San Antonio Half: Week 13

Distance: 11.08 miles
Time: 2 hrs. 5 mins. 26 secs.
Route: Clyde Fant Parkway

*First off, giving a big shout out to my Howzit Sistahs from the Rock N' Roll San Diego Relay...all 3 of them are running a half marathon today!! Mary and Tricia are running in Long Beach and Julie is running the Nike Women's Half in San Francisco. Way to go, sistahs! Much love from Louisiana!*

I'm still trying to figure out how on earth to write this one. If I didn't have a decent sense of humor, I think I would probably have thrown the towel in after my first 5 steps. My alarm went off at 5am. Normally, I wake up before my alarm, but apparently, my body had other plans. It really, REALLY did NOT want to wake up. I trudged out of bed and was very grateful that I had gotten everything ready and laid out last night rather than this morning. I bought a new camelbak yesterday and was happy to get the chance to use it...I felt pretty lucky, a new iPod and a new camelbak in the same week!

I met Jenn across from Sciport and we both were a little tired this morning. I think we both had the same mind set of, "Let's get this mother done with." I decided not to listen to any tuneage this morning, but would instead use the Nike+ function on the iPod. Normally, I keep it in my pocket. Since the Nano has a snazzy clip on it, I decided to clip it to my camelbak. Note to self: If something works, don't change it. Especially when it comes to a pricey piece of equipment. Can anyone guess what happened? If you're guessing that I took 5 strides and the sucker went flying off the camelbak, landed face down on the ground and shattered the screen, then you win a cookie the next time I see you! I immediately picked it up and wanted to cry. Surprisingly, it still works perfectly in spite of the screen. So for now, it will remain...it is what it is and it still works. Jenn looked at me and said, "Don't let it shake you!" I told her that it would not be indicative of how the run would go.

Fall has arrived in Northwest Louisiana. It was cold this morning. Poor Jenn was in short sleeves and shorts. I had my capris and a long sleeve on and I was still cold. I can't imagine how cold Jenn must have been. The first half of the run was actually pretty uneventful and it seemed to be a lot faster than normal. We ran the loop around the pond and it was really pretty with the sun coming up. About a mile after our turn around, we got tired. Really tired. The funny thing is that both of us were tired. Neither of us wanted to say it, but we were just ready to be done. We saw a hill and decided that we could run up it and then we'd walk a little. Needless to say, it was the wrong hill to pick. We started climbing up and we're both vocally encouraging ourselves to get up this hill. Jenn is so sweet...she started saying, "Come on girl, get yourself up the hill". I, on the other hand, had been possessed by a pissed off sailor. I was saying things that I can't post. Lots of s-bombs and f-bombs were dropped in a matter of about 2 minutes. We were about halfway up, when we looked at each other and just about died laughing. It hurt and we could barely catch our breath because we were laughing so hard. I told it was stupid and I was going to finish the hill by walking. Oh, and for the record, you're probably thinking that it must have been one heck of a hill. Um yeah. Let's not forget that this is Louisiana. A good chunk of this state sits below sea level.

We had about a mile left when we saw Mark drive by with the kiddos. They decided to meet us on the trail rather than hitting the track. So, we made that our new goal--to see the kids and Mark. We kept trucking and we couldn't see them. We started to get mad because we knew they were there, but we couldn't see them. Finally, we caught up to them with about a 1/4 mile to go. Gav ran the rest of the way with us and then turned around and ran back with Mark.

Overall, it really was a good run...minus the shattered iPod screen and chub rub on my legs. It was a beautiful morning, fabulous company and I'm still standing. So, I think we'll put this in the win category. 4 weeks remain...two more long runs to go, one taper week and then the race. I cannot wait. :)