Running lately has been a struggle for me - I've been going through a lot of challenges lately, family issues and the like, and I've found it hard to lace up my sneaks for training runs. I almost skipped Thursday's Turkey Trot 10K I had signed up for, but the weather was just perfect - about 70 degrees and sunny, even though the forecast called for rain and temps in the high 50s. In fact, it ended up being almost too hot.
It was a tough run. It goes to show I haven't been training as much as a year ago, because my internal clock was all off and I thought I was about 20 minutes slower than I actually was. Around mile 5, a nearby runner checked her watch, and she said we were at at about 1 hour 15 minutes. I thought we were at 1 hour 30 minutes, I felt like I was so slow! It made me hustle through the last mile, as much as I could, and I ended up with a time of 1:29:00, about seven minutes slower than last year's Turkey Trot, but I was markedly faster than any of my training runs this month, I discovered, when I checked out my times on logyourrun.com. That was a thrill.
Anyway ... I have been feeling kind of demoralized what with personal issues and I've been doubting my goal to run the Shamrock Half Marathon in March. Throughout the 10K I knew I was not as strong as I was a year ago when training to run this same race. Not to mention, I'm conservative about money and I was griping internally about the $70 entry fee. So by mile 4 of this 6.2 mile race, I was pretty much sure there was no way I was going to sign up for this half marathon.
I met up with some running buddies at the finish line, and Bethany had won a raffle prize - a free entry to the very same race I have been hemming and hawing over. Except she can't use it because she's moving to Australia at the end of the year. So she gave it to me. I was just so taken aback at her generosity and I really feel like it was some weird nudge from a higher being or something to get me back on track, to push through these tough times, and so on. I totally pulled a 180, my morale is up again and I haven't run since the race. I really believe in fate working in mysterious ways.
I believe in that stuff too, honey. I hope you continue to train and run. I know it's good for you. I wish my left knee was in better shape - otherwise I'd think about starting to do this, too, and we could do it together at some point!!
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