Tomorrow is the Day

I'm about as ready as I'm going to get for tomorrow's half marathon.  I don't feel ready at all.  My feet hurt after 4 miles every time I run, and I haven't trained on any real Long Runs leading up to this, but ... My stuff is packed for before / after the race, I have my bib, I've rested (no running since Wednesday), and hydrated, and I'm heading to bed EARLY out of respect for my 4:20am alarm.

We had some excitement today:  my husband fell at work and hurt his back - he's FINE but it required a trip to prompt care and some serious pain meds.  He'll be home from work for at least a few days. Tonight as I was packing for the race, he looked at me and said, "I think you'll do it.  I think you'll finish the whole thing.  You're pretty badass, and you'll walk when you need to and take care of yourself, but I believe in you."  Is he not the greatest???  I love him so much.  He was so supportive through all the training runs last summer, and at my first half.  He's been my biggest fan in everything I do, ever since we met.

I don't know what will transpire tomorrow.  I'll be careful not to injure myself.  But I will give it ALL I'VE GOT.  I will leave it all on the road.  This is going to be a far different run from the Inaugural Ventura Marathon, that's for sure!!

Whatever happens, shit-show or no... I'll keep you posted.

Wish me luck.

Trepidation and a Trip to my PT

So this week is coming along nicely so far.  Monday I had a really successful walk with both dogs.  Louie had a NEAR-PERFECT 1.2 miles, even ran with me a bit and stayed right by my side.  One of the dogs in the neighborhood that normally sends him into a nuclear meltdown was out, even barked at us a few times like he was trying to bait him, but Louie stayed calm and focused.  MAJOR success for my little monster! 

Monday was also, of course, the Unofficial Runners' Holiday, otherwise known as the runninng of the Boston Marathon.  This year's publicity was, of course, extraordinary.  All the focus on the story of last year's bombing ...  I don't even want to go there.  Me, I just really get off watching all those amazing athletes.  I found myself trying to explain to a coworker why Boston is so incredible... and it has NOTHING to do with last year's events.  I've learned a lot this year about why the course is so notorious and what makes it difficult, and anyone who can finish it just Blows. My. Mind. 

There were a number of people from my local running group who qualified and got in this year, two whom I knew well enough to follow and get text updates on how they were doing.  They all finished - Tim and Stacie ran the whole thing together and even crossed the finish line holding hands!  How freaking awesome is that?!?  Dan did an amazing job and posted on Facebook throughout his trip to Boston and before and after pics.  I'm hoping to share more about his experience sometime soon.

Yesterday, Tuesday, I had an early meeting at work - needed to be there by 7:30am for a meeting with all the managers in our office, with the guy whom I'm still referring to as "my new boss."  I tried not to grumble too much about the time.  I am NOT a morning person, but I must admit, it was nice having the meeting out of the way and getting on with our day.  Don't tell my new boss I said that.  :-)

I've been working this week on some transition projects - getting files from our old system into the systems we use with the new firm.  It's tedious work and can be frustrating at times, but I enjoy tedious work and I feel quite a sense of accomplishment when I get each of these done.  There's also a time factor - this project really needs to be completed before we get into our busy season, which is only a month away!  Sand is flowing very quickly through that hour-glass...  I still have high hopes that all this preparation will create a situation where this year's busy season won't be anywhere near as difficult, or as long, as last year's.  I do NOT want to repeat the 4-month frenzy that was last fall and winter.  All this to say, I've been enjoying my job this week.

But the point is, Tuesday night was Catch the Wave group night!  We were out at the lake and for many of our group members, it was their first time there, and / or their first time running the Lake Run Loop Route.  This is the route they will run for the race they've spent the last 9 weeks training for, through some SERIOUSLY bad weather.  They have been real troopers, and I'm so proud of our group!  We ran the route using our planned 8/1 run/walk interval and they did fantastically.  I, on the other hand, was having some trouble during the last mile of our 4.37-mile run.  Damn feet started up again.  More on that later.

