Friday morning I set out to conquer my second non-human nemesis: the hill near Myers Park High School that appears at mile 8 of the Corporate Cup half marathon.  I surprised both myself and SuperDad by actually waking up at 6am, bundling up in my cold weather gear, and running over to the hill, approximately 2.5 miles from our house.  I ran that darn hill 6 times, and by the 6th time, it was no easier than the first. I was moving at about an 8:20 pace up that hill, which is not great.  I figure if I can keep a 7:25 pace for the first 6 flat miles of the course, I can afford to run the hills in 7:40 or so.  Not 8:20.  Nevertheless, I was pleased that a) I woke up at 6 am, b) I actually did repeats on that hill, as opposed to doing it once and crying the whole way home, and c) I didn’t get hit by a teenager turning his brand new 2011 Yukon into the parking lot.  It’s sad that one day, SuperBaby will be the “poor kid” at that high school.

Sunday I planned to do a 10 mile run at 7am.  Instead, I slept 12 hours, waking at 9.  Yep, I went to bed during the Duke-Carolina game because Duke was losing and I knew they were not going to pull through.  I think I was depressed in my sleep about the game, and that’s why I slept so long.  When I got up, I had no motivation to run.  It was pouring ran and there was no end in sight.  So naturally, I took two naps with SuperBaby and worked a few hours.  Around 5 it cleared up.  I decided to sack up and take Riley on the run.  Big mistake.  Huge mistake. Riley has OCD.  And she thinks she has IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).  She literally stopped 15 times during 10 miles.  For you non-math majors out there, that is 1.5 times per mile.  There was approximately 1.7 poops and 1 pee (total) generated in those 15 stops.  Riley thinks she has to go but there’s nothing there.  But people walking or driving by think she is going #2, and give me the stink eye when I don’t clean up.  Sorry, can’t clean up a phantom poop.

Also, because I didn’t want to carry my water bottle, along with the doggie poop bags, remote control for her collar, and my Iphone, I did an out-and-back course twice.  Meaning, I mapped out 2.5 miles from the house and ran to that point and back twice.  I put the water around mile 1.5 so I could have water at least every 3 miles.  This way, I was always under street lights as well. The problem with that course is that it goes along a busy road with many stop lights.  Naturally, as it goes when I drive, I hit almost every red light.  I think I had to stop about 23 or 24 times, even if only briefly.  This made me quite angry.  SuperDad thought this was funny, because he thinks it is absurd that I choose to run on such busy roads.  Whatever.  The run was 4 x 2.5 miles at HMP + 20% (about 8:45), HMP + 10% (8:15), HMP (actually, ended up being about 7:40), then HMP + 20%.  All of the stopping and starting messed up my splits, but then again, I guess it gave me time to rest as well.  I was not at all happy with Riley afterward, and the worst part is that I cannot shame her with this blog because she doesn’t read and lacks the opposable thumbs to pull up the site!

I am hoping my shoulder makes it through this last week of taper and the race on Saturday.  If you don’t hear from me before Saturday, it is because I am spending my free time visualizing the race and the pain I will endure on the multiple hills. I am afraid that all my weeks of avoiding hills on my long runs is really going to come back and bite me.  I am going to do one last hill workout tonight in the hopes of drumming up some semblance of fitness before Saturday.