Rest: Tucson tour part. 2

Little did I know that I would be spending all day in a parking lot, living out of a car, surrounded my competitive road bikers. Ya that’s right, from 10:30am to 5:30pm, I was stranded in the competition parking lot. Fuuuuuunn. Actually, I kind of enjoy being at competitions, surrounded by competitive athletes. It reminds me of my softball days in high school and it really motivates me to become a more competitive runner.

While the men did their practice lap, I decided I might as well get my run out of the way…since I would otherwise have absolutely nothing to do. I tiptoed into a porter-potty, awkwardly attempting to change into my running clothes without touching anything (not possible).  I then confidently walked out into the beautiful Tucson sunshine, and immediately took a self-esteem plunge when I realized how weird I looked in running gear when everyone else is wearing spandex. I can imagine their thoughts: Who is this girl? Does she think this is a duathalon? She better stay off of our courses. Luckily, nothing of the sort was said out loud, and I quickly got over my fear.

Fridays are supposed to be an easy day in order to prepare me for my long runs on Saturdays. However, I wanted to work a bit harder to make up for missing my work out on Wednesday  (which is a stupid thing to do I’ve heard. Oh and YES, that is correct: I have not been able to %100 stick to my training schedule since I started this endeavor. Awesome.). So I did a 30-minute, fairly easy run on a beautiful road covered in Saguaros. It was beautiful…minus the speedy cyclists that I imagined wanted to angrily run me over. I then proceeded to do 15 minutes of drills and sprints—that’s where my mistake lies. I felt extremely warm and extremely fast, so the sprints were extremely enjoyable. I remembered how much I love sprinting. Two sprints in and I had already concluded that I was probably going to be a national 5k winner someday soon. Duh. Shoot, I’m not gonna lie, I was a pretty fast base runner in high school, I was born for sprints! Good workout you say? INDEED! But I may regret it tomorrow when I attempt to run 60 minutes with sore, stiff legs.