Bad Timing

According the website countdown clock, there is T-minus 2 days and 20 hours until the Kalamazoo Klassic, which is the 10K I have signed up for. I am terrified and nervous. My timing for this was terrible.

My past two weekends have been a blast. I celebrated the upcoming wedding of one of my dearest friends, and rolled right into a week of intense prep for Warren's daughter's open house, which was this past Saturday. We had a great time celebrating her accomplishments with our friends and family. On Sunday, I felt like I got hit with a truck. Monday, it felt like 2 trucks. When I get that tired I can't sleep well and my stomach just turns upside down. On Tuesday morning, I decided to take a day off work to try to reset myself after another sleepless night. I slept all morning and part of the afternoon, and then decided to get my weekly allergy shots in the afternoon.

I have been taking allergy shots for 6 months without incident. Yesterday, I moved up to my highest level of dosage. Twenty minutes after my shots, I felt like my underarms, ears, and back of my head were on FIRE. They itched like crazy, and I started getting hives. I was taken back to a "reaction room", given several pills to take, and stayed under observation for about an hour. Thankfully Warren was with me to keep me company and to make me laugh. After the medicine they gave me kicked in the itching went away pretty quickly, but my hives stuck around for most of the night. If I wasn't already drained, this totally did me in. Thankfully I was able to at least sleep last night, but I still don't feel caught up.

So, even with all that, I knew I needed to get a run in since I am expected to run 6.2 freaking miles this weekend. I recently bought a new hydration belt that I want to wear for the race. Being the control freak that I am, I don't want to wait for the water stations during the race because it is going to be really hot (almost 70 at 7:30am). I knew I wanted to get used to it, so I wore it out tonight. I also had some Gu, which I am still trying to figure out if I like or not. Because I was tired after work, I had 1/3 of the Gu before my run, wrapped it in foil, and stuck it in the little pouch on my new hydration belt. I planned to do 5.5 miles tonight.

As soon I started I knew it was going to be a rough one. My legs felt like they weighed 100 pounds each. The belt was tough to get used to, and my brain was telling me to stop the minute I started. I stopped to stretch my sore left leg muscle at .75 miles in (this has been a nice trick that has helped my hurting leg after about 1 mile); at 1.5 miles I stopped to go to the bathroom (which I have never done during a run before); at 2.4 miles I decided to have the rest of my Gu. I zipped open the zipper, and saw that it had gone everywhere, and that stuff is STICKY. I felt so defeated, I nearly quit. After walking for a few minutes, I decided to keep going for a while longer. I made it 4.5 miles, not my goal for the day. To keep it in perspective, me a year ago would be very proud of me today for running that far, walking breaks or not. I am trying to stop being so hard on myself :)

Please send your good thoughts my way for this Saturday. Given the chance to do it again, I probably wouldn't schedule a race after two weekends with major events. I know I will finish the race, but I want to do better than finish-I want to run the entire thing, and finish in a decent time.