It puts the lotion in the basket...

So much for well-laid plans, I guess. A mere 6 days into my shiny Hal Higdon's Half Marathon (for Novice runners) Training Schedule, I missed a run. Soxfan and I had the best of intentions, but we just ran out of time. I tried to make it up the next day by tagging it onto the already scheduled run, but I didn't quite make it.

Oh well. I can't beat myself up over it too much, I suppose.

For last week's long run (5m) on Sunday, I decided to try running along the South Platte River. I figured I could run while SoxFan caught us a delicious trout dinner. The road is hard packed gravel and doesn't climb terribly, and is at a mere 6100ft. And you definitely can't top the scenery. It's beautiful. One of these days I'm going to take my camera along and get some pictures of the places I get to run on a regular basis. All non-Coloradans will be green with envy.

Anyway, because the previous weekend's 5 miler on the High Line Canal turned into such a death march, I thought it'd be prudent to carry along a little gatorade at least. I was feeling really good before the run. I felt confident... I had my gatorade. I had a freshly downloaded Podrunner episode. I had my sunglasses. I had a fully charged Garmin with a strong signal. I felt like it was going to be a "great run." What I didn't have? A properly hydrated body.

Now, I know you've all heard (many times) about the importance of drinking plenty of water, etc. And I know you're all tempted to roll your eyes and say "yeah yeah, we get it. Drink the water." But seriously. Drink the water. Oh, and don't run with no shade in an arid environment at mid-day. You'll thank me for this.

Around 4 miles into my 5 miler, I realized that I was no longer sweating. Hmmmm, that's odd. I decided to take a "walk break." ***As an aside, it's been a long time since I had to take a walk break... I may not be able to decide how FAST I'm going to run a particular distance before I head out, but generally I can decide how FAR I'm going to run before I head out. Thus, this "walk break" is synonymous with "heart break."***

I realized: I'm freaking thirsty! My gatorade was long gone, and I was seriously considering plunging my face into the South Platte River and starting to chug. Then, I noticed that I had chill bumps. It was a whole 85-90 degrees outside. Hmm...that's odd.

After about a tenth of a mile, I thought I'd try running again. But my legs felt like jello, and it was clear that I shouldn't try to run, slowly or otherwise, anymore for the day. I dragged my defeated butt back to SoxFan's truck. He gave me a huge smile and asked "How was it?" (as if my tear stained face and slumping shoulders weren't evidence enough).... I just said "Water." Then I chugged so much of it I nearly puked.

Afterwards, I had an excellent self-loathing session during which I tried to determine the source of my running suckiness. Was it possible that I was in worse shape than I was the week before? Did I not get enough sleep? Was it too hot? Did I not get the proper nutrition? Was I simply too much of a wuss? Eventually I narrowed in on the whole water thing. And it helped ease the pain that I wasn't the only complete and utter failure that day: SoxFan didn't bring us even one trout home to share.

Since then, I've been chugging water like Escalades suck gas. And it's made a marked improvement in my running!

Last night I went for a run in a park pretty close to my house with Ini the dogbeast. He was a complete psycho for the first mile, but after that we settled into a nice rhythm and had a perfectly happy little 4 miler together. However, you know that scene from Silence of the Lambs, where Clarice is sort of trail running through the woods? Well, when you're a lone girl running (with a dog, fine, but seriously, Ini would just want to play with any attacker, wouldn't he?) at sunset (and slightly after), the last words you want running through your head are "wow, this is just like that scene from Silence of the Lambs."

Today I'm babysitting for a couple of friends of mine, so I woke up before dawn (no exaggeration, folks) and hauled my sleepy, stinky butt into work early so I could run on the dreadmill. I got 2 miles in this morning, and they went pretty well for dreadmill miles. The only drawback is now, it's only 12:19PM, but it feels like it should be 3:19PM.

See? I've been doing loads of running! Don't go all pessimistic on me and assume that my silence = my laziness!

Oh, and I mentioned this earlier, but do check out PodRunner. It's free, and it's organized by Beats Per Minute (BPM), so you can find an hour or so of music (well, technically it is music) with a perfect beat for you to run to. Before this, I'd only found one song with a perfect tempo for my running speed, and quite frankly, I was getting sick of listening to it over and over again. One of these days that song will shuffle up on my iPod while I'm at work and due to my conditioned response, I'll instantly break out in sweat and start breathing hard.

Oh, in other good news, I've lost 50lbs! I should post some pictures soon.