This time tomorrow...

Tomorrow I will run my first 10K... and by run I mean 'attempt to run as much as possible'. I had been hoping that I would be up to sustained 10 minute intervals by the time the 10K rolled around (with a 2 minute walking period) but I know that I won't be able to keep that up for the whole race so instead, I'm dropping down to 5:1. I know that I can sustain that for roughly 5K; we'll see how well it works tomorrow morning with double the distance. I'm optimistic if only because I have no other choice at this point. Yay me! I can do it!! Sadly, I'm not really buying my own (false) positivity but my main goal is to beat last year's time when I walked the whole thing and I have no doubt that I can do that (unless, you know, I go ass-over-tit and sprain something). Regardless of the outcome, I will be saying I ran my first 10K!

In preparation for tomorrow's run, I spent today visiting my friend Lisa. I know I don't normally name my friends but then I normally can't say "that's my friend" about someone on the cover of and the author of a book about triathlon training for women. Lisa has consistently been one of my biggest cheerleaders in this whole crazy plan. From the "I'm going to hike the Chilkoot" to "I'm going to run a half-marathon", she been a positive voice in my ear repeating "you can do this". Lisa--who has won Ironman triathlons, competed in (but sadly didn't complete) the Leadville Trail 100, and competed with the Canadian Rowing Team--is currently laid up after some back issues so I went to visit, to help alleviate some of her cabin fever. It was wonderful to see her and to talk about the training I've been doing. I joked about how I enjoy running more than I ever thought I would and she asked me what it was that I enjoyed about it? I had never really thought about that before and it felt good to ponder and postulate ideas. It is definitely something I'm going to give more thought to over the coming weeks as I work out a training schedule for October and try to find cross-training activities I will enjoy just as much.

I stayed at my mom's house last night, slept on the futon in my old bedroom. It was a fairly sleepless night (different bed so I kept waking up, never got any decent sleep) so I'm off to bed extra early tonight so that I'm well rested and ready for tomorrow. All that means that I will need to post another blog as I've still got things from a week ago that I want to talk about!