Tone, Trash Talk, and Thanksgiving Turkey

If Juris Mater were a Turkey…

But seriously, only a little over 1 week until Race Day!

As my post earlier this week indicated, my family has been overwhelmed with MANY different challenges. Several hours of daily lice removal definitely puts a damper on regular training plans 😉 Couple this with some difficulties I have been having with my one leg (shin splints, I think?) and running has definitely taken a backseat to my other daily obligations.

Prior to the craziness, I was aiming to run 3-4 days per week. I thought this was a modest, yet achievable goal. In the last 2 weeks, I have only run twice! Yikes! While I feel like a complete slacker, and I am well aware that Juris Mater is going to kick my rear-end, I have taken something very positive from all this. In my sports experience, having a goal (be it a race day, opening game, surviving pre-season field hockey or whatever) is essential to keeping my head in the game and pushing through difficulties. I have never been one to just go out for a run because it feels good. I run toward a goal. For me, working out two times in the past two weeks is actually impressive. If I didn’t have this road race in the near future I would not have taken the time to work out at all. Those two workouts have kept my body in the game, even when life seemed to say that this “race” was not impossible. Had I not gone out for those two runs, two weeks off would lead to two months off…and the cycle would continue until I wasn’t exercising at all! For me, having a goal (race day, big game, etc.), is really important to regular exercise.

Life lessons aside, we have only 10 days left before race day. While I am not as prepared as I had hoped, I will run the race and I will finish. I’ll be pretty straightforward as to my strategy. I’m relying on B-Mama to help me keep a nice pace in the early miles and then I’m going to rely on my sprinters kick to get me to the finish line. We will see how it goes.