My next race is The Dirty Dash, a 10K in two weeks. I’m not really worried about time, since the whole race is through a mud/obstacle course. But I haven’t run over 5 miles in a month – since I was in Minnesota. While I’m sure I can go out and run 6 miles without a problem, during The Dirty Dash I would like to focus more on the mud and obstacles than the running. So I mandated to myself that today I could not put off a long run any longer, and went out to run a 6 mile out-and-back that I run fairly often.

September is tricky. It’s so cold in the morning, and it’s so cold when the sun goes over the mountains. Even though AccuWeather says it’s 68 degrees, and feels like 78 degrees an hour before my run, and obviously only got hotter in that hour, I really wasn’t that worried. It was breezy, it was a nice comfortable temperature when I stepped outside of the house. This was going to be a nice cool run.

I was so hot and thirsty. After two miles I nearly gave up and turned around. (This is after having my route determined for me due to the herding of cows…what was I going to do, run through them?) But I forced through it. I forced myself to the feed store (yep, this is a farming community), and from there forced myself to the Ward House (yep, this is Utah), and at that point convinced myself it was only a block to the end of the paved trail/park/turnaround point, and there was no point in stopping.

By then, I felt much better, and while I was still really hot and thirsty, enjoyed the second half of my run. One of the deals I make with myself on a run that’s hotter than I expect is that I can take off my shirt when I have a mile left. I don’t care what anyone else thinks- I just ran _ miles, I get to run in just a sports bra for the last mile. The temperature difference is immense, and it’s so nice for the last push. I’m sure some of the conservative farmers around here think its absolutely scandalous that I take off my shirt and run in a sports bra. I’m okay with that. I’ll be the liberal hippie runner girl. I don’t mind that label.

But geez, September, will you just put a sticky note on the door that it’s going to be hot during the day?

When you’re self employed, you end up going into the office (or working if you don’t have an office) on days which you would much rather be doing something else. Like holidays. And Saturdays. As you drive into the office and get yourself ready for work, you contemplate all the things you’d rather do. Like garage sale-ing, hiking, home improvement, reading, watching movies, and the list goes on…

But this amazing thing happens when you go to the office on a holiday or Saturday (or Sunday) – you get work done. No one knows you’re there, so they don’t call, only a few happen to email, they don’t stop by. You get work…done! There aren’t 5000 constant interruptions, and you don’t feel yourself being pulled from project to project before you’re ready.

This happened last Saturday to some degree, but it was amazing today. I just can’t even tell you how much more I get done on a Saturday than during the week. We got so much done that we decided we could work from home tomorrow (corporate extensions for tax returns are due September 15, if you’re wondering what the rush is for). So we packed up what we’d need to get tomorrow, and will only go into the office if something unforeseen happens (like, the power goes out and we can’t log into our computers, or there’s a sudden parade outside our house with lots of music and loud noises).

First thing tomorrow morning though, I have to go for a long run. I need to get back up to 6 to 7 miles every weekend so I’ll be ready for The Dirty Dash and to pick up training for the half-marathon after that.

My favorite 5K was this morning – the Park City 4th of July Mountain Run…or whatever incarnation they’re calling it now. It benefits the Park City Ski Team. I’ve run it on and off since I was 12 years old.

In the last four years, as I’ve progressed to getting back in shape, I have steadily increased my time by two minutes a year (30 min, 28 min, 26:15 last year). I didn’t expect the trend to continue this year. With the piriformis and the rotator cuff, I wasn’t anywhere near where I needed to be to run 24 minutes.

I’ve learned over the last several years that if I don’t want to fight the crowd the entire time (this year 549 women and 462 men were registered), you have to line up just behind the ‘fast people’. Turned out to be the right place for me this year as for most of the race we ran a pretty steady pace altogether, not to many people passing or being passed.

We had perfect weather today – it was cloudy and cool during the race. My hands were just slightly cold, but overall it was the perfect temp to not get overheated.

She doesn’t know it, but there’s a girl I graduated from high school with who is my ‘goal’ for this race. She was a swimmer in high school, I was a runner. But post high school, she kicks my butt in this 5K every year. This year, I started right behind her so I could at least keep an eye on how fast she was going. I saw her going the other way right after the turn around. That was great! I still finished behind her, but was much closer this year than in the past (50 seconds).

I knew during the race I was running a pretty good time. All the people I was around had a pretty comfortable pace going, and I knew from previous years they were faster than the people I usually run with (less small kids, more technical fabrics). And you know what? PR! 24:55! It wasn’t a two minute increase, but it was more than a minute! Plus it gives me a great goal to get to 24 next year, and injury free I think it’s possible.

7th in my age group and 65th woman overall! I’ll take that!

(Side note, I have this great desire to turn 30 to move up an age group…but I still would have been 7th in the 30 – 34 age group! Sigh…)