Boldly running where I've never gone before

Since I last posted, I’ve travelled to New Orleans for my birthday weekend and run the Ole Man River Half Marathon as a “practice race” on December 20.  I feel like I did okay, even though it was less than stellar.  I was scheduled that day for a 12.5 mile long-slow run on my training calendar so I decided to get out of town to someplace warm so that the run would actually take place.  Since I love NOLa and they were having a half-marathon, I figured “why not?”.

Because we’ve been caught up in the usual winter craziness at work, I was very poorly prepared for my journey and as a consequence learned a lot about “what not to do” when heading out of town for a race.  First, I booked a hotel room without a fridge, microwave or even a coffeepot.  This guaranteed I would not be able to observe my usual pre-race ritual:  early rising, relaxed high-carb low-fiber breakfast followed by substantial evacuation of bowels (sounds gross but all runners know they’d better have empty bowels before a race).  Secondly, I forgot to bring my special gluten-free energy bar to eat after the first 90 minutes of running.  Third, I stayed up too late the night before the race hanging out around the French Quarter and ended up sleeping too long the next morning.  Despite all these errors in judgment, I did okay and the breakfast of raspberry Zingers purchased from a vending machine then eaten before and during the race only cost me about 10 minutes off my time because of all the porta potty stops they caused.

Overall, I LOVED the race!  We started at Tad Gormley Stadium and ran through beautiful City Park.  The weather was perfect:  sunny and 50-ish with gentle winds.  The number of runners was small but they were not so fast as to leave me in last place.  There were plenty of water stops along the route.  And they had a WONDERFUL post-race buffet including pancakes, bananas, and a self-serve beer truck.  Nice. 

Since my son Simon came along with me (because it was not only a birthday trip for me but for him as well, his birthday being 12/25 and mine 12/21), we spend the rest of the weekend eating and drinking and carousing around New Orleans.  3 days went by so quickly!

And then I came home. 

I got back on Monday afternoon.  Tuesday I worked 11 hours then shopped for Christmas stuff.  

After sleeping about 5 hours, I worked for 13 hours on Wednesday and then went grocery shopping for the holiday. 

After about 4 and 1/2 hours of sleep, on Thursday I worked 8 hours and was immediately catapulted into the family ritual of  a long boozy Christmas Eve dinner (this year spent at a fondue restaurant).  Upon arriving home afterwards, I went immediately to bed where I remained for the next 12 hours.

On Friday, I cooked.  Yes, all day.  First brunch,  then dinner with sangria and dessert.  My son and his girlfriend spent the night and we had a very nice time.

One might remark upon the lack of RUNNING in this past week, a mere 14 days before the Disney World half marathon, and I would have answered I rested after the New Orleans Half and was going to resume running today, Saturday, December 26, with a nice 10-mile jaunt.  However, it started snowing yesterday afternoon and hasn’t stopped yet.  At least 4 inches are on the ground, the temperature is somewhere in the mid-20s and it’s positively awful out there. 

Not to be done in by weather however, I did have a spectacular Plan B.  I decided to do two 60-minute high-impact cardio videos down in the basement preceded and followed by a mile of low-impact Leslie Sansone (with the sound turned down because her babbling drives me barking mad). So I turned on all the lights in the workout area, searched out the DVDs, filled water bottles, switched on the fan and even got into my workout gear.  Then I laid down and took a nap.

I haven’t been able to summon the energy to do anything even remotely athletic today, and am currently sprawled on the sofa enjoying a Harry Potter movie marathon.

I guess sometimes you really just have to let yourself CRASH.

 But I will return to my training tomorrow.