The culmination of a few weeks of build up, the big test, 22 miles. I arrive at RunTex Annex ready to go and pretty feisty about it. Mo is there, but LB is surprisingly and shockingly late. However, in pure LB fashion, he sends me a text to tell me he will be 7 minutes late. Exactly. I give him a little grief for lallygagging and he retorts, "We'll see about that at the end of the run." Ominous.
I should have kept my mouth shut. He was right.
I had a great first part of the run, in fact, great up until 18ish (just like San Antonio) For no reason at all, I start to crumble, complain, kvetch. I want to quit completely. I wonder why I'm signed up for Boston and what shopping I can do there instead while everyone else runs.
I mean, really, I was fine. My legs don't hurt any more than they are supposed to. I don't have a cramp, my feet don't hurt. I just slow down, like concrete blocks on my feet slow down. And, I am Jersey Girl angry about it!
I speed up and try to catch LB. I try to stay with Mo. They both pull away and I find myself grinding out the last several miles just watching their posteriors. Granted we added the hills at the end, not really following the pre-designated Gazelle route.
When their watches hit 22, they stop. My watch is STILL not at 22, so I have to keep going, shuffling along until the magic lap sound goes off. I trudge over the annex. I should have hid myself away, gotten in my car and slinked on home.
Gilbert asks me, are you OK Red? He seems to repeat this over and over as I gasp for an answer. Each time it seems he's getting louder and louder. If my face wasn't red to match my hair, I would be totally shocked!
After my great 18 miles the week before, I am humbled. I thought I was on track, that I was training up well. It's a mere 4 miles more and I crashed and burned.
I spend the day thinking about what it was...what I could have done differently aside from not being a smart alec to LB.
It's the red wine says Coach M; Gilbert says it's eating and drinking...which one should or shouldn't I be doing I wonder?
Luckily, there are 2 more attempts for me at this distance. Next time, I will keep my mouth shut at the start and just dread it quietly.!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Thanks for sharing! Keep on, keeping on. What if you didn't even look at the miles, would your body know what 18 feels like?
ER sez, You need to eat more chocolate cake!!
Is life worth living without red wine? Hmmmm.... Love your blog. You have such a distinctive voice. Hope to see you this summer.
Post a Comment