Ultra

Yesterday was a blah day. I rode my bike to and from work and that was all I did for exercise. I was exhausted. We had meetings and training all day yesterday and will have another full day of the same today. Trainings mentally wear me out and give me no motivation to do anything after they are done. Yesterday I consoled myself with a nice hot bath and reading Trail Runner in the tub. So delightful.

I am a huge water person and seek comfort and sollace from the tub. In college after a long/bad day I would go in the bathroom and make a "wet bar". I would bring a bottle of vodka, a bottle of tonic and sometimes cranberry juice if we had it, and a tray of ice cubes. I would put on some music, usually Ani Difranco and take a hot bath listening to Ani and making mix drinks at my "wet bar". It was great. However, I am older, sober, and mature and so I bring with me running magazines instead now. Oh how times have been a changin'.

ANYWAYS, I know today that I need to get in a good sweat session so I am HOPING that my text to Running Mama will elicit a positive response. I asked her if she wanted to do some "hill training up philo" Sometimes when the motivation for yourself isn't there you have to rely on others. Sometimes guilt trips work too!

Onto exciting news, Running Mama sent me a facebook message yesterday asking if I am in for this. It's a 100 mile relay through Vermont. It starts at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont and then goes south to Okemo Mountain Resort. You sign up with a team of six people for the relay and each person does three legs of the race averaging out in total to running 17 miles. Some legs are shorter (2-4 miles) while others are longer (6-8). My response to RM about this was, "do you not know me at all?"

I am always looking for the next thing to do to push my body to the limit. To find out how hard and far I can push myself. I feel like the type of person I am, I need instant gratification. Running isn't necessarily instant gratification but you can see the progression of improvement. If you start doing hill repeats you notice that running up Battery Street Hill is nothing in comparision to how it felt to run up Mt. Philo. Or doing sprint repeats helps when you push it into the next gear towards the end of a race and smoke some people at the very end when they are gassed out. Its those small things that you do notice and when they happen I get excited and jazzed up to push myself harder and further than I thought I could to improve my craft.

I think doing an all night running relay 100 mile race is just the thing to push me a little bit more. I am so excited for this and really hope that RM and I can find 4 other idiots that want to do it with us! If interested go to the link check out the info and DO IT. It's August 13th. Anyone want to do it, I know you do! Bonus: you can feel like Dean Karnazes doing an all night run for a fraction of the time he actually does it! I AM SO THERE!