Here comes another one....

Why does signing up for a race 40 miles away that starts at 7 am ever seem ok to me??? It seems like the day before a race I always get that "oh crap, why did I PAY MONEY for this again??" feeling that seems to continue all the way up until I stumble across the finish line.

So anyway, tomorrow is the Middle Half. And I can tell you EXACTLY why I signed up for it - it's an inaugural, and if there is ANYTHING I am a sucker for it's an inaugural event. I don't know why being the first to do something speaks to me, but it just DOES. That got me into both the Flying Monkey Marathon last fall (awesome and worth it) and the Atlanta Marathon back in March (horrible and I would never, ever do it again). I hope tomorrow's event is much more like the FMM (and maybe they will have las poletas popsicle) and not so much like Atlanta aka Bring-your-own-fluids-death march. One of my coworkers was nice enough to pick up the race packets for several of us and so far so good. The shirts are nice tech shirts and there were some pretty decent samples in there, of course one of them being a big ole thing of Accelerade, which they are serving tomorrow. UGH! I'll be sporting my own Gatorade. They also went ahead and had our chips in there, so that will be a nice time saver for tomorrow's early wake up call.

Heaven forbid there's ever an Inaugural Bridge Jumping event here or an Inaugural Ironman Nashville.

But naturally, there is controversy. They've taken one stupid ass stand on headphones. Fast forward through tons of emails, posts on the local running board site, etc and their rule is you get a DQ if you are wearing them. Ok, I'll take my DQ. It doesn't matter to me whether or not I'm in the official results, and without me there people will feel like they placed better than they did and I'll have my music and be happy and they'll be happy, too. I mean, seriously, what a retarded rule. I don't have to have music to run. Last week I ran 10 and the week before 12 without them, so it's not a requirement to make my legs move but I just love to run with the emotion of whatever I have cued up in my ipod. So sue me. Or DQ me. Whatever. The ironic thing is that at Brent's last race as a 29 yr old he got DQd for changing on course from the full to the half, and my last race as a 29 year old will also "never have happened". Funny, huh? (Of course I do reserve the right to sign up for last minute races next weekend since I have 2 more weekends in my 20's counting this one!)

Several people from my work are running it, as well as Lana and Michele, so it should be fun! Brent's going to be on his bike snapping pics, so that will give me something exciting and new to look for! And it's about the flattest course ever - net gain - GET READY FOR IT - 45 feet. Seriously. I'm not sure what my goal is, I'd like to be 9 min miles, so we'll see. It's going to be hot - upper 80's, so that'll be a factor, too. I'm using this one as a tune up for Memphis just to see where I'm at. I haven't tapered for it, but I did lay off yesterday's workout some and won't workout again tonight although I am DYING to hop on my bike! It's a really nice evening here.

Swimming this week is going well. We've made wicked progress with freestyle (finally) and I am basically having to reteach myself breastroke because I started in on some bad habits and have screwed the whole thing up. Backstroke is always my best, and I'm just working on speed there. We're getting faster, stronger, and far less embarrassing. AND, it's not that uncommon for us to no longer be the worst swimmers in the pool. Sweet!

Alrighty, time to get some pasta in the pot!!! Have a great weekend everyone!

Rae

WIDTW-
Sat - 10 mile run
Sun - 11.5 bike, 550m swim
Mon - 4.2 run, 2 hours pool (class + practice)
Tue - rest
Wed - 4.2 run, 600m swim
Thur - 30 mins elliptical
Fri - 500m swim