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.

Okay, how much has happened since my last post? Enough.

After the 5K on the 4th, my long runs didn’t go well. My legs felt very tired, and there was just no pickup. I didn’t feel great going into the Bryce Canyon Half-Marathon. However, that morning, I felt awesome! So awesome in fact, that I went out way too fast (I seriously clocked an 8-minute mile for mile 3, and didn’t slow down much until mile 6). I died by mile 7 – my back hurt, the back of my knees hurt…the early and fast downhill had just been too much for me. I finished in 2 hours, 18 minutes. Not SO far from my goal, but far enough.

Since then, I’ve been taking it pretty easy. I’ve still be running, but more like 10 – 15 miles a week and not a really long run (no longer than 6 miles) on the weekends. We took a 10 day vacation in early August, and I ran a few times, but just enough to it wouldn’t be hard to get back on schedule when vacation was over.

The truth is, I’ve felt great – much better than before the half, when my legs were tired and I just couldn’t make them go.

Yesterday was Labor Day to most of you. To me, it was Miner Day, Park City’s town celebration day. It, of course, starts off with a 5K! In the past couple of years, the course has been short. I let them know last year via email that they might want to work on that… And…they did! It was a full 5K this year! Yesterday morning was cold. It was supposed to be really cold, but the weather smiled on us – I felt comfortable enough to wear shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, and gloves. It was the perfect outfit for the weather.

I felt like I was going really fast. Was I having a breakthrough run? I knew there weren’t too many people in front of me, and I was passing just as many as were passing me…I finished, stopped my Nike+, and realized I was seriously not having a breakthrough run. I was running…not fast! But, hey, I was running faster than everyone else apparently. On a side note, always remember to kick at the end – I totally counted this girl I passed as gone, and she ALMOST caught up to me. Timing chips put her at 0.1 seconds behind me.

Anyway, as soon as the race finished, I said hi to another Olaf Alum who often runs the same races I do, and left the race to hit breakfast. I hadn’t even registered for the raffle, and it would just be ridiculous to think I placed in the top 3 in my age group (not that there have ever been age group awards before this year!). But then a friend met up with us after breakfast – and said he heard my name called. I checked with the organizers today – I was third in the female 20 – 35 age group. Huge age group, right? Oh, and I was 4.5 minutes slower than the girl who was 2nd. Like I said, I didn’t go fast, just faster than everybody else. But, I have to say, I am super-excited to have placed in my age group for once. Next time I hope it’s because I actually went fast

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…)