This became my new motto at my Saturday race, where the weather was absolutely beautiful weather for our run and for about 30 minutes thereafter. Then the rain started to fall and it quickly progressed to summer monsoon season in Portland.
I usually dress way too warm for runs. A blogger recently wrote about how if you're standing around waiting for a race to begin and thinking about how perfect the temperature is, you're overdressed. That's me, in a nutshell. But for Saturday I did manage to talk myself out of wearing anything more than a tech tee and capris and within five minutes of starting to run I was sooo glad I did. It was almost too warm in some spots of the course when there was no wind (the adjacent highway creates a big wind tunnel effect in places).
Except for the five steps I took to get to a tree to pull the huge (HUGE!!) rock out of the tread of my shoe, I amazed myself by running the whole thing. It became purely mental towards the end, and the zen iPod saved me. My running playlist always starts with U2's "Beautiful Day," which I love to run to. My power song right now is "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" -- I go between that and "It's the End of the World (As We Know It)", which I think is a great running song. I did my power song to keep myself running the last quarter mile before the two mile mark; my deal with myself was run to two miles and see how it went after that. Then it became, well you've gone this far just go a little bit farther, and then finally, dude you can't stop now. The very last quarter mile or so was when my all-time zen running song came on: Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty." Really, how can you not push through all the fatigue with that one?
I was hoping to break 40 minutes -- really impressive for me since I hadn't run a step since my last race five weeks prior -- but I came in at 0:40:39. Probably that stupid rock (HUGE! HUGE rock!!!) in my shoe.
The race was directed by the guy who does my running league and it was very well done. Panera Bread was one of the sponsors so we had all these tasty and fresh bagels and pastries plus their flavored cream cheese. The honey and walnut cream cheese was absolutely amazing. Plus plenty of food, even for the very last people to finish. And to cap it all off, the fog and rain held off until we were wrapping everything up.
I can't wait for the October 2nd Fall Finale with my league. I should be the proud winner of cash! I've also signed up for the Run Like Hell 10K for October 24 -- my very last race in the 30-39 age bracket. After that, I'll be a master.
Cheers,
the CilleyGirl
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