Like Dorothy (without the red shoes).

So, I get to Crissy Field this morning for my run and barely made it out of the car in one piece because the what must have been hurricane strength winds tried to steal my legs by slamming the car door shut right when I was trying to exit.  Luckily my ninja-like reactions kept all my parts intact (more like the fact that I hadn’t yet put any of myself out the door but I like to believe that if I had, I would still have escaped unscathed in thanks to my superior reaction times.. the people who know how completely uncoordinated and non-ninja like I am are LOLing right about now).  It did take me some time to muster up the courage to get out of the warm, cozy car into the foggy, super windy morning so I had to use scare tactics on myself to motivate for the run… reminding myself that it’s a very real possibility that it may be just as foggy and/or windy on race day seemed to do the trick so out I went to get in my 8 miles.

I opted to head away from the Golden Gate bridge as the headwinds in that direction were ridiculous so instead I went through the Marina, up into Fort Mason, down for a few loops in Aquatic Park, back up into Fort Mason (which meant hauling myself up that scarily big hill again… that thing is ridiculous) and back down through the Marina to Crissy Field. The run itself would have been challenging enough in terms of the hills and the distance but that wind really pushed the entire thing from challenging into the realm of really freaking hard. 

Despite my grumblings about the conditions today, I’m glad that I went and am proud of myself for getting in all 8 miles despite the less than perfect conditions.  With 10 very short weeks left until race time, each day counts and I need to give it everything I’ve got both physically and mentally. As I’ve written about before, optimism isn’t necessarily a strength of mine and I have a propensity for self-doubt so getting my head to fall in line with training is just as difficult for me as it is to get my body to cooperate.  

I’ve already made it past a lot of barriers (both physical and emotional) that would have normally given me enough of an excuse to decide that this was a disastrous idea and failure was imminent therefore I should quit immediately.  But here’s the thing… I haven’t quit…  I haven’t even considered that as an option…. maybe this getting older thing has more perks than I realized… if turning 40 is going to bring with it feelings of being more grounded, settled, self-assured and authentically "me", then I’m a huge fan already.  

8.01 miles, 1hr 22min 37 sec, avg pace 10.19 (the wind totally slowed me down!)

Cheers,

SF runner in training