Lesson Learned!

OK, OK...maybe I should have already known this, but I learned this one the hard way.

This morning I was determined that in our training run I was going to run the first 3.1 miles in UNDER 30 minutes. I've only done that once - during the Allen Springfest 5K, and I still don't know what happened except that it was very cold that day. I got up feeling GREAT and ready to go. The temperature outside was between 55 and 62 degrees, but it didn't feel that cold. I told Rick I wanted to stop and get an energy drink on the way to "the Rock". We stopped at Quick Trip and I got the energy drink. Rick thought he'd like some coffee and it sounded so good I got some too. I drank all the energy drink and about 1/3 of the coffee on the way to the lake. We started off and I still felt great. I ran the first mile in 9:37 and I was running smooth and not breathing too awfully hard - so I was right on the pace I wanted to do the entire 3.1 in.

Disclaimer: This part of the post is not for the faint stomached!

At about mile 1.4 Rick called out that he wasn't going to drink coffee before a run ever again - he was really feeling it. I turned my head to see if he was looking OK and when I turned back it hit...I said I'm going to have to stop for a second - we stopped and I walked onto the grass and immediately heaved and heaved and heaved - I lost a good portion of what I had consumed that morning in the grass on the side of the running path. Of course then I felt like carp as well! Oh, and by the way, for those of you that use the Garmin feature of auto-pause...your Garmin may pause when you stop - but as soon as you start barfing your guts out it senses the movement and starts the clock running again! It will sure mess with your pace!

End of Disclaimer

We went on running, but with the stop I knew I wasn't going to make my under 30 time. I pressed on, but after mile 2, and before mile 3 I had to walk some and let my tummy settle a bit. Even with the stop and the walk break we still managed a 31:30 5K time. Well, I thought, perhaps a negative split then....but it was not to be. We finished mile 6.2 in a respectable 1:03:13 which is about a 31:43 5K. So we kept on running...by mile 8 I was feeling good again and I actually ran the last mile at a 9:47 pace. I think that is the first time I've ever run the last mile and it felt halfway decent. I just wish this had been a bit better run.

I want you all to notice the new races posted in my upcoming runs list.

We got the news this past week that we may not get to go to San Antonio. Rick got transferred to a new group last week and they are scheduled to move their offices the weekend of the race. We should find out something for sure next week.

To stave off some of the disappointment we signed up for the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot - an 8 mile run on Thanksgiving morning, and then we decided to go for broke and sign up for the Rudolph Run here in Allen - a 5K that some of my students have been talking about running as well. Then today when we were talking to Cotton on the phone he told us to sign up for the Dallas Running Club 1/2 marathon as my birthday present. He knew how disappointed we were to not get to go run our first 1/2 in San Antoino, and this one is already 99% full - so if we were going to sign up we needed to do so now. We were planning on running the distance that day anyway - now we'll just get a medal for doing it! He also thinks he might be able to come out and watch us run - that will be really cool! THANKS SON!

Guess we'll be tapering our running next week now for the newest race on our list. I'm not going to take San Antoinio off until we know something for sure...keep tuned in for more details to come!