Today I have to miss my Ride the Wave group.  I have a board meeting to attend this evening out of town, so I'll be working late and driving home... probably won't be home until after 9pm.  Ew, I hate that.  I am considering leaving work and taking a long lunch break to go for a run.  It will be my last run before Saturday's half marathon.  I'm going to let my feet rest until then, other than a possible dog walk on Friday.

I did finally make it into my physical therapist yesterday.  He checked out my neck pain and recommended I come in for a few visits to work on correcting that.  It's a posture thing - my posture while working at my computer. 

I expected him to tell me the foot pain was caused my the same problems I had last year - my calves are too tight, I need to stretch and foam roll more, I need to stop wearing heels.  I was prepared for a lecture about the exercises he showed me last year and that he can tell I haven't kept up with them.  Instead, he said he was surprised how loose my calves were - they're tight, but nowhere near as bad as last time, and he could tell I've been working on it.  That was very nice to hear... but here's the thing:  he basically said he doesn't have a good idea about what might be the cause of my foot pain. 

He wants me to come in and run on the treadmill and take another look at my form - we did this last year and he had suggestions about my cadence, but said my form was good.  Maybe something about that has changed.  So further investigation is the plan on that.  If we don't know what's wrong, we don't know how to FIX it.  Basically, I took that as terrible news.  But not the kind of terrible news that sends me to the nearest junk-food bar, so you know... there's that.

He did spend some time torturing me - my neck (upper trapezius), calves, and even the bottom of my feet, calluses and all... and I'm pretty sore today. My shoulder / neck area especially - it actually feels bruised there!  And I talked with him about whether I should attempt the Christie Clinic Illinois event this weekend.  He didn't want to tell me one way or the other whether to do it or not, but gave me some good input on what to consider.  And I've been talking with my Catch the Wave co-leaders and my Ride the Wave group members and leaders about it for weeks.  It's time to make a decision.

Found in this mornings email in-box:  Today's Daily Kick in tbe Butt:
"We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort."
Jesse Owens


Determination.  Dedication.  Discipline.  Effort.
I think I have my mantra for this weekend's 13.1.  I've decided to go, even through I'm not properly trained for it and I'm still having ongoing issues with foot pain.  I'll do a 5/1 or 4/1 run/walk interval and take it slow, and if it gets to the point where I can't do the run interval anymore, I'll keep walking. 

If I CAN finish, I WILL finish. 

If I can't finish because the pain in my feet is too great, that is going to be okay.

Oh, and as for the title to this post?  The Trepidation part?  Yeah, this half marathon has me scared.  The foot pain, when it's bad, it's BAD and the fear of that pain has been a big part of why I haven't been training more and better since the weather improved.  This weekend is about facing fear, not about running through pain.  I'll stop if I need to, but showing up requires that I face the fear of that pain.

Lies, Mo-Jo, Photos and Music

I awoke today with more than my share of motivation!

Plowed through work and had a very productive day, and headed home looking forward to a nice run in the bright sunshine and 40-degree weather.  I had a great run on Saturday - 6.2 miles in about and hour and 15 minutes - and a light, easy three miler was on tap for this evening.

Once through the warm-up, the first few minutes of running were troubling.  Heavy legs.  But my mo-jo was in overdrive, so I used a beginners' trick:  run for 5 minutes, take a short break, then get going again.  (Besides, the dog had some business to attend to.)  I must always remember when this happens:  my legs are liars.  They are insipid, fickle, lazy things, and they sometimes lie.  They are NOT made of lead.  They are light as air, they are strong and full of energy.  Knocked out the 2.5-mile running portion of today's route in about 32 minutes.  Not too shabby for someone with legs of iron, huh?

So, I guess I'm going in reverse order today.  Sunday, Easter, was lovely.  No exercise, too much food, lots of good conversation with great company over at grandma's house. There was pie.  And plenty of it.  With Cool Whip topping.  Oh, yeah.  That happened.

