Other possible titles for this post:

• Stretching is your friend
• Pace yourself
• Hydration and you: a primer
• Sleep matters

In order to provide MORE proof of my total idiocy, I decided to go out for a 5-miler a mere 16 hours after finishing my 10k.

Ordinarily, I don't really think this would've been a huge issue, but as it happens, I got about 3 hours of sleep last night. Not for any particular reason, I hit the sack around 12:30, and proceeded to lie in bed until 3:30am or so. And even when I did sleep, I had some wacky dreams that kept waking me up.

Anyhow, I was on the fence about even doing a run today, but with the day off I couldn't really pass it up, so when my wife and daughter headed out to enjoy some Labor Day festivities, I opted to head out for a post-race 5-miler.

As soon as I stepped out the door and started up the gradual hill on my street, I could tell my legs were going to fight me every step of the way. So, instead of listening to my body I went out at 8:58 for the first mile and 8:44 for the second. Genius.

At about 3 miles I began the old walk/run routine, albeit not as badly as usual. As a ran by the high school on my way back I noticed the temp was 90, much too hot for a sleep-deprived post-race run I think! I actually ended up cutting things short at about 4.5 miles and cursed myself the entire way home. Tomorrow I will surely rest, and try for better runs on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Today was the big day for the Nike+ 10k. I had originally planned on running it this morning, but having imbibed a little too much last night, I wasn't really feeling my best when I woke up. As a matter of fact, I felt kind of "off" the entire day. I'm not really sure what it was, but I actually considered bailing on the race.

We went to my parent's house this afternoon for some Labor Day festivities meaning I didn't get out for my run until about 9pm. And of course I made the brilliant race day decision to have about 20 hot wings for dinner!

Why yes, that IS a vat of hot grease burning a hole in my stomach! So kind of you to notice.

So after putting it off for about as long as I possibly could, I headed out the door, did a quick warm-up jog and started my race.

My goal was 50 minutes, so I knew I'd have to hit 5:00 per kilometer. I went out pretty fast and felt alright, but right around 2.5 miles I hit a big hill and the pace slowed to about 5:30 per km. Things stayed right around there for pretty much the rest of the race, or until the last mile or so. I was able to pick things up at the end for an official time of 52:18. (No, I still haven't calibrated my Nike+)

When I got home and mapped out my route on mapmyrun.com, it came out to about 6.8 miles, which comes out to a 7:40 pace which would've been good for a 47:43 10k! Either way, I'm happy with my result, and really just happy that I finished it!

I was innocently listening to my new favorite podcast, The Runner's Roundtable, when I heard them mention the Worldwide Half. I remember Nigel talking about it a number of times on his podcast last year, so I was at least aware of it. But when they said it was coming up in October, I was a little shocked.

Apparently I signed up for the half-marathon back in June! Well, that certainly changes the training plan doesn't it?

At this point, it's probably too late to do any proper training for it, but I'll do it anyway. There aren't any local half-marathons scheduled for that weekend, so I'll just run a 13.1 mile route around here and see how it goes!

Not the way I envisioned my half-marathon debut but such is life!

In preparation for Sunday's Nike+ Human Race, I thought I'd go out tonight and give my planned 10k course a test drive. I've never raced a distance longer than 5k, so I wanted to try and see how I would feel keeping the pace around 8:15 - 8:30, which would be pretty close to my anticipated race pace.

It was around 75 degrees with low humidity by the time I started around 8:30pm. Surprisingly enough, my legs felt pretty fresh after yesterday's 9-miler. I was worried that my Achilles would start bothering me again, or my quads would feel dead, but overall everything felt really good!

I started out the first mile pretty conservatively just to get the legs warmed up but picked up the pace for miles 2 and 3 because that part of the route is fairly flat, and I knew I had a couple miles of hills (both up and down) coming up that could (WOULD) slow me down.

I managed to keep the pace pretty steady through the toughest part of the course and had enough left for the last mile and a half, which is mostly downhill or flat! I ended up finishing in 48:38, which is way faster than my goal of 50:00 so I'm pretty confident going into Sunday.

However, I face the Nike+ dilemma in that my Plus is STILL not reporting distances properly. For example, it reported tonight's run as 5.52 miles. So, I decided that if I'm not able to get the thing properly calibrated before Sunday, I'll run the 10k according to the Nike+ even though that will give me a slower time. I think that's the only way I can really participate anyway. Oh well!

I have one more short run planned for this week and then I'm going to take Friday and Saturday off from running to rest up for the race. It should be a fun one, even if I'm running it alone!

Yesterday's 9-miler was postponed to today for really no good reason except I was being lazy. I'll admit I was a little worried about this run since I haven't really tried to run for more than an hour at a time in pretty much forever. And as a diabetic, I really have to be concerned about my blood sugar levels during exercise, especially on long(er) runs. I carry my glucose tablets on every run and thankfully have not had to use them yet.

It's also a little concerning since I usually run at night, and even though I run on moderately trafficked roads, there's always that fear that my blood sugar is going to drop and I'm going to pass out in a ditch or something.

All that being said, I went for my run anyway! I wasn't really shooting for any specific pace, I just wanted to finish, so I tried to keep things slow. Things felt pretty good until about mile 2 when my left Achilles/calf started bothering me. This has happened before and I know that if I keep running, it usually loosens up and the pain goes away.

Then at around mile 3 I started feeling weird, almost light-headed. I considered stopping, or cutting my run short, but instead decided to pop in to Rite-Aid for a Gatorade G2 and a Soy Joy bar. I downed the Soy Joy and about half the Gatorade and continued on my route. That seemed to do the trick, as I felt much better over the last 2/3 of the run.

Once I finished, I was pretty happy to see my time (1:24:06) which works out to a 9:38 on the Nike+ (9:12 when adjusted for the incorrect distance reported by the Nike+). It's funny that 9:12 is exactly what I would need to run a half-marathon in 2 hours. Not that I'm planning on running a half-marathon anytime soon, but still.

Even more impressive were my splits.

Pretty sweet, especially considering I wasn't really paying much attention to my time or pace during the run. Oh, and that 10+ mile in Mile 4 was the part where I walked for a little bit while I had my Gatorade.

Right towards the end my legs started feeling really dead, and my knees were starting to get a little sore. Nothing major, and I probably could've continued for a couple more miles, but I didn't want to get too crazy and injure something, so I stopped.

It felt good to get this run under my belt! Maybe I'll do a half-marathon after all!