Wow it’s been an insane month! I nearly died a month ago today, and I’m still feeling the repercussions of that crash. My health has been a roller coaster. Some days I feel somewhat alive, others… yeah, not so much. I’ve kept running though, very slowly, but running all the same. As important as my physical health is, mental health is equally important. And running is critical to my mental health. So slowly, often very slowly I’ve been getting out there and putting one foot in front of the other. Most days that time was when I felt best. The majority of the rest of the day was spend in bed wishing I had the health to live life to the fullest
I had another great weekend planned with two potentially great races. First was the XTERRA Virginia Key 10K, then off to visit with my grandparents for the Naples Daily News Half Marathon. Neither went as planned. It took significantly longer for me to get to Virginia Key on Saturday morning. Miami Dade transit isn’t exactly an efficient means of travel. I really wish I had a bike to ride these days…
Anyway, I did eventually make it to the race (on time) and again due to my health had to consciously hold back. No ‘racing’, just running easy. Thankfully it was a very small race so I still had a shot of winning my age group. On a typical day I had no doubt I could run away with the overall here, but this was certainly not a typical day. Between holding back, and a little bit of a trail marking snafu I ended up near the back of the pack. I finished 10th – out of 12! I still won the age group since I was literally the only one in it! The trails were fun to run, quite interesting actually, as there were some obstacles in place for mountain bikes which provided a little bit of a challenge in a few places and certainly made for some abnormal terrain. Alls well that ends well, right? It was no where near my ideal time, but I still enjoyed myself (and managed to keep alive the shot at one XTERRA age group title)
Next, it was off to Naples. Or not… those county busses didn’t exactly get me where I needed to be in time to catch my Greyhound. So I spent the afternoon trying (and failing) to find a ride to Naples. This had been another race I really looked forward to. It’s a fast course. Originally I had been targeting a PR (and Boston [6:17/mi] pace). Now I was just going to run it for fun: just relax and enjoy the race atmosphere while hopefully finishing in sub 1:35/1:40 still. Plus it was a great excuse to visit with family. Well that clearly didn’t happen. I never made it to Naples… and the race never went off! Apparently, some downed power lines and storm debris forced them to cancel it that morning. So, I didn’t feel too bad about missing my ride out there, but I was still frustrated that the run never happened. So I just went for a run on South Beach instead
Unpredictable, chaotic and a total roller coaster ride: Yeah, thats life! Live it up, cause you never know what its going to throw at you next