. Another was my friend Carrie, who now lives in London. When I visited with her a few months ago I asked her if it was really her that I saw. She said it was, and she was totally taken aback, like 'where did all of these people come from?'

But the worst was last week when we were doing fartleks in International Friendship Park. We had to pass by everyone eating at Montgomery Inn. Everyone was staring at us as we passed by, and it was worse because we had to do two loops, so we passed them four times. But instead of feeling like I wanted to laugh, I just felt like I wanted their steak dinners. :)

Sweaty Girl

It has been sooooo humid lately!

I went for my negative split run last night (and actually for real did a negative split...in fact, I had two minutes left over) and when I came back I was so sweaty. I actually had a film of sweat all over me, and I was only out for 40 minutes! (I don't really sweat very much ever. I could run 9 miles usually and not sweat). It was gross.

But even grosser (is that a word?) is that I had a softball game afterwards. I basically just keep my running clothes on and pull my t-shirt over. Well, I change my shoes of course too. But I was being finicky about my pigtails and decided to redo them. I could have wrung them out. Nasty. I do not like all of this sweat. It was even worse on the field.

I am so done with this humidity. It is really throwing my times off. I just have to keep telling myself that I am running slower because of all this heat and humidity. Apparantly other people are feeling it too, because Coach Joe F sent out an email telling us not to get discouraged if we felt slow, because the heat and humidity are so bad that they are bound to slow us down.

By the way, I just looked at the humidity for yesterday...it got up to 93%. Gross.

Be-yoo-ti-ful!

Wow! It was so nice out yesterday! Perfect running weather! I always feel like a tool when I mention weather in my blog, but it has seriously been terrible here. It rains every day and has been pretty cold too. So when its nice out, it is SUCH a rare thing.

Bill and I did a nice easy 2.68 miles (I thought we had done more, but checking afterwards on mapmyrun.com, found out the real distance. Whoops). I felt pretty good too. Which is good, because the day before felt really really hard, even though it was only 2 miles. Maybe the lesson is to not take days off. When I take a day off, it seems really hard to get back into it. Well, maybe I can take a DAY off, but not three days off.

I don't even run with my ipod. It seems pointless when you are only out there for twenty something minutes. I just sing songs in my head. Yesterday it was the song from Ferris Bueller's Day Off (I think it is called "March of the Swivelheads"), you know, in the end where he is running through people's lawns to beat his parents home? (Hmmm, sorry for the Ferris Bueller spoiler, for anyone who has not seen the movie :) Anyway, I was singing that I think because I was weaving in and out of all the people on the sidewalk to run. Maybe with all of the weaving I really did do 3 miles yesterday!

Whoo-hoo for me!

Despite my lack of motivation, I have run ALL THREE nights this week (if you count the week as starting on Sunday). And I think the sheer repetitiveness of just getting out there and doing it is breaking up my running funk.

It is also actually getting warmer out. Yesterday when I ran it was 70 degrees out! Now I know that this is nothing to you Cincinnatians who are braving 80 plus degree weather, but seriously, I have been wearing sweaters to work every day! This makes me happy because I remember the Hyde Park Blast from last year and the heat was killer. I knew that running in 50 degree weather wasn't going to help me that much.

So last night I did hill repeats again to work on building up my sprinting capability. I did 6 repeats (I made sure I counted accurately this time). I think I am going to have to find a better hill to practice on. Or maybe I will just have to do more repeats. I will not say that this time was easy, but I felt great the entire time. I guess I will be able to better guage that tomorrow when the pain sets in.

I realized last night too...I will still have 2 weeks of training once I get home! That should give me more than enough time to get ready for the race. Hurrah!

Tonight is a no-running night. I am moving into my hotel which I think will be enough of a work out for me. I already lugged one of my suitcases and a backpack .77 miles to work so that I can check-in at lunchtime. The other suitcase is the one I am worried about. It is the one that always gets that bright orange HEAVY label on it at the airport. And one of it's wheels are broken (thank you, Charles de Gaulle). So I guess it will be a weight-lifting night.

What's Next for Runnergrrrl?

Well, I thought I would be joining another training group, this time for the Hyde Park Blast. HOWEVER, I just found out yesterday that after the marathon I will be returning to jolly olde England for 6 weeks! This will become my true running test. Will I be able to keep it up on my own? Who knows. I hope so. But I am definitely one of those people who thrive in a group. And let me tell you, if my husband decides he doesn't want to go to the gym when we get home, I have a really hard time going by myself. So we'll see.

It will also be kind of hard to train for the Blast without blasting through all of those hills in Hyde Park during the training. Although there are hills here, the real Hyde Park is no match for our Cincinnati version. Not to mention that today our high is supposed to top off around 67, whereas I heard yesterday in Cincinnati was more like 80.

Oh well, I will definitely keep on running. I have no excuse. It is only 4.1 miles!!!!
AND, I've decided to keep the blog. I KNOW it says that it's about marathon training, but I guess that will just have to change to more all-encompassing running. Not as exciting, but I don't care. :)