But in keeping with my reverse timeline for the weekend, my Sunday morning weigh-in was a big surprise!  You may recall that last Sunday I had been celebrating and eaten too much food the night before, and found the scale sadly increased by 1.5 pounds.  This week, I had NOT eaten my weight in Mexican food the night previous.  In fact, I had a pretty reasonable week, food-wise, and was reasonably active.  And I was rewarded!  Down 3.5 pounds from the previous weigh-in.  Okay, so let's ignore last week's weigh-in debacle, even if I discount that, it's a full 2 pounds down over two weeks - WAHOO!

This may have something to do with my big mo-jo surge today - I realized after the weigh-in that I am now 20.5 pounds from my goal weight!  This I find very encouraging.  I did a bit of research after this little revelation and found that I'm just shy of my lowest weight in five years.  The last time I was near this weight (165.5 as of today) was in May 2008 when I logged in at 162.0.  This was after a year or so on Weight-Watchers.  That was where I got stuck, and where I stayed, until I started gaining the weight back.  But I'm getting off-track... that story's for another post.

Back-tracking to Saturday:  an absolutely gorgeous day for a run, and boy, did I take advantage of it.  I had been out the night before with friends, out of town, at a concert (more on that in a bit... reverse timeline, remember?) and got home around 2am.  I just couldn't sleep at that point, and didn't sleep well once I did pass out.  I think I ended up sleeping from about 3am to 7am.  Oh well, sometimes that's just the price you pay for a FREAKING AWESOME night!  I had some cereal and coffee, watched TV for a bit, and got Coty ready for some Action.  I'm doing my LONG runs every OTHER week, and this was my off-week, so my long run was relatively short:  a practice 10k.  I really didn't know if I'd have the energy for it after the night I'd had, but I'd planned out a new route on MapMyRun as early as Tuesday and had been working to memorize it all week.  I was looking forward to trying it out.  Good thing for the planning; otherwise I may have wimped out and done a much shorter run!  Not much to say about it other than I really enjoyed it, and was really proud of myself for the follow-through.

After the run, I made those pies.  And they.  Were.  Amazing.  I'm really good at that.  Then I was heading out for our usual Saturday night festivities but Jason had to run some errands with his brother and I was left alone after 8pm and no longer knew what to do with myself.  Obviously, I chose to do my makeup and then take a picture of myself:

Now to the most fun part of today's post:  Friday night's concert!  It was a last-minute invitation and I'm SO glad my friends called.  I went to see GREEN DAY - one of my favorite bands - and with two of my very favorite people, former co-workers and dear friends, and members of the band I often go and see - Triple Charge Time.

Here we are before and during the show:

The show was fantastic - as you may expect, very high-energy - they played nearly all of my favorite songs, including several that are in frequent-rotation on my running playlist, and especially "Know Your Enemy" which may well be my favorite of their songs.  I can't say enough good things about the show!!

Our seats were fantastic - relatively close in a smallish venue - here are a couple of shots I got with my phone:

So that's my weekend wrap-up and weigh-in report for a Monday night.  I hope your weekend and your Monday were as fun-filled and action-packed as mine were!  Keep that mo-jo working all week long!!

Oh, and don't forget to "Like" my page on Facebook!

Know Your Enemy lyrics:

