On the mend...

The shin is feeling a lot better and I am hoping to start running again this weekend. I made a lame attempt (meaning I went to the gym once) to do some cross training this week but I just really want to run. I have a dress fitting on Saturday so I am hoping that the lack of exercise and junk food this week won't do me in.

Even though I said I shouldn't do another race before the wedding, I am contemplating doing the Hampton Half and Rockfest .One of my favorite bands, Entrain, is scheduled to play after the race. It always seems so cool when there is a band and post-race party when I sign up for these races but most of the time I just want to head home, shower and take a nap after a race. It's far enough ahead that I have time to train up for it despite this setback and I'll have two weeks to recover before the wedding. May not be such a bad idea...

Ouch!

As I mentioned, I completed the Reach the Beach Relay over the weekend with 11 other crazy running friends. I am normally conservative in my running but I must been overcome with all the excitement of the race and I went out too fast on my first leg. This was also my hardest and longest of the three legs (8.6 miles) that I was assigned to run. This was not my brightest idea. I ended up feeling wasted in my second leg and hobbled through the my last leg. My right shin for some reason decided to act up. When I got home, I showered and went to bed only to wake up at 3 AM in excruciating pain, to the point that I was in tears. Z feel asleep in front of the TV and it took all my power to make it down the stairs. Even though I woke him up, Z was very attentive. Neither of us was really sure what to do. Do I go to the ER? Can I tough it out? Well, I opted for the latter and thankfully some RICE, TLC, and Advil PM helped. I felt a lot better after I slept and even better today although I still have some tenderness. I learned my lesson here about how not to run a relay... and maybe hold off any major races until after the wedding

Reach the Beach Recap

Reach the Beach has come and gone. Reach the Beach is essentially a race you do with 11 other friends that are crazy enough to run 200 miles collectively and continuously for 2 days. It's like a roving party with a little running and, if you're lucky, some sleep, thrown in.

Z captained a team, The Colbert Nation, again this year. Overall, I think it's the smoothest relay that I have done (two RTB's and one Green Mountain Relay (GMR)). I think the relay veterans on the team got this relay thing done to science including how to get the marker off the van windows before returning them to the rental place (diaper wipes work really well).

The race organizers revamped some of the logistics to stagger the runners going through the transition areas (TA's) a little more. That meant that our start time, 11:40 AM, was about 3 hours later than the previous two relays. There was definitely concerns about getting to the finish "before the chicken got cold". We actually did very well with an overall time of 30:39:30 (8:47 min/mile pace), about hour faster than last year even with the additional 6 miles this year. Of course, the time is not all that important.