I'm slightly crazy

Today I cried.  Do you want to know what I was crying about?  I bit my cheek-twice, and it hurt a lot.  And even though it may not seem like it was a big enough deal to cry about, I cried for a long time.  Now I'm trying to figure out why I cried exactly.  It has been a long time since my last good cry, and I feel like every girl needs one of those every now and then to clean out all of the hormones that we store.  Perhaps I was emotionally exhausted, which is always a possibility when you're the mom of two little girls.  Even if they're being good, it still wears me out.  Or it could be that I was physically exhausted.  Today I ran...a lot...and I'm worn out.  But I really think that it was a combination of all three of those things.  Jeremy came over to try and comfort me while I was crying over my bitten cheek, and he was trying really hard not to laugh at the situation.  Even I was trying to hold back my laughter through the tears because I looked quite ridiculous.  He really was a good husband trying to make his wife feel better.  And now he is at the library checking out a new teen fiction book for me to read and at the mall exchanging a sweater I bought that is too small.  I must be really tired if I don't even want to go to the mall. 

So now I sit at home and try to nurse my tired little legs and tear-worn eyes back to health.  This morning I joined my RAGNAR team for some paced runs with a local running coach.  We did 4x1600 m repeats up and down hills at race pace and faster.  When I ran my first half marathon a couple of years ago, I was at about a 7:45-8:00 min/mile pace.  I felt great.  My morning runs with some friends are at about 9:00-9:15 min/mile.  I have a half marathon coming up in March that I really want to do well at.  I'd love to be at my previous best time.  However, I know I'm not as well trained for this one as I was for my last and I have no illusions that I will be at that pace.  My realistic goal is 8:15-8:30.  But today, I decided to try and see if I had that old pace still in me.  My first mile (uphill) was 8:00.  My second mile (downhill) was 6:42.  My third mile (uphill) was 7:43.  And my fourth mile (downhill) was 6:54.  I felt awesome.  My legs felt good, my lungs felt good, and I was so happy to learn that I still have that kind of speed in me.  By the time we did our warm-up, cool-down, and paces we covered about six miles.  That in itself is a good work-out, but I still had my long run with my McKay Lake ladies.

We've been adding a mile to our Saturday runs each week, and this week we were supposed to run 10-11 miles.  Having only a three hour break in between the workouts, I was very nervous and decided that I would only go as far as my legs would let me.  I was expecting a six mile run for my second workout.  I hit four miles and felt awesome.  I didn't even feel tired, so I kept running.  We turned around at five and I thought that I had this in the bag.  My legs for my RAGNAR race are 5.4 miles, 4.1, and 9.6.  I know that in order to pull off that last nine-mile leg, I will have to train some back-to-back runs to get used to doing that kind of distance at the end of my race.  Today's training was perfect and I was thinking that maybe my legs won't be as ridiculous as I was afraid they'd be.  But all of my confidence was thrown out the window when at six miles I realized I had to go to the bathroom-very badly.  We run on a dirt trail that has no access to any public bathrooms or porta-potties.  There was lots of open space down by the river, and a lot of pot gut holes I could have used.  But I would have been so exposed!  Not to mention the fact that the prairie dogs would have been very upset had I used their home as a toilet.  So I did the only thing I could do, held it in.  It very quickly became painful to run.  I was cramping up and had to stop a couple of times to get everything situated.  The last four miles were miserable.  Every time I stopped to walk, my legs argued that they didn't want to start running again.  My running partner had to run back to pick me up multiple times and probably added a mile to her run.  By the time I finished at a 9:45 pace, I just wanted to fall over from pain and exhaustion.  I should have listened to my gut instinct before the ran began and settled for only six miles.  But I let my pride overrule my body's effort to protect itself and pushed it farther than I should have.  I can be a real idiot.

Therefore, I am sitting at home, laying on the couch, running to the bathroom and crying over my lunch all in an effort to reset my body from the trauma of this morning.  What a way to spend a Saturday.