Do you know the enemy?Do you know your enemy?Well, gotta know the enemy, wah hey
Do you know the enemy?Do you know your enemy?Well, gotta know the enemy, wah hey
Do you know the enemy?Do you know your enemy?Well, gotta know the enemy, wah hey
Violence is an energyAgainst the enemyWell, violence is an energy, wah hey
Bringing on the furyThe choir infantryRevolt against the honor to obey
Overthrow the effigyThe vast majorityWell, burning down the foreman of control
Silence is the enemyAgainst your urgencySo rally up the demons of your soul
Do you know the enemy?Do you know your enemy?Well, gotta know the enemy, wah hey
Do you know the enemy?Do you know your enemy?Well, gotta know the enemy, wah hey
The insurgency will riseWhen the blood's been sacrificedDon't be blinded by the lies in your eyesSing!
Well, violence is an energy, oh ay, oh ayWell, from here to eternity, oh ay, oh ayWell, violence is an energy, oh ay, oh ayWell, silence is the enemy so gimme gimme revolution!
Do you know the enemy?Do you know your enemy?Well, gotta know the enemy, wah hey
Do you know the enemy?Do you know your enemy?Well, gotta know the enemy, wah hey
Do you know the enemy?Do you know your enemy?Well, gotta know the enemy, wah hey
Overthrow the effigyThe vast majorityBurning down the foreman of control
Silence is the enemyAgainst your urgencySo rally up the demons of your soul

This I Believe

Great little ditty I read on Monday - and a terrific start to my week, I must say!  The following was posted on the Run Junkees Facebook page (if you haven't "Liked" them, I highly recommend it - great inspirational posts every day, from all sorts of perspectives!):

Met a fellow runner named Chet over the weekend. He was an old school marathoner, completing his first in 1987. He shared a story which inspired this pic.

While running a marathon Chet happened along side a fellow runner who was best described as short and stout. Chet engaged the runner in a brief conversation and said "How's it going?" The runner confidently said "Great! I'm running at world record pace". Chet inquisitively replied "World record pace, huh?" The runner answered "Yep. My world. My record. My pace."  

This REALLY got me thinking, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. What a great way to summarize my own view of what I'm working toward!  MY world.  MY record.  MY pace.
I love it so much I'll quote it again.

MY world. MY record. MY pace.

I put such stock in Ownership of this journey.  I am Responsible for what I eat, what I do with my body.  I'm a huge believer in Choice.  It's maybe the core belief I really hold true in my life.  I'm not a particularly spiritual or religious person, but I believe that in life and love, in so many things, You ARE the CHOICES You Make.  That may be why I love love love the quote attributed to Aristotle: "You are what you repeatedly do."

Photo credit:   bridget_willard  via photopinhttp://www.photopin.com cc

Every day, I wake up and choose to be with my life partner, I choose to care for him and for myself, and for our son.  I choose to go to work with a positive attitude.  I choose to exercise (or not to).  I choose to work through problems (be they at work or at home or in my own crazy mixed-up mind) with an aim for SOLUTION, rather than spend my time and energy on simple complaints about "the way things are."  These things are my responsibility.  No one else is responsible for my actions.  I own them.  I choose. 

Me. 

I. 

Choose.

I could literally spend the entire day ranting and raving on this subject.  It's just that important to me.

It's also why I have a tendency to kick myself so hard when I screw up.  Screwing up is not something that happened to me.  It's something I did to myself.  I LET it happen (whatever it was).  I got distracted and lost sight of my goal.  I allowed myself to ___________.  I chose to eat a pint of ice cream.  I chose not to workout for a week (or a month, whatever).  I chose to walk instead of run.  I chose to eat fast-food breakfast every other morning and told myself I "didn't have time" to make something healthy before work. 

Yes, I make terrible choices now and then.  Sometimes I make terrible, unhealthy choices every day for months!  And sometimes, I make wonderful, healthy, life-affirming choices on a daily basis, with the occasional unhealthy choice mixed in for balance.

I'm learning to be gentler with myself when I screw up.  (Translation:  I am choosing to accept small failures and move forward, rather than choosing to dwell on them and allowing those small failures to accelerate and spiral into larger ones.)

So the way I see it, everything in life comes down to the choices I make every day.  Yes, some things are beyond my control.  Certainly!  We don't choose to have a sick family member or a death in the family.  I did not  choose to get laid off from a job I loved, where I got to work with people I really care about.  But we do choose how to respond to those major and minor tragedies.  (Of course nothing ever feels so minor at the time!)

