Last weekend’s goal was to run 18 miles! Wrap your mind around that two digit number. I started my morning at 4:30AM with Italian Espresso, Stretching and a dash past Twitter. Bottles had been filled the night before with HEED and Perpetuem on Ice and ready to go. On the way to the start, I dropped two bottles at the top of a huge hill.

One of our friends had mapped out a six mile course for us near the starting point and this run turned out to be the most exciting part of the run. All on dirt, up hill, past dogs, cats, chickens, horses in the middle of the farms (not green farm land). I was cracking up the whole time cause I had no idea that I lived near anything rural at all! “Look there’s a chicken racing with us!” “Stay dog” “Is that a street or a driveway?” Lots of cactus out here, little shade and a random scattering of houses. I was terrified of coyotes and mountain lions out this early in the morning. Have no idea of what we’d do if we saw the big CAT. And, there were so many cackling roosters it’s a wonder anybody could be sleeping at 530 in the morning.

Thank you SkirtSports! This is not how I look at the end of 18 miles!! Ha ha ha.

Yes, I was running in a dress. I could have been drinking cocktails in this dress! This is you know like TIGHT and VERY green. When I was running down the street and saw old guys slowing down to look, I just waved! “Yes I am running in a dress.” Especially in the first town, where all these old guys in 1940’s Ford’s were driving…kinda felt a lot LOUD. My running buddy, Bobbi ran behind me for a while to check and make sure I wasn’t revealing anything. Underneath my dress is a pair of compression shorts that holds two gels- one in each leg. For any of you thinking about trying the Marathon Dress, it’s really comfortable! No waist bands to worry about, sweats well and the shorts underneath did not cause me to chaffe at all!! I did get a golfball-sized chaffe wound in my arm pit, though not the dresses fault!

Our marathon course is a downhill course, so, we train on the long runs and even the tempo runs on a downhill course and last weekend, I did suffer from bleeding blisters, but I’m happy to report that I have no new blisters! Finished our 18 mile run in 3 hours (lots of little stretch breaks) and our average speed was 9:20. Not as fast as I’d like, but the six mile cross country run at the beginning slowed things down a bit. Honestly, I don’t really care about the time, I mostly care about the fact that when I finished I felt tired but ABLE. Like, I could have run more. I was hungry, though. Should have had two gels and 4 bottles of Heed/Perpetuem. Managed to NOT eat the kitchen sink when I first walked in the door. Drank Recoverrite followed by some pluots from home garden.

The hardest part of the training is not the training. It is being a mom. Being tired, sore, and generally without a lot of extra energy to run after my kids and play with them like I’d like. It’s just harder. I am doing this marathon for myself. It’s my time to be alone, be girly, and achieve my goal, so I’m doing the best I can. Hopefully, my kids will pursue their dreams with this much effort someday.

Digg!

It is best that you have the perfect triathlon training schedule to be more effective.

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