Memorial Day Weekend Update!

How was the weekend?

Mine was great!

I worked Friday night and ended up going to bed shortly after 10. I sometimes LOVE Friday nights like this. I always feel so refreshed on Saturday.

I got up at 9 a.m. Saturday so I could run my 12 miles before I had to work again. I had kind of been dreading this 12-miler and was actually supposed to complete it a couple of weeks ago. But vacay happened. And my birthday happened. So seeing as my half is THIS Sunday (OMG, Freak Out, WTH am I doing??!@#), I had to get it in this weekend. Plus, I knew that if I could run 12 miles, I would have much more confidence going into this half marathon.

So I laced up my shoes, put on my hat (which I only wear on long runs!), and set out with a fully charged iPod.

My course was running from my house to Lake of the Isles, then Lake Calhoun, then around Lake Harriet, and then back to my house along Calhoun again. Exactly 12 miles.

The first seven miles went well. I didn't stop that whole time and was feeling good. But by the time I got to Harriet, I was thirsty. My mouth feels gummy kind of thirsty. So I stopped for water. That's when it got hard.

It was also starting to get hot out. So I was thirsty. A lot. I stopped at every drinking fountain (thanks Minneapolis Parks for lots of drinking fountains!) and had to stop to walk a few times around Lake Harriet. But I never walked for more than about two minutes. So I was OK with it.

I really decided to listen to my body too and gave in to having to drink water. Normally I don't have water when I run and I wait until I'm done. But I really think I would have been way too dehydrated had I done that.

But it was in mile 8 that I noticed that the inside of my arms burned. My arms were rubbing against my body (I had a tank top on) and this chaffing was hurting. A lot. Even when I ran with my arms away from my body, it still stung. So that kind of sucked. I'll be sure to douse my arms in Body Glide before the big race.

So I kept on trucking and I finished the 12 miles! The last few miles were really hard, but I really had a sense of accomplishment. And in hindsight, it wasn't that hard. The "this is so hard I want to quit so bad why am I doing this??" mentality goes right away when I'm done running. Yeah, I'm not excited to do it again and add a mile, but I now know that I CAN do it!

Post-12 miles. Happy to have survived.

I was thirsty when I was done. I drank this whole thing. And then some.

Bad picture of my chafing, but you get the idea. Gosh my camera sucks.

I had to work after my run and I was tired and yawning, but I made it through the rest of the day with little to no problems. And I was feeling pretty dang proud of myself!


And now—to change topics—the exciting news of this upcoming week is that Sarah and I have our first tennis game on Thursday! We're signed up through the City of Bloomington and I'm so happy and excited to get to play tennis every week. I freaking love that game and I miss it so much!

Yesterday I texted Sarah to see if she was interested in a morning run. But then we decided instead of a run we should play some tennis!

Tennis courts are kind of hard to come by in Uptown. They're almost always all booked. But last week when we were running around Isles in the morning, Sarah says, "Oh my god! We should play tennis in the morning! The courts are empty!"

And she was right! Empty they were. We rode our bikes to the courts and played for about 45 minutes. We played a few games, hit some volleys, and even did hardcore net drills. It was great. And fun to get a workout in in the morning that wasn't running.

Here we are! Ready to take on the competition!