Number 25 and number 45 = Birthday Race

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I will be turning 45.

FORTY-FIVE...that is crazy... I don't feel 45 at all...I guess that is a good thing right...

All I want for my birthday is to be healthy.  

Oh and no kids fighting at my house would also be nice.

So what does a normal person do for their birthday....running a half marathon of course.

What's better than to put myself through misery and facing the strong possibility of having stomach problems?

I could not pass this up. The race is on my birthday and it will be my 25th half marathon!

Here is the problem and it is a big one...I am NOT ready for 13 miles.

Not even close...

My last real long run was well my last half marathon....and that was a month ago...yikes...

So I have no goals other to finish.  There will be a lot of walking.

I just want to have a good time.

After that race I need to get back on a running schedule and increase the mileage.

I want to go back to how things were before my injury.

I still have bad days with the pain coming back and I guess it will always be like this.  I won't go back to running 5 days with no rest, that is a sure way to returning to the PT and I don't want that.

This was my mileage for 2013 (plus 1 mile)

960 miles

I signed up for a local 5K race for next weekend.  I will do it with my kids.

I decided to do a few of those for the winter/spring season because I did not signed them up for soccer or basketball because my older son work load in class is too much and he missed too many practices last season.  I hate to do that and it is the first time that they won't be on a team for a whole season but school is number 1 and I don't want to sign them up and miss most of the activities..waste of money and also does not make good teammates.  

Will is on the track team and we started this week.  For now it is only once a week; Wednesday morning before school.  I volunteered to help the teacher who is coaching the team.   We had 65 kids  and I hope they will all come back.  I will help with the running part...  We did very little running for the first day.  All the kids made the same mistake: going put way too fast and crashing before the end of the lap :) For the second lap I told them they could not pass me. It was funny because this lap is short and some kids were trying to cheat and cut the course short.  This is not PE! Nobody is forcing them to come to this so why cheat?! It's the "I have to be first" thing I guess.  After the second lap I asked some of the older kids to guess how far we had ran.  "1 mile!" Hmmm no not even close. "1/2 a mile!" Nope.  The lap is only 0.16 mile! I was wearing my Garmin so I had the exact distance. :). So in the end  a big workout of 0.32 mile:). I would spend a lot less time on stretching exercises and more on actually moving.  

They will have one meet in April and I am looking forward to that!

I am looking for races to fill up my calendar! If you are local and have suggestions please leave a comment!

Check out the cool running stickers I found yesterday!  I have a scrapbook for all my races with bibs and other stuff.

Have a good weekend!