Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Sooner or later God'll cut you down

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down


Seriously. This little ditty from my man Cash came on at about Mile 11, when I was in the middle of a major sufferfest.

I totally don't recommend running a half-marathon without training just a little bit.

My longest run since Norway was 7 miles.

And I hadn't run in two weeks.

And you know? Half-marathons are sort of old hat by now. So in my brain, I'm thinking "No problem!"

But yeah, today is the first day I could walk downstairs.

That was a blast yesterday when I had to be out doing field work at the lake.

This race report will be short.
Here are Lauren, Joe, and me at the beginning (note I am charging Joe's mom to give her my long sleeve shirt ).

The race started nice.

Some lady on crutches tried to cross the street through the pack of runners and right in front of Lauren and me. We both managed to dodge her, but hello?!

But as expected, at about Mile 5.5 I started to hit a wall. When I hit the halfway point, I was very aware that a PR was nowhere in the picture, so I just chilled out and enjoyed the run. That lasted until about Mile 10. Then, it was all about survival. Joe actually yoyoed with me a few times, but I was so oblivious to everything but how tired my quads were that I didn't even notice.

I came in at 2:28, which, besides the fiasco in Toronto in 2006 where I was crying from how much my calf hurt but for some reason couldn't just take a DNF, is my slowest time ever. And Toronto was 2:30. Three months ago, I came in at 2:13. Ah, how far I have fallen!

But the good news? I don't actually really care. I had a fun weekend, even if I did miss my flight home and have to pay $150 to get on the next one. Stupid traffic! Seriously. Pennslyvania you are so on my shitlist right now with your incredibly stupid road construction. I'm sending you the bill!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

We all do it at one time or another. Glad you had fun though.

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

Pennsylvania's tourism motto is (or recently was - it may've changed by now) "America Starts Here".

See? Nobody said anything about finishing, or passing Go, or Collecting $200 (which latter'd put you $50 to the good, btw) ...

But you finished anyway. Bully for ya. Proves you are full of Virtue, Liberty and Independence, which is PA's official motto.

Runner-up Motto: "All Sales Are Final. No Refunds. Governor Carries Less Than $20 Cash and Does Not Have Key to State Treasury."

Seriously, congratulations on finishing. Anyone who can count the time it took her to run 13 miles in increments smaller than half-days is someone to whom I doff my chapeau.

ButterPeanut said...

I will repeat this performance in Brussels in two weeks!

Dang, we forgot to exchange iPod contents in Tromso (I could use that Cash song).

Frayed Laces said...

Well at least you can't say you trained too hard and still missed a PR!


It's refreshing to hear a runner acknowledge that they are totally cool with a less-than-ideal performance.

Laurie said...

I had a feeling you were going to miss your flight home :( Sorry I couldn't help you though I'm sure the traffic would have negated that effort anyway.

Great job finishing on less than ideal training, that definitely counts for something!

peter said...

Be nice to PA, they gotta vote for Obama for sanity to return to this land. Nice race for not having trained. Vacations do that to you, they ruin your base, but you always figure it's still in there somewhere, or at least most of it, and what the heck.

Rainmaker said...

I think it would be hilarious if you actually made up a little invoice and put it in an envelope and mailed it to a few agencies. It would make for an awesome blog post.

Oly said...

I've never been a "GOD" fearing type... untill I read your post.

Thanks for that, now I'm scared.

Hope I'm never on your shit list, or god's, mostly yours though.

April said...

Hey Danielle in Iowa, Amy and I wanna know if you'd be our PaceSetter for next week? If you're down with that, send an email to 26point2ers@gmail.com and I'll send you the questions! Thanks!!

Unknown said...

Seriously, fun is what it's all about!

Steve Stenzel said...

Stupid Pennslyvania. Nice job though! And way to dodge the lady on the crutches! WTF?!?

jeanne said...

Fun is my middle name. It's gotta be, bcs PR'ing apparently isn't. So good on ya!