How's this for a survey question?

The lovely folks from the Army Ten-Miler sent a link to a survey for us finishers to complete, if we wanted to. Here's the first question:

I guess they thought we all might still be a bit addled from the heat.

My experience was, generally, quite good. Race organizers can't control the weather. Maybe Al Gore could work a little harder on that before next year's fall races?

One of the female runners I met in DC is a little older than I am, and quite a bit more experienced. I talked with her yesterday and they had run out of water by the time she got to the five-mile mark. So I was very lucky that fluids were available to me the entire route.

For those of you who haven't registered for a race before, you have to put down a predicted finish time. Your time determines where you are in the starting corrals – slower runners start later, and I was in the last corral. It seems logical to put down a faster time, whether you can meet it or not. Of course, that would be lying. It didn't occur to me to do that when I registered, as I'm not a liar, but if it meant I would cross the starting line sooner – and thus be assured of having fluids available … hmmmm.

At any rate, spectators stepped up and offered her water and trail mix; I've read elsewhere that Chicago spectators also saved the day for some of the LaSalle runners.

Nearly everyone staying at our hotel was in the race. The civilian runners, all apparently from the same club, were kinda snooty. I'm sure they thought the chubby old lady was the spectator and my husband, who is pretty lean, was the runner. Even though I was wearing my Country Music Marathon shirt! But the military runners were, without fail, enthusiastic, encouraging, polite, enthusiastic, interested, interesting, and did I mention enthusiastic? The volunteers, many of them military as well, were handing out high-fives and hoooahs all along the route.

I think what got me through it in somewhat good shape was thinking of it as a training run, not a race. All I wanted to do was finish and add one more star to my training chart. I ran it about a minute slower than my race pace, which is fine with me. Cooler weather, or cloud cover, or even a breeze would have helped, but hey – it is what it is, and it's over!

And it's good to be back. I'll update you on the antidepressants tomorrow.

I didn't die and I wasn't last

Hi, kids! Long time, no post. But you knew it would be a while.

A lot has happened since last we met. First, though, I really have to hand it to you Florida runners. The Army Ten-Miler was held in swamplike conditions, and if you weren't conditioned for it you suffered. I was semi-conditioned, and I semi-suffered. I feel very badly for the family of the runner who died. I haven't found out how old he was, but I do know he collapsed just 200 yards from the finish line.

While I was running – or walking, take your pick – I saw three runners carried off the course. It was brutal out there. Fortunately they didn't run out of water or Gatorade – or cups, as they did in Chicago. The New York Times story about LaSalle said runners were picking cups up off the road to be filled by volunteers.

I missed my target finish time by 12 minutes – chip time was 2:12:08. I was 106th out of 148 in my age group. I met a lovely woman from Missouri on the hotel shuttle bus and we ran together the whole way. This was her first-ever race and I hope she had fun. I lost her after the finish. She beat me by one hundreth of a second. [I let her win! Heh.]

Since Mr. Shrinking Knitter is camera-challenged, I have no finish photos, but will snag one when the offical race photography company posts them later this week.

I'll be back tomorrow with more about what's been going on around here.

If you're a mom …

or if you know one or if you have one, then Happy Mother's Day!

We had a little cold front pop through overnight and it's quite lovely today – cool temperatures and low humidity. Whaddya wanna bet I take a walk on a rest day?

The first half of yesterday's eight-mile run was great. I deliberately left the stopwatch at home; I just want to get the joy back. At about the five-mile mark I had to walk for a couple minutes and found myself alternating between a fast walk and a slow jog the remainder of the route. Mr. Shrinking Knitter came by at Mile 7.5 and I hopped in the car for the last half-mile back to my car.

The joy is not completely back, but it's getting closer.

I logged 24.1 running miles last week and did three half-hour weight-training sessions.

I haven't registered for it yet, but I've definitely decided to do the Rex Healthcare Half-Marathon in Raleigh in November. Leading up to that, I'll be doing the Army Ten-Miler on October 7 in Washington, DC. Training starts in three months.

You know what that means, don't you?

Two new t-shirts! Heh.

Seriously, it means I have 12 weeks to work on losing some – or maybe even all – of the excess weight I've been lugging around since last fall.

I don't mean to imply that I haven't been working on losing it; y'all know I have. Three months of non-training fitness workouts and non-training meal plans should yield some lower numbers between now and the first of August. I'm not setting a number goal; I just want to be lighter, leaner, faster and meaner when I start training than I am now.

Is that too much to ask?