run, neville, run.

Four months of semi-hardcore training (for me at least) has finally paid off. Well...sort of. I got up this morning after a restless 4 hours of sleep, bright and early at the brisk alarm-stroke of 5 a.m. What a wonderful morning. I got up, feeling (oddly) very much awake and began to prepare my legs for torture. I had developed shin splints this past week in my right leg and have been icing it every free moment since, so I was hoping and praying and ibuprofin-ing that my semi-injured righty would come through for me. Boy did he ever come through. Now, you're going to think I'm crazy, but after talking to many psycho runners (people who run and enjoy it...like say, they'll run 10 miles just for fun every few days) I was advised to massage my right leg to try and relieve some fluid that supposedly builds up in the leg or something. So I did that, but I think it got taken too far when this morning, in the lobby of Penthouse (the floor I live on in Morris) I began talking to my leg as if it were a 3-month-old baby. "Please....don't hurt! Just come on and let me run and I promise, you won't have to even walk up the stairs for the next few weeks!" Saying such things in your head is one thing. But when you're all alone and saying them audibly, you better start to wonder if you still have friends and if you realize you do, you start thinking you should go and tell them 'thank you' for being your friend, even though you're weird enough to talk to your injured right leg before a big race (as if you were coaching it or something). Wow, that sentence was long.

Anyway, that's what the day was like for me...by the grace of God I'm convinced, I did not get one side cramp, nor did I ever feel like I was gonna pass out, even though the cloudless sky and 80+ degree heat was convincing me on the 4th mile stretch that this might not end so pretty...for me. I actually was laughing at the end of the race...well, approaching the finish line and even had enough energy to throw my right arm up in the air to pose for a photographer taking pictures from this cat walk above the race road. Bad move on my part though. That's when God said, "Uh-uh-uh..you're pushing your luck" and my back right leg felt the worst shooting-like pain its ever felt, and I literally felt like the back of my right leg's calf had fallen off. I stumbled, losing my "stride" (the words really cool runners use--did I mention I now subscribe to "Runner's World?" :) and almost tripped over my own two legs about 100 feet from the finish line. It was bad, but I suppose it could've been a lot worse. I will never forget that feeling though..it was soooooo weird!!!!! (inside joke----sorry)

This week is going to not be so good for me, but I'll try to be more faithful then I have been the past few days. Happy mother's day. It's Sunday morning now technically, but really, it's still Saturday to me. Night.