Hotter than a Firecracker!

July began right where June left off....HOT-HOT-HOT!  So gosh darn hot that it's been unbearable.

But at the end of June, I set a personal goal to run 100 miles during the month of July.  I had never really tracked my training miles before but I had been trying to do a better job of tracking how many miles I was putting on my new shoes so it felt like it would be fairly easy to do.  I also thought (naively) that 100 miles wouldn't be that big of a deal.  I didn't have any half marathons scheduled but there are 31 days in July so that's just a little under 3.5 miles a day.  Piece of cake, right?   More on all of that later.

At the last minute I heard about a race taking place in downtown Indy on the 4th of July.  It was a 6 miler and fairly inexpensive to do, so I signed up the day before.

It was perfect, the starting line was a block from where I work so I was able to use my building parking garage.  The event was a called the Firecracker 6 so of course rather than a starting gun they set off firecrackers!

My first mile felt good; even Kenyan like for me but it came to a crashing halt after that.  All of a sudden my stomach started giving me fits and all I could do was frantically start looking for a bathroom.  Of course none of the buildings downtown were open since it was a holiday so I started walking.  Made it to the aid station just after mile 2, took in some water and Gatorade and continued walking.  Eventually I started feeling better.  Maybe I just wasn't hydrated well enough.  But the damage was done and I'd lost my mojo for this race.  It was nice that we ran down toward Fountain Square; I'd never participate in a race that took me in that direction before.  And a big shout-out to the aid station after mile 4, they had the COLDEST water and it was fabulous.

Maybe about a 1/4 of a mile before the finish line, they had volunteers handing out American flags.  I take my flag and notice the girl next to me start to pick up speed.  Well, she was NOT going to cross that line before me.  We really pushed each other to the finish but I'm happy to report that I did beat her...by 8 seconds!

Glad I did this event.  And I even beat the finishing time that (in my mind) I had set.