We choose how to live.  How to go on. 

Will we breed bitterness, anger, sadness? 

Or will we breed joy?  Love?  Excitement? 

A sense of adventure? 

Inspiration?

What are you choosing today?

Photo credit:  Photo Extremist via Photopin cc

Becoming Calloused

Well with the new job I'm struggling a little with making some time for blogging but I'm still doing my thing over here.  It was a great week at work - I'm totally loving the new job.  SO glad I decided to make this change!  So... workout rundown for the week:

Monday:  pouring down rain.  Of course, it was clear but cold all day, right up until I got off work and headed home for a 3-mile run!  It started pouring down while I was getting changed into running clothes.  I actually had to talk Coty into going for a walk.  That's how bad it was.  Completely insane.  Do you have any idea what it takes to make that dog LAY DOWN when you suggest going for a walk???  So we did get in one mile... one very fast mile and got completely soaked through in under 15 minutes.  :-D

Tuesday was a long day - I had to go out of town for work, so up at 5am, on the road at 6:15am, worked 8am - 5pm at a client, then the 1 1/2-hour drive home.  No workout for me.  I call that a "rest day."

Wednesday was the first night for Ride the Wave!  I've been so excited for this, and made sure to eat "clean" all day - a really healthy lunch (one i was so pleased with, I took a picture!) and hefty afternoon snack to fuel up, and left work early so I could change clothes and be there right on time, at 5:15pm.  There was some socializing and introductions, some discussion of what the program is about, etc. and then a 2-mile assessment run. We had an opportunity to warm up with about a 1-mile jaunt to the "starting line" so I did an easy 2-minute walk / 2-minute jog to warm up on that distance.   I was hoping to run the entire 2 miles and average about a 11:30-min pace.  It was dark, so although I had my Garmin on, I didn't have much opportunity to monitor my pace, and the point is to run at a "comfortable" speed, and as I said, a speed I can maintain for the full 2-mile run.  As expected, I was one of the last to complete the assessment (compared to the 50-odd other participants, I'm definitely one of the slowest!) but I'm happy to report I came in at 22:54 - RIGHT ON PACE with my goal.  Awesome.

Full Garmin details here

Thursday was a gym day and I started with 20 minutes of interval training on the stationary bike on Level 5.  That one is still pretty tough but it may be time to consider trying Level 6.  Got in 5 miles before the timer went off. Then I did a "full-body" strength training workout - three sets each of 11 different exercises, hitting all muscle groups.  Highlights:  I bumped up my barbell curls from 20 lbs / 10 reps to 30 lbs / 6 reps.  That was tougher than I expected.  Will have to work on that.  Another new Bosu Ball Exercise:  squats on that wobbly thing!  Pretty self-explanatory, but I found a video for you anyway.   That was challenging - think I worked on balance more than glutes with those squats - but MUCH easier than the side-to-side lunges from two weeks ago!  Another new exercise:  "Fireflies" - this is awkward and I don't like to think what it looks like if you're a fellow gym-goer and have to watch me do this, but it feels good, works practically the whole body, and it's difficult!  Check out the video below.  Oh and this will be relevant later on... we had a snowstorm Thursday night.  Started around 4pm and it was fun looking out the gym windows and seeing all that snow dumping out of the sky!  (Didn't hurt that the weather kept the gym attendance low that night!!)

Friday I was a bit sore (the good kind) from the gym workout but feeling fantastic.  As always, Friday is a rest day so after work, just chilled out till Jason got home and we headed out for an evening together.  Burger baskets, beer, and oh yeah, something in the basement of the bar CAUGHT FIRE.  That pretty much cleared the joint out, but of course, we finished our beer and made sure to settle our tab before we headed home.  In all honesty, it was really more of a smolder than a fire but it's more fun to say the place was in flames, don'tcha think??  The fire department never even showed up but they located the source of the smoke and took care of it inside of maybe 20 minutes or so.  All's well that ends well - Jason had to work today anyway so we had planned to make an early night of it.

