five sleeps...

...until my very first half-marathon - eeeek!

After kicking ass and taking names (well, relatively) in the 10k a few weeks ago, I got a wild hair and decided that I really could (and had no reason not to - hello to you, vacation!) run the upcoming Rock n Roll in San Jose with Summer. A self-proclaimed non-runner, she rocked it two years ago. Anyone that knows us knows that we're a bit competitive, which she totally took advantage of when she suckered/reverse-psychology-ed me into this mess. That bitch.

Rob and I spent a few days in both Tahoe and Denver over the last few weeks and did some altitude running as part of my training calendar. It went....meh. Tahoe was a five-miler that I finished strong, but huffing a bit thanks to the thin mountain air. Denver was definitely harder since I ate and drank all the things the city had to offer and felt totally gross to begin with. What should have been a loonnnnnng run on Sunday was pushed to yesterday morning and did not go well. Like, not well to the point that I considered just chalking up my non-refundable registration fee and quitting on the spot. Ugh.

Knowing that altitude is an asshole, I got up this morning and ran about a third of the race's full distance (again, per my training schedule. Hal Higdon, you may just save me yet, buddy.). I can't say that I killed it, but sea level air tastes/feels/is SO much better.

I'm still nervous, but now I might be a little teeny tiny bit excited. Regardless, my face will probably much resemble this guy for the 2.5+ hours I'll be running on Sunday:

are we there yet?!