cloud nine

Yesterday morning I woke up, knowing that I had to hit the longest long run ever to have a realistic chance at running this half marathon. I had zero motivation to go out there. D usually runs at least part of the time with me on any run of 50 minutes or more, but he was still out of town. This one was all on me.

I messed around, uploading music to my Amazon cloud drive, fiddling with my gear, deciding what to wear (it was about 60 degrees, right on the line of long sleeve versus short sleeve), trying out my new tunebelt with which I'd use my droid with mapmyrun, fueling with my new honey stinger waffles, what have you. It was 10:30 before I got going.

It was ugly. I did about 2 miles outside before deciding I was way too hot in my lightweight-as-hell new Nike jacket, the tunebelt was a huge pain in my ass, I hadn't brought water and was already thirsty, etc. I retreated to the gym and a treadmill, on an incline. I then couldn't get my music to work, the headphone jack was in the wrong spot on my droid and the cords wrapped around my arm.

Basically--anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. But I was determined to do at least 7 miles, because I have to start adding mileage at this point, or I'll never run 13.1 in 6 weeks.

I finally got in a groove, and was even able to pause and jump off for water at the fountain a couple of times. Whew! But then, on my 3rd water break, I was gone JUST too long and the treadmill reset. I knew I'd run 3.88 before jumping off, so I put that in my droid's calculator before getting rolling again. I obviously should have brought a shot bloc or something, because I started to feel lightheaded. I probably didn't have enough breakfast. I was trying to do calculations in my head to figure out how far I needed to go on the treadmill, to get to 7 with the half a mile or so distance back home, but I suck at math even when not lightheaded and dizzy.

So, I just kept going, walking when I needed to. I ran home, and mapmyrun didn't start back up. I was so annoyed. I limped home (nah, I ran the last stretch!) and immediately came in to measure the run from the gym and add all my components: outside, treadmill 1, treadmill 2, run home. I was hoping to hit 7 and was completely not sure I was there.

Turns out? 7.6! My farthest ever. Runer-up: the 12k I ran last year.

This run completely turned my attitude around. I now feel optimistic about the race, like it's something I can do. My legs don't even feel blown out, so I think that with proper fueling mid-run, I can add miles easily. My hip? 100% fine and pain free!

I decided to break down and order a Garmin since the droid/tunebelt alternative was a disaster. I went online tonight to order it, decided to put it on my Discover card for a change, checked the "cashback bonus" box, thinking I'd earn some points. Instead, I got an option to use my $137 cashback bonus on this purchase.

So, I just got a garmin for $6. That's got to be a sign, right?