Late can sometimes be Great

As most people know I'm notoriously late for most things. The whole time management concept, not one of my strongest suits. It's me, I try and that's all I can offer. Today however I honed in on my tardiness. I managed to make it to the race today relatively on time, which meant that I had time to warm-up and stretch and whatnot before the race started. I will state that there's no reason for me to be at a cross country race any more than 45 min prior to the start so I consider getting there 40 min before, on time. Well we all start lining up at the start line, I do a couple of striders, the official states the race will go off in 5 min, I start to get super cotton mouth. So I thought that I'd have time to quickly sprint to my stuff not too far from the line and grab a quick sip of water. As I'm heading back to the start to my surprise the gun went off before I made it back. Not expecting that, what a way to get into the race! Of course through the madness of processing everything I was trying to search for my teammates so I could pace with someone. Not an easy task with a mass of runners. I just gave up and ran, figuring that one way or another either I would find them or they'd find me, which did happen eventually. From start to finish it was an interesting race. I was late to the start. I played cat and mouse a couple of times with a few runners in the middle. The most energy efficient tactic it is not but it worked for me. Then I ran down quite a few runners in last 100 meters. Oh how I love when my track speed conveys out on the finishes! Such a great feeling! Best part of it all I shaved 1:10 off of my time from 2 weeks ago giving me an all time personal best for a 5K cross country course and an inside peak to what is to come I hope!
Here's a link to a pretty cool pic that was snapped of me at this race http://eliterunning.com/photos/index.php?g2_itemId=160771

Will do a half-marathon for...

The sheer joy and pleasure-ummm no that's definitely not it. Yep I'll break down and admit it I'll only do it for the swag. Last year I accidentally entered myself in the Nike Women's Half Marathon out in San Francisco. When I say accidentally, I mean that I entered myself purposely but it was a random drawing and didn't think that I'd be picked. Joke was on me I was picked, so I set out last October to do this thing. What enticed me into even thinking about entering was that every finisher received a custom designed Tiffany's necklace. I was sold, what girl doesn't like the sight of that little blue box even if she's not a huge fan of the designer. Though it started off only doing it for the glitz, the end result was for a very worthy cause that meant something to me- The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. After I was through with that I swore that I would never run another 1/2 again for a very long time. Oops so I was swayed by swag again this year, though this time around I wasn't going out to Cali to run this one and it was a key chain (still designed by Tiffany's) instead of a necklace but the proceeds went to the same charity. It was the same Nike Women's Half Marathon except it was virtual through the Nike + system (a glorified high tech pedometer) letting you run wherever you happen to be and enabling you to not have to run it in one fail swoop. As long as I clocked in 13.1 miles in the day I was set as a "finisher". Which is exactly what I did 5.1 miles in the morning and a blistering cold long 8 miles at night. Pretty cool but pretty crazy. I did it though and now that's it's all over I promise myself that I will try not to be swayed by glittery objects to do obscene amounts of unnecessary mileage next year. Key word here is try.

Along for the hills

Can I offer you a hill, more hills, or how about a large hill with many more hills. Ah yes that would be this past week in a nutshell. It started with Tuesday when Jess and I decided to do continuous Summit Hills since our annual meeting was later on that night and there wasn't going to be practice. Well little did we know that continuous hills are excruciating and that we'd be doing a hill workout on Thursday. I got through both workouts without too much of a hitch. Amongst my many plans on ramping up the training is adding a third day to the mix. It just so happened that there was a cross country race going on for today so I figured that since my team needed a couple of girls to score for the grand prix that it would be a perfect training run for me. I also haven't raced this pre-season except for the mistake 5 miler earlier in Sept. Why not, a little through the woods action, change up the terrain, 3.1 miles, fairly easy. That's right I forgot to mention the HILLS! Not just 1, many, I stopped counting after 2. I wasn't expecting to throw a 3rd day of running up inclines into the mix, but like the other days I got through it and didn't finish with too shabby of a time (It was a cross country PR with GBTC). Now that that's all over with I think that I will stay as far away for hills for at least a week, hopefully longer.