So today I planned a 3-4 mile group run.  The roads were relatively clear of all that snow but there are still patches of ice and packed snow here & there.  Well, wouldn't you know it, I found the ice!  About 4 minutes into our run, my left foot hit a bit of (what appeared to be) wet pavement (but which was in fact, wet ice) and went sliding at freaky-fast speed directly to my right.  I went sprawling.  UGH when will I learn not to fall down all the damn time?!?!?!  I landed HARD on the outside of  my left knee and the outside of my thigh, tweaked my ankle just a bit, and my face hit the curb.  (I had a nightmarish flash-forward of how I was about to lose my teeth.  Thank goodness I just hit my chin on the curb.  My teeth remain intact.)  I'm SO GLAD Meg was running with me, she encouraged me to stay still, evaluate my condition and then we walked for several minutes, tried some more running, and finished the run.  We just took care, took our time, ran some, walked some, and chatted.  Got about 3 miles in after all, just slowly - about 54 minutes (including my time on the ground).  There was a stretching demo set for after the run so I stuck around for that and gave my very unhappy leg/knee/thigh muscle some solid stretching.  Once my body began to cool off, it REALLY started to tighten up.  I'm taking it easy for the rest of the day, RICE (Meg taught me this great acronym) Rest, Ice, Compress, and Elevate.

So now I'm limping.  I took a bunch of Advil & I'm RICEing it.  We'll see how it feels tomorrow.  I don't think I have a serious injury.  Just some bruising and, apparently, some balance issues!

Tonight is our friend John's Big Fortieth Birthday so I'm planning to wear Extremely Un-Sensible Shoes, have dinner out, and party like a 40-year-old rock star later.  Hope my leg holds up to the abuse!  And as always, tomorrow will be another weigh-in day.  Have fun out there!

Last thought for the day:  found this on Facebook this week and I loved it.  I love the thought that "Your mind becomes calloused to effort."  We can train our minds the same way we train our bodies, and at the same time.
BTW, here is where I found it:  Not sure the source, it was on my friend's wall.

Weekend Update

Some fun stuff:  
I attended the annual Lake Run Club Awards banquet last night.  It was lots of fun to mingle & socialize with my fellow runners, in "real" clothes!  I had been nominated for a couple of awards, which I didn't win, but after the "official" awards were given out, they had some other "Scandalous Honors"... examples:  "Spits really well, for a girl"  - "My wife beats me, and I'm happy about it" - "Most races completed in the least clothing" - "Don't Wait for Me, I'm Running Late" - and Coty won one of those!

I've been saying for years that she's the best running partner a girl could hope for; now it's official!

I often joke that people are more likely to recognize the dog than to recognize me because she's ALWAYS with me.  I love that she won an award for best running partner - it's SO appropriate!!

Blog Business:  
My gym workout on Thursday left me a little sore to say the least.  Those funky moves with the Bosu Ball utilized some muscles that had been lying dormant.  Friday's plan was to clean house and do a 4 mile run.  That didn't go so well.  It was just one of those runs, it took about 1.5 miles before I started to feel loose enough to run for any length of time but I was really just pretty stiff.  I did a lot of walking, jogged whenever it felt comfortable.  Eventually I settled on a revised goal for the day of completing the 4-mile route in under an hour, and I did manage that.  They can't all be awesome runs.  Sometimes you just have to trudge through and finish, even when it doesn't feel perfect.

Yesterday, more housekeeping was in order (does it count as "nesting" if you're prepping for a new job rather than a new baby??) and another 4-mile run.  I waited for the weather to warm up a little (36 degrees and not too windy) in the afternoon, and decided on the fly to make it a 5-mile run.  I'm wanting to run longer segments and get used to running at least three miles without a break, so I did my normal warmup walk / run for a mile, then ran 3.1 miles without a stop, and walked (with a little jogging thrown in) the remainder of the way home.

