My next marathon humiliation will be the Lost Dutchman outside of Phoenix on Feb. 16.
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| I'll be here in 3.5 months! (Lost Dutchman Marathon: Photo credit) |
MM is in, too.
Sweet! Maybe I'll finally beat him. It's kind of my goal (sorry, babe). It keeps me going when I don't want to run. I think to myself: If I have a really, really good race and he has a really, really bad race, it's possible yet highly unlikely that I could zoom past him as he crawls to the finish.
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| Look! Campfire before the start. Too, too cool. (Photo credit: I dunno, but thanks) |
It's a cheery thought, though I doubt it will happen.
Plus I really don't want MM to crawl to the finish (though sometimes, I must admit, such thoughts bring me malicious pleasure).
My goals for this marathon? To finish. To not die. To finish. That's about it at this point.
I don't seem to race well. I hit all my target paces on runs, I practice fueling and then, I don't know, I stand there at the starting line and I'm all hyped up and excited yet, at the same time there's this part of me that longs (longs!) to be out running by myself on the trails.
Running beside people I don't know feels cluttered, like standing with strangers on an elevator, and everyone just stands there and no one says anything, and if you do say something everyone looks at you as if you're a freak or, worse yet, laughs like you just told a joke, even though you didn't.
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| Luckily, we don't have many elevators in Alaska. (stock photo) |
Racing feels like that to me. And yeah, I'm that woman who talks to everyone she passes. Last marathon a guy got so fed up with my chatter that he sprinted ahead in the middle of a hill (I caught back up on the downhill and he sprinted ahead again. I think I scared him).
What I love the most about racing is the anticipation and planning, the dreaming and the training. I love the training. And I'm going to really love slogging out long runs in dark, subzero Alaska weather.
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| So pretty! But so cold and so icy. |
Friday is my last day in Nebraska City. It's storming now, thunder and lightning, which we don't often get in Alaska. Such a treat.
Earlier today I took my last swim at the Ambassador Wellness Center, which I will miss terribly.
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| Goodbye, goodbye. We had ourselves a time, yes? |
So far:
Monday: Swim, 1 mile
Tuesday: Run, 8.35 miles
Wednesday: Swim, 1 mile
I don't like running with a lot of people either and seek out small races on purpose. Your next marathon sounds really cool. :)
ReplyDeleteI like both size races. I don't like to be crowded but I love racing with a lot of people in front and behind me. I love the sight of all those runners doing a race together.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I do love watching a lot of runners in races, it kind of chokes me up you know, so many people doing what I love so much. I love to watch them; I just don't want to run in crowds. Next year I might do the Philly Marathon though, along with 25,000 other people. That will be wild. Who knows, it might turn out to be my new thing.
ReplyDeleteI swim and swim and take group lessons and take individual lessons and get no faster. But wearing the wet suit in the races made me faster or seemed to. And YES IMO tris are much more fun than races. For me it is the biking part. I would never do a bike race but I love racing on a bike in a tri. And I like doing all 3 things.
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