Sleepy Hollow Half, Good Trail Run with Good Friends, and Being Sick

I run with Tony a lot. Sometimes, I'll even go as far to get up at 4am, hop on the first train upstate, just to run 10 miles with Tony on beautiful trails. Wayne thinks it's a bit much, but it's like hanging out with a friend, running, enjoying scenery (and complaining abt snow) and seeing deer. Not what I'd get in the city.

Tony mentioned the Sleepy Hollow Half Marathon, and I saw a sign for it on our run one day. He mentioned it again. And then Georgia mentioned wanting to do it, so yeah, I'll sign up. And then we got a crew, of the three of us plus Beth and Cortney.

Beth and Corntney and I hopped on a slightly-later-than-normal train and Tony picked us up at North White Plains. We debated over how many layers to run and ran nice and and easy to the race start with Georgia, who met us in the lot. We shivered at the start, waited in line for port-a-potties, and headed out on the run.

My plan was to run easy - have a steady pace. We kept a sub 8:30 pace (on average, some of the hills slowed us down at parts). Tony and I had a conversational pace, chatting, talking about races, friends, runs, etc. He kept saying "eh" and I kept teasing him that Ray Zahab was instilling some Canadian in him. I had just spent a week w my Canadian coworkers so their language was really floating around my head too.

Towards the end, my feet started hurting. I've been wrestling with some weird foot pains - primarily when I race on roads - and it kicked in around mile 9 or 10. Tears in my eyes. But whatever, we were just chilling, having fun.

We finished in 1:51 - not bad for chilling out, with lots of hills and too much wind.

Tony yelled at me for making him run too fast and then we had to hang around in the cold. We walked around the block and then by that point, met up with everyone else. We ran back, freezing cold, and quickly warmed up. We then warmed up with diner food.


The rest of the week, I've been soaking my feet and hoping my doctor's words about "you need to rest those dogs!" were wrong. I didn't have pain now, but what if - what if? The pain according to my doctor is an inflammation and I need to rest it. Sigh.

And I went into work Monday, not feeling great, but whatever. Finally I ended up leaving around 4pm, blowing off the planned errands. After a wretched commute and rain, I was miserable. I went to bed early and felt horrible in the morning, too horrible to even run a few miles. But I had to go to work! I had to! I ended up working for 2 hours, napping for three, working another 2. And today I feel better, but not heaps. Hopefully this time off from running means this was one kickass taper and I'm ready to KICK ASS Saturday at Operation Endurance!

I hope! I hope! I hope!