10 miles and counting!

Ran 10 miles today (well 10.3 to be precise, 1hr 36mins, I'm happy).  This was grand (as the countdown clock shows).....Feb 7 is racing towards me.  The course has a three hour limit - Case tells me when you line up everyone is grouped based on their anticipated finish time and, more importantly, everyone lies!!!!  Gawd racing is tricky, me being me I would never have thought to lie.

New challenges

Omg, Case is continuing to find new forms of torture for me.....I mean it in a kind caring way.  For the non-runners/gym goers on the left is a bosu ball.  It can be used for different types of torture (much like the box I mentioned in my last post).  For some months now I have been using it to do push ups - you turn it over so it has the ball side down and them hold the sides and go for it.  New world, no more girl pushups, it's all boy push ups from now on.  One exercise I've done from the beginning is the plank.  Put your feet on the top of the ball, straighten your body into a pushup or rest on your elbows, hold your stomach muscles in and count the minutes!  Case has variations on this now too.  Go into the plank and he adds a 20/30 or 40 pound weight to my back, depending on how he feels - now that has you focused on holding the plank so the darn weight doesn't slip off.  One of my favs is he turns the ball over and I stand/balance on it, he hands me a weight bar and I have to crouch and stand up, over and over and over again.  It's not easy but that one is really good for the stabalizer muscles in my ankles i.e. reduces the risk of injury.  When I first started I could hardly balance on the ball, let alone hold a weight - Case told me I'd get good at it and he was right.  Getting good with the bosu has been one of those deeply satisfying things where you see improvement relatively quickly - now that appeals to me.

On to new things

Moving along.  My first race is done and there will never be another first.  Well yes I guess there will be the first half marathon then the first marathon but now I have done my very first race I at least have some idea what happens. Case is wasting no time.  Today I ran 9 miles....in a thunderstorm complete with lightening.  It was all okay, my focus was on distance not time but I did it in 1hr 26mins, which was better than I had expected.  Toward the end my right knee started to ache a little - I am completely paranoid about injuries now, I haven't got long until the half in Feb and in-between I am going to Vegas so will have to spend a hideous week only being able to run on the treadmill, which I have decided I dislike intensely as it seems really hard on my body.  
On a sweet note, over the last months Case has commented that my legs are very strong. We have been doing these hideous exercises that involve leaping onto a box.  It's really all about having explosive muscle power, or some such thing.  Anyway this week he had me literally jumping onto a box just below my waist height!  Honestly if you'd told me I'd ever be able to go from flatfooted to leaping that high anytime before Tuesday at 7pm I would have laughed you out of the room.  Just because he's Case he also had me do 5 of them after I had already completed 20 jumps on the medium box and don't go thinking getting my toes on the edge was enough either - hell no, gotta land in the middle on top of the box!  I got a high five out of it and a few claps from the audience....sweetly gratifying!

Today I showed up

My race is done.....it was remarkable, nerve-wracking and a great thing to do, I will do more.  The stats are important because what's measured matters.  1hr 05 total run - I didn't break 1hr (a little part of me is disappointed....) but I beat my best by 6+mins, I'll reconcile it.  84th in a field of 213, boys and girls (beating boys matters to me, it's an Army thing, when you are me in the Army it was always tough to beat boys).  4th in my age group of 21 - Case had me see this matters, his text "4th outta 21? WOW...now thats what im talking about....CONGRATS..." ends "yay Jody".  It was cold, really cold....I had to decide to run with my running jacket - point being that when you begin you have to decide a whole lot of things, how you dress being one, I didn't regret it.  I got to see the 1st and 2nd place runners come in from the 50k and 50mile runs, remarkable - I didn't get to see the first women come in but I did hear two women next to me talk about wanting to see them too - I would have stayed but I was cold and had run the event with no support at the end, I wanted to go home, needed to get warm so I left.  It was grand and it was fun and it was unexpected.
Half marathon in Feb - I'll bring some pals to help, it would be nice to share in the moment, but if they can't come (they would have today to btw, but it wasn't possible), then I'll do it again, just me and love it.