Day 75 - 8 days to go - and 8 mile run

Hmmmmm - seems I'm good at dishing advice about running and then I have a day like today.

I just had zero motivation but with the race 8 days away, this was no time to blow off training so I dragged myself to the gym.

Eh, it was tough enough to get going for the two hour treadmill journey and then, the absolute unthinkable happened.  Horror, of horrors... at 45 minutes into the training - my I-Pod DIED.  Poof.  No music.  NOOOOOOOOO!!!  Not today, not the day of the dragging ass!  Please, oh please.  I need my Paradise City, Eminem, Pat Benatar...  even the Ludacris song with the mean lyrics.  Oh please say it ain't so.

But it was so.  It was me, the treadmill and (ugh - no offense Drew Carey) The Price Is Right.

Trying to get motivated to bean bag games and overweight midwesterners jazzed to "come on down" was not the easiest thing ever and I really thought more than once during mile five and six that this would be a perfectly good excuse to quit.  Everyone would understand.  Or really, no one would ever have to know.  Could just be my little secret.

Sigh.  But I would know.  I would know that I quit - and it wouldn't feel good.  It would suck even more than being forced to watch the Price Is Right.

It wasn't the greatest run ever.  I walked probably as much as I ran today - still, even with the walking and the Showcase Showdown, I managed to finish the 8 miles in just under 2 hours (4.1mph)  Slow but steady.  And quick enough to finish my race in time to get the medal.  And slow enough to not even feel like dying after my work out.

The best part of the whole thing is I really got off the treadmill feeling pissed off that I was "so lame" to walk so much of the training.  And then a little voice in the back of my head spoke up and said -- "You ran/walked for 8 miles!  8 miles!!  If you walked 8 miles in a week, that would've been a big accomplishment 75 days ago and you just did it in 2 hours!"  That voice is right.  Just yesterday I was writing about how "there's no bad runs, just bad attitudes."

So I'm proud to say, I (kinda) ran 8 miles today and will be running/walking/crawling if need be - in just eight days past a finish line!

XO
Jen