What a difference a day makes. My head-cold is almost gone. Today it is bright, sunny, and a balmy 46 degrees outside - no really, that is warm for London lately. It was a perfect day for a run through Hyde Park. I had the pleasure of catching the changing of the guard with all the horses and the band, which is really only cool to catch during a run in the winter. In the summer there are 15,000 douchebags crowded around Buckingham Palace taking pictures with their Ipads (will y'all cut that out, you look redic holding up a giant Ipad to take a photo), and generally being in my way.
Anyways, I ran 5.2 miles at a moderate pace, with a few pick-ups in there for good measure. I am tapering for the Barcelona half Marathon, which is on Sunday, February 17th at 8:45 a.m. Woo hoo!We are leaving for Barcelona today. Neither Dave or I have ever been, but everyone we meet here in London has told us that Barcelona is the shit. And there is nothing like training for a marathon/running a race while traveling. I never have to say, "no I shouldn't eat that, I want to be hungry for dinner". Guess what, I'll be hungry in 5 minutes......gimme. And what better place to be hungry than in Barcelona!
The course looks like it will give me an outstanding tour of the city. We are staying about 1K from the race start at the Hotel Montecarlo in the Gothic Quarter, so I can just jog to the start. Easy-peasy. Something tells me Dave will be sleeping in.
As far as a goal for this race, I suppose I'd like to finish around 1:40. The course is flat and I know there will be official pacers for a 1:40 finish. I am just not sure how many people are racing. There could be 30,000 people out there and I will never even see the 1:40 pacer.
But really, I will be happy just finishing strong......hopefully, stronger than I did at the Watford Half Marathon 2 weeks ago. The photo below says everything about how I was feeling at mile 12.5 during that race: head down, shit form, the elastic waste drawstring hanging out of my pants, struggling not to barf - fun. I did that race after a nasty bout of the stomach flu where I couldn't eat anything for a week before. Probably not my smartest move, but I finished nonetheless.
So happy running! I'll post an update on the trip next week when we are back.
2 comments:
Good luck, sister! It sounds like you'll be in a much better position to kill this race. And eat everything in sight.
Have your slacker husband take some decent photos of you racing.
Go get 'em Amie! Glad you're feeling better.
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