Just days away...

It finally happened...

Yesterday was my first official "freak" out day.  We're all allowed to have them, right?  I don't know why it was yesterday, but I had the "What in God's name am I doing?!" thought pass through my mind multiple times.  Maybe it was just a case of the Mondays.  (If you don't get that, you obviously never watched Office Space!)  Maybe it was because yesterday was a cross-training day when I didn't run.  Maybe it's because I'm in over my head.  No, no, it can't be that last one.  :-)

The good news is that the freak out passed, and I'm back in the zone!  What zone is that?  Apparently last night it was the drink-water-until-you-feel-like-you'll-burst zone.  Not really the best thing to do leading up to bedtime, but a girl's got to hydrate!!!!

I'm still on my hydration kick, and if you looked in my car, you'd see proof of that via 3 water bottles (in koozies, of course) on my front seat.  You can never have too many water bottles, even if one of them's empty.  (By the way, does anyone else keep an "emergency" water in the car?  I call it my Tillie Tooter water.  Don't know the Tillie Tooter story?  You must not have been in or around Broward County in 2000.)  What other kicks am I on?  EATING!!!!  Sweet Mary, this is my favorite part of a race like this.  You probably know that I love to eat; I mean, just look at me!  One glance & it's apparent that this girl likes her food!  :-)  Seriously, I do!  Not knowing exactly what the calories burned will be on Saturday, but knowing it'll be a lot, I'm eating whatever the heck I want.  Oh, wait, I do that normally, don't I?!  All kidding aside, I really am trying to pack in some extra calories to "energy up" a bit.

Speaking of energy, my next thing to tackle is deciding what foods will be good to have on race day.  I've got the usual suspects: granola bars, bananas, energy gels, Gatorades/Powerades, my beloved Belvita cookies, but know I'll need some other stuff.  I've heard that pickles are good.  Maybe it's a sodium thing?!  Maybe some deli meats for protein?  Just not sure, but am open to suggestions!

Oh, I can't believe I forgot to mention this!  Lately, I've been doing runs that are the distance (or distances) of some of the legs I'll have in the race.  Today I did what'll be my longest leg on Saturday: 6.3 miles.  Did I tell you that the team, although they want to have "fun" (their word), they also want to beat last year's pace of 8 minutes, 22 seconds per mile?  Did I also tell you that all 5 of my teammates are enlisted Coast Guardsmen (and woman)?  Yeah, I'm the only non-CG member of the team!  I've got to represent!  (Represent what?  Ummmm, I haven't figured that out yet!)  My goal is to help as much as I can with that, so here's where today's run comes in: my 6.3 miles today had an average of 7 minutes, 52 seconds per mile!  (Yeah, I've got the proof  on RunKeeper!  It's no BS!)  Ok, ok, I'll admit that today's weather was absolutely beautiful and although it was hot & sunny, it wasn't that humid, so you probably can't make an "apples to apples" comparison of this run to what Saturday will be like, but HOT DAMN!, that was a confidence booster!!!