how not to train for a race

erica and i are signed up to run the twin cities 10 mile run in october. We've been running together lately, and have been doing fairly well. We regularly run on Saturday mornings, and this weekend was no exception. Because it was going to be so hot (100+ with a heat index of at least 105) we decided it would be a brilliant idea to go even earlier than normal, and so I was at her house just after 7:30.

We had a map of the race route, and our idea was to park one of our cars after about mile 3, then drive the other car to the start, and run that part of the course in order to familiarize ourselves with the terrain. Is this not brilliance? Not so much, as it turns out.

We started off toward Franklin St. and the bridge that we would be crossing (which has right in front of it a really big hill that we were (not) excited about tackling) We found that we were detoured by lots of cones because they had closed off part of the street for the Lifetime Fitness Triathalon that was also on Saturday morning. Ok, so we ended up wandering around trying to get back to where we could cross the bridge, and found out that approximately 70% of the streets in that area are blocked off or torn up because of construction. Glad I don't live around there!

We got to our destination, parked Erica's car and proceeded back toward the Metrodome to start off our run. By the time we got down there, parked and plugged the meter, it was about 8:15, I think. We started running in the shade, the breeze was beautiful, all in all, not so bad. Then we turned the corner and got hit full on by the sun. Woah baby, was it hot! But we really had only gone about 4 block, so we were still doing alright, going strong.

We made our way from downtown over to the river road, about a mile, then it hit Erica. We're running toward her car, with the water bottles, and a ride back to my car and then home, and her keys were still in my car...not so good. The decision was made that Erica would run back to my car, get her keys, and then meet up with me along the path. I agreed to this because she's a faster runner than I am, and if I were to go back to my car, I would want to be done running.

So she turned around and headed back, and I kept going forward, and hit one of my favorite spots by the river, a nice long downhill section. I was thinking how if Erica drove stick, she could just take my car to where her car is and then park and run toward me, it would be about equal. Then I thought it wouldn't make any difference, because to drive my car, she would need my key, and then it occurred to me that to get INTO my car and get her keys, she would need my key that was sitting happily tied into my shoelaces at that very moment. Whoops!

I turned around and headed back up the hill, I had only gone about 60-70 feet probably, this train of thought came upon me pretty quickly, but I knew she was running the opposite direction, and there were a couple places she could have turned to get back toward the car, and I was imagining that we would both end up at the car, pooped out but feeling the need to try again for some reason. Thankfully, Erica also realized the mistake that had been made and turned around as well, so we met up, pretty much where we had split just minutes before, and lamented over the lapses in our thought processes.

We decided to keep going despite the growing heat and the growing fact that I had to pee pretty badly. As we were driving to drop Erica's car off, we had passed a parking lot that had a big truck all loaded up with biffies, presumably also for the triathalon. I was thinking that if they were set up by then, I could use one and we would be ok. Then we'd turn around and head back to my car and call it a morning, because it was only gonna get worse.

We ran down the hill, got to the parking lot, no bifs...that wasn't good. We were super hot, super tired, stuck between our 2 cars, and didn't really want to keep going. We had to go back to my car because that's where Erica's keys were. The good thing is that we didn't have to run the big fat hill at the end that we were no longer even remotely excited about running. The bad news is that we just had to keep running.

We ended up running back up the hill that we started down, and then walking to the Guthrie which was about 2 blocks away. We had stopped by there to use the restrooms on Wednesday when we were running, and they didn't seem to mind sweaty people wandering around, so if it was open, we were going in. It was open, and we ended up having to take the escalator to the 4th floor and met 2 very cheery women behind an info desk that were extremely gracious in pointing out the bathrooms. I decided that morning that I really liked the Guthrie. It was heavenly, nice and cool, dimly lit, out of the sun, with friendly people that don't turn you away when you look like a mess.

So after that we walked for another 4-5 blocks to get down to Portland, and decided we could make it running the 6 blocks back to the car. We got back around 9:15, so we had been gone about an hour, and we had maybe covered about 3miles all told, especially counting the turning around and running back and forth places. An hour to run 3 miles? ugh. Even walking 3 miles should take 45 min. or less.

Pretty early on in the whole experience, we decided that we should never try that again. Maybe I'll take Christine's idea and suggest that we run the night before if the temperature will be in the triple digits.