August as Usual

I hate complaining about the summer weather here.  I mean what exactly would one reasonably expect from Dallas in August?  And I do complain bitterly when I'm miserably cold, and I don't feel like anyone should complain about both heat and cold, but yeah, it's pretty much what everyone does this month here. 

So we've had some awesome things like this:

Note that this was at 4:33 a.m. this week.  And I'm smack dab in the middle of Dallas.  So 89 degrees at the start of my run. 

Yow!

And I definitely wanted to quit yesterday.  I considered turning around at the first water stop, which would have given me about 5 miles round trip.  But we had 9 on the schedule, and I stuck it out.  And then I negative split that bitch!  I was running with my new-ish running friend Bobby and we were egging each other on.  By the last quarter mile, I was seeing 7:30s on my watch, which hasn't happened on in August on a weekday run in longer than I can remember.  It made me feel really good to be done and I tried to really soak in how it felt so I can remember pushing through and kicking butt when it comes to race day. 

Speaking of kicking butt...

The last two weeks have had two races.  The Badass Brazos half-marathon down in Waco this past Sunday, and the San Francisco Marathon that I ran two weeks ago.

Remember how I thought it was kind of crazy to do a half in Texas in August?  Well, the weather did not disappoint:

I was amazed at the parallels between the two races.  They were surprisingly similar, but Waco was half the distance and twice the temperature!  (That's kind of a lie, San Fran was about 55 degrees when I started, and I finished before it hit 106 here this past weekend.  Details, details...)

There were some crazy steep hills in Waco that I was not expecting.

There was some walking involved.

San Fran also had some hills, but given the city's elevation profile, they absolutely could have made it worse.  It was "not bad for San Francisco" but that's enough to nearly kill me! 

They actually put the elevation chart on the inside of the medal ribbon, which I thought was pretty cool. 

The white part is the first half, the navy part is the second half. 

I ended up running my basic plan -- ran the first 11 miles, then walked to mile 18 (though if we were ever going downhill, I tried to jog or run that part, which seemed like it was about 30% of the time in those miles), and then I ran it in.  I had grand plans of running marathon pace or something the last 8 miles, but my legs and spirit were tuckered out.  I ended up finishing in 4:36:07, which was fine with me.  Marathon 22 was in the books, and state number 11 checked off the list. 

I worried the race did some serious damage -- during the marathon and afterward, my right hamstring seemed really tight.  I stayed an extra day in San Fran (went to Sausalito and hung out drinking wine with my brother) and came home late Monday night/early Tuesday morning.  Given the timing, there was pretty much no chance I could run on Tuesday, which was good.  I ran a bit the next few days, but it hurt.  I tried foam rolling, taking it easy, stretching, and it just wasn't getting better.  I was a bit worried I'd really mucked things up. 

Last week Saturday night was a friend's bachelorette party and we had a ton of fun, but ended up staying out until after the bars closed (actually got stuck in horrendous traffic in uptown, crowds of people in the street, impossible for my beastie's husband to drive through (which was fun for him with about 8 drunk women piled in the car, sitting on laps and in the trunk, all trying to tell him how best to drive and get out of the traffic, haha, he's a saint!)).  So Sunday morning, given that my leg still hurt and I was probably still drunk at 5:30 a.m., I skipped my long run, but I did go get it checked out by a chiro.  He recommended a sports massage and said easy running was fine if it didn't hurt, and advised me not to stretch it since that seemed to aggravate it.  Well, I went to Philly for work (oh, that's a good excuse for not blogging lately, I've had a ton of work travel), and ran there, and by the end of the run, I couldn't remember which leg had been hurting.  So 9 days later, all back to normal (well, except the toenail...). 

And now things are just ticking along.  It's Restaurant Week here, so eating out a lot.  Wedding this weekend, then back to Philly!