13.1s and 5s

A post about running.

If you remember, I was supposed to run the Bentonville Half Marathon a mere 12 hours after we landed back from our vacation in Paris.  I trained pretty hard for this race. I did hill repeats on the terrible, horrible hill that was to be around mile 12 of this race. I went to lots of speed sessions. I ran as much as my time and guilt allowed me to. And then I ended up not being able to run the half because, well, life happens. I still miss my grandma......
But this is a good post! About persevering! And busting through the cloud of depression that seemed to so easily descend on my pretty-much-perfect life. Here's how it went:

We got back from Paris and I was an emotional mess. We went to Chicago for the funeral and I was even more of an emotional mess- by this time "anger" had entered by emotional whirlwind- not fun. We got home and the mess continued. I was pissed off, super sad, bordering on depressed, and lots of other weird emotions. I did not want to run. Or work. Or talk to people. At all. Ever. I wanted to sit mindlessly and alternate my drinking between wine and coffee and smoke cigarettes and not be around anyone. I was clearly not in a good place....

Then I start thinking about how far I've come in my running and how far I still have to go. And how much it would suck to start from square one again. But at the same time it seemed to easy and so desirable to just throw in the towel and walk away. But Instead of throwing in the towel, we threw the kids in the car on a Saturday afternoon and drove down to Fayetteville to sign me up for the Hogeye Half Marathon on Sunday morning :) So on April 14th I put my half marathon training to use and killed it in the half! Here are the 3 things I will always remember from that half:
1. I spent the first 5 miles trying not to cry. Crying and running are a strange combination.
2. I may or may not have attempted to chug a PBR at mile 10.
3. I passed lots of dudes in the last 3 miles. I'm attributing this to running on PBR power.



Other notes:
*I ran a 5k up in Illinois last weekend. My goal was 23:30. I wasn't even close. I ran a 24:17.
*I ran 10 miles last Monday and got sunburned. Then it snowed on Friday. Weird.
*Next Race: Speedy Skunk May 18th (I think). Now to decide on 5k or 10k???