You can clearly see here my walk then run for the first 1.0 miles, then running at a pretty steady pace from 1.1 to 4.2

And check out the NEGATIVE splits for the three miles in the middle here!

Negative splits:  I could get used to that.

Now THAT felt GREAT.  Finished about 5.2 miles in 1:15.  Average pace was about 14:30 which of course is not great, but my aim was for steady, strong, and not stopping so goal achieved for the day.  Speed workouts are for another day.  You just never know what today's run will be like until you get out there and GET GOING!

"The great thing about athletics is that it's like poker, sometimes you know what's in your hand and it may be a load of rubbish, but you've got to keep up the front."
--Sebastian Coe
I found this little gem at http://www.brocawblazers.org/camp/running_quotes.html

More Blog Business:
Well it's Sunday, which means it's Weigh-In Day, and today was a good one:  this morning I was down 1.4 lbs from last week - hooray for Tangible Evidence of Progress!

Last Thing:  
Tomorrow is my first day at the new gig.  I'm looking forward to it, excited & a little nervous... hope I get a good night's sleep.  Things I'd like to do tonight (AKA Things I Would Do Tonight If I Was Smart):  come up with a meal and exercise plan for the week.  Planning has proven to be key to my success so far, and with a new job, it's a big question-mark what my schedule will be, how it's all going to work, etc.  Tomorrow all I know is where & when to show up, and that I'll be in orientation all day.  Think I'll pack a lunch that I can leave in the car (it's cold enough outside, it will be like it's in a fridge), and then if I'm free for lunch I have something planned already.  And some snacks in my purse as well for my mid-day snack.

Wish me luck!

I actually had a couple of other items I wanted to post about this evening... but they don't feel like they belong in this post!  Perhaps another post is in order tonight.  We'll see...

Run, Interrupted

There's a saying in Illinois:  If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes.

As far as I'm concerned, this has never been more true than this week.  The weather forecast is positively insane.  This post on Facebook tickled me & really says it all.

I'm not in Chicago but the forecast is the same for our area so this was just perfect to sum up the situation.

So here's how this played out with respect to last night's planned 3.2-mile group run through the neighborhood:

It was raining in the morning, cleared up in the afternoon while I was at work, then started sprinkling again at 4:30pm, just in time for me to head home to change and get to the 5:30pm run.  Meh, a little rain never killed anyone, I can run in the rain - the dog doesn't like it much but she'll put up with a lot for her Daily Constitutional.

JUST as I reached to pick up my windbreaker (I mean, literally, the moment I reached for it!), I heard the first clap of thunder.  THUNDER in January??? What the hell??  Ah well, wait 5 minutes, it might not be a big deal.  Sure enough, the rain lightened up a bit while we waited for the other runners to arrive at our starting point, and we headed out with the group right on time.  Coty was a bit nervous (she really really hates water and that goes double for lightning) but gamely trucking along.  We got about 8 minutes in before the raining turned to POURING rain.  Another couple of minutes and we paired that up with some lightning.  Coty pretty much gave up all hope of survival at that point and started sprinting, running toward random houses (presumably to request asylum and adoption with a new family) and wrapping her leash occasionally around trees & light-posts.  We said our hurried goodbyes and got back to the starting point and the car as quickly as possible.

Terrible photo, but:  The creepy eyes are Coty.  Those lines are rain pouring down.  Coty says "This is the STUPIDEST idea you have EVER had!"

Don't know if you can read this, but I thought it ironic:  my socks (SOPPING wet by the end of this little excursion) say "Duo Dry."

 Thus ended my 1.25-mile run for January 29, 2013.  16 minutes.  Ugh.  Today will be a gym/ strength-training day (tomorrow too) which is nice, because it's going to be in the teens again with a low of 1 on Thursday.  Maybe Friday I'll be able to go for a run in beautiful 40-degree weather??

Just wait 5 minutes, you never know what's coming up next.