Dread{mill}

Let me start by saying how much I love having a treadmill in my basement.  I love getting home from work, putting Katie down for a nap and then heading down to get in some exercise while she is asleep.

But I have a very hard time running on a treadmill.  Like, gasping for breath, staring at the numbers thinking, "I've only gone a mile??"  I am incapable of "zoning out" on the TV or a movie for more than 5 minutes.  My eyes always wander back to display and I watch the numbers counting my mileage move in super-slow-motion.  And I'm walking a LOT more often than I would on a normal run outdoors.  A LOT more.  It's quite ridiculous.

Any tips or advice, would be appreciated.  I'm still getting some time in running, which is better than nothing, but MAN!  It is so hard for me.  Is it just going to take more time in until I'm used to it, or what?

Race Report: South Valley Half Marathon

This pretty much sums up how I feel/felt about the race that I "ran" on Satuday:

Poorest performance in a half since the first time I ran the distance.  2:29:40 is the official time.  A good 20-30 minutes slower than I had hoped for/boasted about/planned on.

The course was harder than I thought it would be. (3 miles up hill??)  It was hotter than I thought it would be... and around mile 9 I just kind of gave up, after being passed by the 2:10 pacer, the 2:15 pacer and the 2:20 pacer.

I'm not proud of it.  I'm embarrassed.  A lot.

The race was gun timed and when the gun went off, I was still waiting to get in the Honey Bucket.  So I started out 1:30 behind everyone else and was running WAY too fast, trying to catch up to the 1:55 pacer.  I never even saw him.  The closest I got was the 2:05 pacer and I didn't stay in front of her for very long.

There are a lot more boring details that I could complain about and try to use as an excuse.  But the bottom line was that I wasn't prepared for the course and hadn't trained as well as I should have.

Adding to my embarrassment were two great bloggers that waited and waited and waited around for me to finish for a photo.

I'll be running with you in October, Blaine!  And Candice, you are so pretty.

Here's the Thing...

I don't like blogging about running anymore.

OK, that's not really true... but I feel weird blogging about running.  I mean, does anyone really care about my mid-week runs and how slow I went and what I felt like and how I saw this many runners and only one of them acknowledged me? 

Does anyone really care about my long runs and how slowly I go and how many times I walked and how I tried a new flavor of GU and liked it?

Mostly I just want to talk about this:

And I do... a lot... on my personal/family blog.

... ... ... ... ...

Anyway, I ran 12 miles this morning.  And it took me WAY too long.  Like, 30  minutes slower than what I had hoped to be running for the half marathon in two weeks.

Confidence boosting, wouldn't you say?