10.6

Saturday I woke up earlyish and got ready for my last long run before the Nike Women's Half Marathon on October 17th.

Friday I had mapped out a 10 mile route that took me from my house to the park where my daughter had a soccer game. I laid my stuff out Friday night, charged my Garmin and even ate a pasta dinner. Saturday I woke up and laid in my warm bed for a bit then finally decided I could procrastinate no more.

I ate a piece of toast and drank some water and then ate a few Sharkies. I packed what was left of them and also some fruit snacks that my kids eat into the pocket on my handheld water bottle and then walked to the trail near my house.

I told myself I wasn't going to look at my pace except when my Garmin beeped at every mile. Mile 1 and 2 were the usual warm up miles and then I remembered that I needed to ask my husband to bring a water bottle for me to the soccer game because I knew I would run out during my run. At the end of mile 2 I paused my Garmin and sent my husband a text. I then continued on with my run. When I neared what was the end of mile 3 I glanced at my watch to see how much farther until I could turn around and it read 2 miles. Crap, I forgot to restart it after I sent the text.

I was annoyed because that meant I wouldn't know the exact time for the entire run, only an estimate. Oh well, nothing I could do at that point so I trudged along.

My thoughts were about the Nike half and how I would do, what my time would be, how bad will the hills be, will I be able to finish, do I wear shorts or capris, what about mittens and a jacket, handheld or no handheld, what am I gonna do about fuel, water or a sports drink, yadda yadda.

Somewhere in mile 5 I said hello to a little boy who was waving to all the runners and bikers and that triggered the voice control on my iPhone to go off. This has happened several times in the past and is very frustrating. I had to stop and cancel out of it even though the cord to my earphones was inside my top. I’ve determined that the little microphone on the earphones is picking up the breeze, my breathing and an occasional hi and I thought that putting the cord inside my top would prevent the voice control from going off but apparently I was wrong. Several times I had to stop because it kept going off.

During mile 7 I tried to run up a steep hill. I made it part way then had to walk the rest. It was near this point in my run that I ran out of energy chews but knowing that I only had about 3 miles left I wasn’t worried. My pace had slowed and during this point of the run I was up in the hills where it was breezy and the stupid voice control started going off again. I have to get ear phones that don’t have a microphone on them because I can’t deal with this during the half.

Anyway, I am plugging along and really wanting to be done with this run. As I get to mile 8 and 9 I started losing my bearings because I couldn’t figure out where I was even though I wasn’t far from home and then I worried that had made an error in mapping out the route and would have to call my husband to come and get me. I took a couple of walking breaks and asked someone what the nearest street was and then finally saw the street I needed to get to my daughter’s soccer game. Thank you God!

10.6 miles done in about 2 hours.

Next long run? 13.1 in San Francisco.