Will run for ice cream.

I love daylight saving. It instantly eliminates lack of evening daylight as an excuse for not running. It’s perfect for me. I’ve been so lazy during the fall/winter months and I hate it. I actually ran three times this week, which should not be an accomplishment, but it sadly is. I would have run four times, but I hurt my ankle on Tuesday chasing after Charlie as he ran through the front door. Doh.

I need to figure out if I want to do the Country Music Half. It comes down to time, money and training restraints. Basically, do I want to have to get up early and run after probably a night on the town and the day of the concert? Also, do I want to pay the $100 registration fee? It’s kind of a steep fee, but it’s also the effin’ country music marathon! Lots of entertainment, fun music, sights to see… like Nike but with many more bands. That is my biggest reason for wanting to do it… the fact that I happen to be in Nashville the same weekend, it’s a sign! Then there’s the whole training bit. Yes, I did a half two weeks ago, but I was NOT ready for it. I have six weeks before the race, if I can get myself in order and do some actual long runs (not races), then that will be the biggest determiner.

In other news, today was the Bay to Bay 12k. It wasn’t my best race, but it was fun nonetheless. H, E and I were all ailing, which made the whole thing a bit of an ordeal. H developed some sort of weird blood blister on her foot and was in a great amount of pain as she ran. E hadn’t run any sort of long distance and also has ankle/knee issues, so that was slowing her down. Then this week I’ve had this tightness behind my left knee, that I can’t figure out. So it was bothering me, but I powered through it for the most part. My biggest issue was taking off to quickly at the start and running the first mile faster than I can maintain. Ooops.

The Bay to Bay still has the best food at the finish. This year on top of The Columbia’s black beans and rice, there was ICE CREAM! HECK YES! Seriously. Ice cream made the race. There was also different breads, pastries, bagels and juice, but ICE CREAM!

I found out that there will be a women’s half marathon in St. Pete on H’s 18th birthday. Pretty exciting. If I’m in the state of Florida I’ll be doing the that race and the River Run. Yep.

How I survived Gasparilla…

The gasparilla half certainly qualifies as an experience and a half. I didn’t train for it the way that I should have. In fact, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to run, let alone crawl the full 13.1 miles. Thankfully, I did. H and I did walk a little bit, but at the absolute most it was maybe a mile, probably more like a 1/2 mile.

The weather was horrible. It was very very windy as a cold front worked its way across the bay and the last six miles I ran in the rain. I figure it was all part of the adventure, but I’m not sure I’d go looking to run a race in the rain/wind again. Haha.

The race itself was eh. I thought the course was boring. It started in the dark, the streets didn’t really have street lights or anything, so that was weird. It also went in a circle and we ended up back at the beginning and then took a turn. I didn’t like having to pass the finish line at half way and know that I still had another 6 1/2 miles to run.

Exciting things: There was a guy running the full marathon who dribbled a basketball the entire time. Then there was another guy JUGGLING as he ran the whole marathon. Insane. Speaking of insane, H and I were getting bored and so H decided to sing the entire 99 bottles of beer on the wall song as we ran. Thankfully? or maybe unfortunately? It only took her about a mile and half to sing the whole thing.

During the out and back part on Bayshore I saw our TNT coaches. Actually, they saw us and called out my name. The surprise of someone cheering for me from the sidelines definitely gave me a needed boost of energy, especially since I had no idea how I was going to survive. Also, some nice stranger made little packets of pretzels and gummy bears and offered them to the runners. As we passed by, she offered pretzels and H and I passed them up, but she said gummy bears a second later and H made a U-Turn to go get herself some gummy bears.

Oh and I ran next to the marathon winner for .01 seconds. I was on mile 9 and he was on mile 20. Haha.

I crossed the finish line in a vertical position and actually ran into college friends and who had ran the race/supported their spouses. (ooh, so weird to say that!) I’m not sure I’d want to do Gasparilla again, the t-shirt was great, the expo was great, the race itself… eh. We’ll see though.

I ran a recovery run on Monday, thinking that it would help stretch out my muscles. Not so much. It definitely made things hurt so much more. I’ve been on a ibuprofen schedule for a couple days now.