Tiki Trottin'

     This past Saturday, I had an opportunity for a rare nighttime 5K race.  I participated in this particular race last year, and let me tell you it's a lot of fun!  The race is known as the Tiki Trot and it is held in Hecker, Illinois, as part of St. Augustine of Canturbury Catholic Church church picnic.  It's a standard chicken dinner, beer, and bingo church picnic with a rare rose of a 5k.  This race really is so much fun it's criminal.
     The race starts at 8:00 p.m. and the course is lined with hundereds of tiki torches.  People come from all over for this and I do mean all over.  Last year we met a lady who came as far away as Kentucky for this night race!  This little speck of town which according to the census only covers about .2 of a square mile sees a people explosion of roughly 400 times the town's population.  And probably 75% of the people are there for the race, not the picnic!
     So, I dragged my wonderful husband along for my fun.  At race time me, the husband, and over 1000 of our "friends" were corraled behind the starting line.  I leaned over and said to my hubby, "I now know why cows seem so pissy being herded."  To make it feel more like a cattle drive, we were all outfitted with a timing chip.  "Bagged & Tagged" as my wise ass husband put it.  You laced this chip onto your shoe, and your time started when you crossed the starting mat, and time stopped when your foot crossed the finish mat. 
     The Race Emcee was far away from me at the actual starting line shouting some instructions.  To be honest, I gave up trying to listen and was already jammimg to my race tunes.  My official race strategy was do the first mile in under 9 minutes and wing the rest.  Great strategy.  Once I took the left that lead you away from town I felt I was doing quite well.  I could feel the tiny rush of adrenaline when I passed someone.  Hey, even if that person was 90 or speed walking, it still felt empowing to overtake SOMEONE.
     I was booking along as I passed the first mile marker.  It was already quite dark and I could see the tiki flames buring ahead of me.  I could already see the turnaround.  The course turns to the right and thanks to the absence of corn in the fields this year, I could see where the tiki runway ended. 
     As I ran along the tiki brightened county road and made my way back into town, I took a few moments to really see what was going on around me.  It really is a neat to see all those tiki's lighting your path, and all the runners and walkers in this even have some sort of glow-in-the-dark get up.  I even had on a few glow-in-the-dark bracelets on. 
     I rounded the corner towards the finish and I suddenly started to feel my legs turning into jelly, but I only had a little more to go. I pushed through and got a little lift from the hundreds of people clapping and cheering the runners along.  I glanced at the time clock when I crossed the finish mat and noted the time, 31:27:00. 
     WHAT?!?!?  As the poor guy was cutting the timing chip from my shoe, my head was screaming.  I thought I had done so well.  Way off my regular pace.  I had thought I had done extremely well for myself and that should mean under 30 minutes.  Seething inside, I calmly waited for my husband to finish and between gulps of breath and water my favorite cheerleader reminded me of something.  He reminded me about the timing chip and how I was nowhere near the starting line when the clock started.  Thank God for Husbands!  It really was good of him to calm me down before he had a chance to catch his own breath.
     I'm antsy for the race timekeepers to update their website with the official race results.  So while I impatiently wait, it's back to the goal at hand...those monster 13.1 miles are only 32 days away!!!

It's Tough

Damn, if doubt don't creep into the brain like a weed.  It starts out little enough, but just like the weed once it takes hold, it's a bitch to get rid of.

The past few weeks have been tough.  I have upped the distance to 5 miles, and it was going along really great.  Then the demands of life get in the way.  The house, the kids, the husband, the heat...they all stand in my way!  The usual stuff like the house, kids, husband, etc. don't stand in my way as much.  They are all really supportive (except the house, it could care less). 

It's the heat.  It's a bitch.  I'm talking King Kamehameha Be-yotch!  Ordinarily, I bask in the stuff.  I can't normally get enough sunshine and warmth.  I am a summer person. Sun should have been my middle name.  This crazy, nasty humid scorcher of a month has gotten the best of me.

I can't always get to the YMCA to run in air-conditioned comfort.  Those things called Kids don't always want to go, or I'm watching other kids and they aren't members, or at certain times of the day the place is just packed.  So running outside is the only option.  I would have done it in the early morning, but the air is so heavy & the fog is so bad at 5:30 in the morning some tired farmer might turn little old me into street pizza.  And going after the fog burns off is out of the question since the heat index reaches the mid nineties by 9 am.  So I wind up not putting in the required 5 miles.

Which leaves me to sit here and get down on myself for not doing anything and being a big failure.  How can I work through that?  How am I supposed to keep thinking positive when I am really thinking I am going to fail.  The Hills and Hollows 1/2 Marathon is just under two months away and every time I think about it I get nauseous.  Hell, I've got two small 5 & 6K races right before the Big One and they make me sick to think about and those are races I've done before without problems!
Well, I guess I just gotta make an attempt no matter how pathetic it is.  And I've got to constantly remind myself that if I miss one run, it's not the end of the world!  And I know that I can go 8 miles which is over half the distance.  To quote Joe Dirt, "You gotta just keep on keepin' on."  Yeah, easy for him to say.  I just need to make it easy for me to say.