Game on!

So it is official. I am now registered for the Toronto Half-Marathon on October 15th. I am giving Toronto a chance to redeem itself. If I get out of there still in possession of my passport and able to walk, I will consider it a much more successful trip than last time.

Mr. Passport, I promise I will guard you with my life this time and not let some sketchy dude in Chinatown steal you again. Although you really aren't nearly as cool as my stolen passport with that full page Ugandan visa and Haiti stamps.

I guess I need to start boning up on my miles/km conversions. Or I could just be like Al and calculate my pace in knots. That will be some new fun math to do in my head while I run. It might look something like this:

We all know Bessel functions are an integral (haha, get it?) part of converting paces. I think the Garmin does this though :-)

My hammy is still sore and I doubt it will feel better until I take a break from running. I would like to PR on this half though... My last half marathon in April was 2:19, and that was in the pouring rain AND we ran three miles before the start, since it was supposed to be an 18 mile training run (we never got around to those last two miles after the race). Granted I feel slower now than I was then. My friend says I should not push the hamstring and run it for fun and to hang out with Lisa. Although I fear that if I don't push it, Lisa will leave me in the dust :-)

So hamstring be damned! I will let you rest after October 15th! The aformentioned friend can't even make me feel guilty about this, because he is stuck on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean and can no longer read this blog :-) I am sure I will get a huge "told you so" when I am hobbling around from not listening to the hammy.

So my first step in not taking it easy is to run not one, but two races this coming weekend. The first is a 5 mile trail race up at Pilot Knob State Park. This is the sister race to the 15k I ran in May where I won a rock. There are so few trail races in the area, you gotta do 'em as they come, even if they fall on a weekend with another race you have already signed up for... So that is Saturday.

Sunday is the Capital Pursuit 10-miler. I was wary of signing up for this one because I may not beat my time from last year (I am very competetive with myself). But if I could finish that sucker limping the entire second half of the race and still finish with a 10:15 overall pace, perhaps there is hope.

Today I was supposed to do 8, but I woke up at 6am ready to roll and it did not stop raining all day. Finally I thought the rain had broken at about 6pm, so I put on the running shoes and headed out the door. About a quarter mile from my house, it started pouring again. I could barely see at some points (forgot my hat). The leader of my old running group (which morphed into my current running group) is doing Ironman Wisconsin today, so I figure, if she can do all that in the rain, I can at least suck it up and run 3 miles...

So I turned it into a 3 miler, which means I'll have to make up that 8 miler some time this week... It actually wasn't such a bad rain to run in - the temps were around 60 and since I was only doing 3, I didn't have enough time to get cold. I ran a 9:18 pace too (I think I was just eager to get home).

Argh! The rain just wants to make me curl up in my pajamas and stay home. But there is homework to do for tomorrow. And I left it at school. So instead I must leave the cozy house and brave the elements to go face a pile of math.