I have this great master-plan in mind for tomorrow’s 9-mile run. As you may have read, my current personal distance record is 8.15 less-than-stellar miles, and tomorrow there is a BIGFAT9 on the running calendar.
Did anyone have a clue this was a movie? I think the picture just sums up how I feel about running 9 miles. How horribly difficult and ominous it feels…
So about this master plan of mine… see, I live at the TOP of a hill. I can manage about a 1.5-mile slightly uphill run at the start, but any distance further than that requires me to travel downhill. And what goes down eventually has to go back up, right? Or something like that. So unless I drive down to the flat roads in my town, I’m usually stuck dragging my tired, shaky legs a mile uphill at the end of each run.
Why yes Miley, there is always going to be another mountain… at the end of my long runs.
I’ve decided that I really really ant to run the Holiday Half in 2 hours and 20 minutes. Overambitious? Maybe. But I think I can do it. This means picking up the speed on my training runs and trying to replicate the course pattern as much as possible. The course starts off with a bit of a hill climb, but after the initial climb, it’s really no hillier than the routes I run at home.
For tomorrow’s 9-miler, my goal is to complete it in 1:30 or less. I’m going to do this by adjusting my route to start at my house, work through a 2-mile hill climb right at the beginning, speed up on a steep one-mile descent, then level off for the last 6 miles (with some small rolling hills) by running to J’s house in the flatlands.
I would love to live somewhere with roads like this to run on. For a day…
I really hope this strategy works. I also took the advice of the super-sweet Ashley at PrettyFittie and purchased some NuuN for my run since the Gatorade just wasn’t agreeing with me. While buying the NuuN, I also picked up a pack of watermelon Gu Chomps and Cran-Razz Clif Shotbloks to see which I like best since the idea of a body-temperature gel while running ups the queasy-factor for me.
On a funny and non-nauseating note – one of my favorite awesomely-sarcastic runners, Cely, gave me a little shout out on her blog Running off the Reese’s, because I sent her this hilarious link in response to her visit to the American Girl Place in Chicago. If you ever had an American Girl doll or wanted one, check this out and leave me a comment telling me which doll you had. I was a Molly all the way:
Right down to the love of books, loathing attitude toward math, and the scheming for attention…
girlsthatrun 