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Running
Ugh. Summer. Sure, there are lots of things to love like extra daylight and beach trips, but 100 degree heat and 100% humidity? Nope. I do not love those things, and I especially don't love running in those conditions. So what do you do when it feels like your skin is about to melt off your body and sizzle onto the pavement, but you want to keep your running fitness? Try other workouts! Here are my 5 favorites.
Apparently I've talked about a lot of reasons to love running over the years. And while some reasons are trivial and some are life-changing, there's always another reason to run.
I've always wanted to run with bulls. And while the dangerous event in Pamplona may not be the sort of adrenaline rush I've been craving, I still had the chance to run with the bulls of Bull City, my hometown Durham, NC.Travis, Kristen and I caught up with some other Fleet Feet runners at the start line of the race, all us bulls eager for the scenic and slightly hilly race.
We say this every year, and yet every year we run the Tar Heel 10 Miler. It's iconic for Chapel Hill fans who run. The course runs through campus and hits up highlights like Franklin Street, the Old Well, the bell tower, and the stadium. But as a fellow runner around mile 4 quipped, "Well they sure don't call it Chapel FLAT!"
It's always exciting to get a new medal, but where do you put it? For my first couple race medals I just draped them on the frame of a mirror, but a few more medals later and my poor mirror was sagging under the weight, so I just stuffed the medals into a bin. But a bin is a sad place for medals to gather dust and feel neglected, so I started looking for a medal rack. I wasn't thrilled with any of the commercial medal racks available. They were cute, but they just didn't fit me, so after a while I just decided to build my own race medal rack.
Well, it had to happen eventually. After a four race PR streak I finally broke my streak. It was bound to happen though. It's unreasonable to assume that I can run every race in my life faster than the last, and it might as well happen on my fifth half marathon.
It's here! It's here! Taper crazies, taper tantrums, (half) maranoia - all the insanity that comes with rest and nerves leading up to race weekend. The Rock 'n' Roll Raleigh half marathon is this weekend and I'm giving mile 7.5 to 8.7 a big ol' stink-eye for that ugly hill I'll have to run up. (And that's already the toughest section of a half marathon in my opinion, so I don't need any hill to make it worse!) Fine, fine, after a weekend on the Appalachian Trail I shouldn't complain about a measly ol' 163 feet elevation change. I shouldn't complain...but I still will. Bah! But since it's Friday I've got a few things on my radar to celebrate the weekend!
I am trying so hard to psych myself up for this race.The Rock'n'Roll Raleigh marathon and half marathon is coming up on Sunday, and I'm racing the half. Racing? Running? One of those. I'll be trying to race my time to see if I can somehow get it under 2 hours and 10 minutes, but at the same time I'm worried.
