I am now at T-9 days until my next half marathon.  Stupidly, I registered without looking at the course map first. Dear reader, ALWAYS look at the course map before registering. The race is in Central Park and I had it in my head that Central Park would be a lovely easy route. Hahaha. Only afterwards, as in months afterwards, did I see this “Major uphills are at approximately 1.5, 3.5, 4.5, 7, 9.5, and 10.5 miles.” It actually says major uphills.  I am not looking at the elevation on the course map because I don’t really want to know at this point.

A respiratory infection, the weather, and work have gotten in the way of training as much for this one as I would have liked and I am NOT AT ALL prepared for the hills.

I’d been congested for the past few weeks (husband and I passed the germs back and forth, we’re generous like that) and between the congestion, tiredness from middle of the night coughing fits, and not getting on antibiotics as soon as I probably should have my running was impacted. I wound up taking off running for nearly a week. Which is scary when you have a big race looming.  Now I’m on prescription cough suppressant that is strong enough to knock me out at night (the over the counter stuff was not doing it for me) and the antibiotics are doing their job. I was able to start running again this past Wednesday.  And work wise I’m not having to hover my finger over the mute button to cover coughing on conference calls which is nice. Nobody likes someone hacking in their ear.

Because of the icy weather here I’ve mostly trained on the dreadmill at home.  The cold alone is not really a problem but the ice and sidewalks being covered with snow made it a little treacherous for an uncoordinated person like me to run outside. Running on the dreadmill is VERY different from running outside so when the weather started warming up a few weeks ago I hit the streets the minute I could! Still have not gotten in as much outdoor running as I did before the last half marathon but can’t change mother nature.  I’ve done hill training once or twice by running the steep uphill train station parking lot that is near the house.

Work has also impacted my running, there have been some long hours lately. I normally work 9-6 but for awhile I’ve had a streak of 8:30- 7 days with not much time to work in a lunch run.  Since I started working from home I’m not as much of a morning person as I used to be and am not about to wake up at any form of o’dark for a run in the morning.  This makes it tricky to fit in runs but I have kept up with the distance on the schedule except for the down time while I was under the weather.

So I won’t be as prepared as I would like for this half, but is anyone ever really 100% prepared when you work full time and there is this thing called life that happens? No.  And you know how I am going to power through this? I am going to run it dressed as BATWOMAN. That’s right.  Can’t run a race in any way but awesome when you’re dressed as Batwoman baby!

The theme of the half is “Women Run The World”.  Which of course we do. In keeping with this theme I thought a superhero outfit was appropriate. I bought it today. It took awhile to put together a Batwoman outfit that didn’t have such a vixen spin on it that it would be impossible to run in without being indecent but I did.   Fingers crossed Batwoman finishes strong!