I signed up for a race longer than my Garmin can handle

Today was an unintentional brick workout.  I don't do brick workouts as part of a training plan. I do them as a result of scheduling.


It started at 5am when I met my buddies Jackie and Carolyn, to do our long run. Carolyn and I are headed to North Carolina to celebrate our friend Mike's birthday, and Jackie was also going out of town. Doing the long run anywhere remotely cooler than NC sounded like a good plan. We ran 6 miles along the Baltimore harbor, and 6 miles back. Good times, I love running downtown. I thought it'd be rough to do a long run before work, but since it was only 12 miles, and since work was only a half day, it was easy.


I tried out my new running skirt from skirt sport - SO comfortable, and no chafing! Loved it!

I felt bad for covering Jackie's nice hardwood floors with my nasty sweat. It was humid even at 5am.


My new friend Heather offered to take me on a tour of the bike course for my first triathlon, the Irongirl Columbia, which is two weeks from Sunday! We finally figured out today worked in our schedules, so a two-a-day it was. Lily, Mike and I met up with her this evening. I'll be honest. I was terrified. I'd heard horror stories of the hills, and I'm not totally over my fear of downhills.


The hills were tough, but they have nothing on my neighborhood. It was a great 17.5 mile ride, and I feel so much better knowing what to expect on race day.  WOAH just looked at my Garmin stats - top speed 32 mph! And no crying or panic attacks!


I tried out my new hydration pack on this morning's run, and between that and my new skirt, I've never been more comfortable on a run. It's so fancy, and holds so much water and tons of other crap.


I liked it so much, that I decided just using it on training runs around Baltimore wasn't using it to it's full potential. I wanted another trail ultra to really try it out on. So this happened.

 Did you catch that? I'm signed up for a 50 mile run.


A little history: On a training run this spring, Kara told Lily and I about how she was entering the lottery to run the JFK 50 Miler. We were intrigued, but didn't like the lottery system. We continued to discuss the possibility after seeing all the 50 miler racers at the Northface Endurance Challenge.


Fast forward to this week, when a running group I'm in on facebook posted about an upcoming 50 miler. In my never ending quest to be like Kara, I emailed it to Lily with the subject line "we don't really need to wait until next year, right?". I was half joking, but she totally called me out and said I couldn't send her emails like that unless I was serious. Busted.


And we all see how that ended. Lily and I just signed up, obsessively g-chatting as to whether the other one had put in their credit card info yet. November 19th, I'll be running ten miles, and I can think "only 40 to go". Insane.