Week 8 –15 miles 6.2 miles plus softball (will explain below) And I obviously still think I’m a week ahead of where I actually am.

A friend of mine moved to Antigua recently (rough life,right?) and was going to be back in town this weekend. So I signed up for the James Island Connector run so I’d have a chance to hang out for a bit and maybe even get a new 10k PR. So the plan was run the race yesterday, run 9 miles today for the total of 15. Cheating a bit but not a big deal.

                                                          Prior to the evil

So let me just start by saying that the JI Connector Run is completely evil.

Anyone living in Charleston knows its flat as a pancake here, so hill training? Doesn’t exist. I went into this thinking I could totally kick some butt until I realized connector = bridge = hills. DUH.

And let’s not forget the wind! The course starts downtown, goes over the connector, and back.

The run didn’t start out bad, actually. The hills kinda sucked but weren’t anything I couldn’t deal with. And the wind wasn’t so bad either. I actually finished the first 5k in 22 min and some change.At one point there was a break in my music and I could hear a couple guys behind me talking about needing energy for the 2nd half. And I remember thinking that it couldn’t be that bad – its just the same thing going back.

Then we turned around.

It was then that I determined that whoever was responsible for the course must have had some revenge to be had on someone. Because the wind (head wind, mind you) coupled with the hills on the way back were INSANE. I actually ran so hard against the wind going up the hill once, that when it stopped abruptly for a few seconds, I lost my footing.

Then there was the time I got a little too close to the side barrier. (Hi fishies!)

I stopped running and walked up the hill for about 20 seconds also. I passed a girl walking once and almost gave her some words of encouragement to keep going, but I was so out of breath it wasn’t happening. I was especially glad for this when she passed me 20 seconds later, but fortunately still didn’t have the breath to mutter anything mean (in good humor, of course), either.  So no PR for me. Also? I was THREE SECONDS behind the girl who won 3rd place in my age group. I totally would have vomited across the finish line to beat her if I had known the girl in front of me was between me and winning a ridiculous useless trophy.

Oh well.

The plan afterwards was to take pictures with funny orange slice smiles, but since they only had whole oranges, we had to improvise a little.

But Kim won an award, so go Kim!!

I get home from the race and I’m tired, but expected that. Around 4pm though I started getting what I can only guess was sinus pressure. Great.

Bryan and I went out to the store, and on the way home he decided it would be funny to drive the long way around the neighborhood and see if our garage door opener opened up anyone else’s garage.

It didn’t.

Last night we went out to dinner with our neighbors thanks to a Groupon we both purchased. We spent the evening being generally ridiculous, topped with Bryan signing up for email updates under the following name:

Thanks to generally feeling kinda cruddy I went to bed at 9pm. When I woke up this morning I felt better, but worn down, had swollen glands, a sore throat and while I didn’t have a fever, had a temp that was slightly higher than usual.

While hemming and hawing about running vs not running, I came across a paper Bryan got in the mail encouraging him to sign up for additional accident insurance.

I guess they can’t write “in case an accident causes you to suddenly DIE”, but still, the wording was quite funny.

In the end, I’m here blogging now instead of running. My buddy didn’t sleep well last night and I have two softball games this afternoon. I know I don’t have enough energy for both. So, no long run for me this weekend.

Maybe a nap, though.