Look Around Your World, Pretty Baby. Is it Everything You Hoped It'd Be?

Our Friday team party was just fine. I had to get up and speak and that makes me nervous, but since I'm on the board, I have to just accept it.

The above is a photo of all the women on my team who showed up. We have junior riders in grade school and high school on up to masters riders who are 55 years old. It's a nice spectrum.

When we got back from the party, John and I started watching X-Files on Netflix streaming. I never got to watch it when it first came on because my daughters were young and too scared. It seems a little dated now, but it's still fun so far.

On Saturday I woke up and read my book for about an hour or so, and then John and I got ready to run. This is the 4th year we've signed up for the 25K mostly trail running race and also the 4th year that we did a pre-run together.

The route is really beautiful. It starts on a crushed limestone trail in Solon, Iowa and wends its way through some farmland, some gigantic lakeside estates and then heads to the spillway and wooded trails, before you take the not-so-picturesque few miles back on the highway.

A photo by the glow of my obnoxiously orange jacket.

 I was worried my feet issues from my Wednesday run would plague me, so we parked one of our cars a little bit further than the halfway point and the other car at the start/finish, in case I needed to quit early. John brought me the smaller pads for my feet and I tried them out that day. They actually worked really well. My feet didn't hurt too badly the entire run. Of course, they were pretty numb after I got them all wet crossing the spillway and then running down a windy highway in 40'ish degree temperatures...

In this race, the weather conditions are everything. The first time I did the race, I had been training all Winter in 20 degree temperatures and then, on the day of the race, it warmed up to almost 90 degrees in the middle of the race. I got heat stroke and severely dehydrated, and couldn't finish the race. Two years ago, we had about 6 inches of snow on the ground and it takes so much effort to pick your legs up in those conditions. Last year, it was a little ice and snow mixed in with tons of slippery mud. My fastest time for this was 3:04:11. So, my goal for this year is 3 hours or less. On Saturday, the conditions were pretty good. Temps in the 40's and only a little mud here and there. We finished our pre-run in 3:00:20. Only 20 seconds off of my goal time. Now, I just have to hope it doesn't , rain, hail, tornado or blizzard and I might have a shot of reaching my goal time.

 John and I both felt pretty good after the run. According to MapMyRun, we burnt 2500 calories and according to my scale, I lost 5 lbs (I'm sure that was all water/sweat weight). A good person would look at that and think they should refrain from eating much, in order to get their weight down and help their future times. John and I looked at those numbers and said, "Woohoo! Let's get Mexican, with a side of guacamole...And, wait. It's two-for-one margaritas?! Sign us up!" Yeah. We're probably not the best at sacrificing for our races...

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So, I'd call our pre-run a big success. My feet didn't hurt much, we each only had one blister to show for it, I am almost at my goal time, and best of all, we had guilt-free Mexican food and margaritas.