The next race in my Triple Half Challenge is the Mystic Half Marathon.  Tomorrow is the race and I am afraid my heart isn’t in it the way it should be.  I think that is because the race starts at 7:00 a.m. and I have to drive an hour to get to it.  Why should that bother me?  I run runDisney races that require me to wake up at 3:00 in the morning.  Last year I drove to Boston, MA for the Heartbreak Hill Half Marathon, over a 2 hour drive to Boston, so I just have to suck it up and get over that fact.

I am planning on running the race with my friends Diana and Kimberlee.  We were at the Middletown Half and the Cheshire Half together the past two months and we decided tomorrow to run this race together.  Diana and I don’t have a time goal in mind to get a PR and I had an incident where my back gave me grief this week, so I am being careful.  I saw my chiropractor twice this week and I am in good shape with my back’s health.  I just have to be sure to see him on Tuesday to make sure nothing gets aggravated.  The hard part with this race will be the hour drive home afterwards.

My main concern about this race is that I feel under trained.  I ran the Cheshire Half Marathon on April 28th, then went on vacation and had just a few very short runs, and then I got in a 7 mile run last Sunday.  So my longest training run for this race has been 7 miles.  That’s not how I typically train, so I am hoping the races that I have had already under my belt will be sufficient.  But again, our decision tomorrow is to survive and have fun during the race.  No time goals and hopefully we will finish before the course is closed!

I will be happy when this race is behind me; but I do have a road ahead of me that I am going to have to start really focusing on.  I finally sat down today to review my training schedule for the summer.  I have 2 marathons in the fall that I need to begin preparing for – the Marine Corp Marathon and the Philadelphia Marathon.  That means I am going to start getting in long runs during the heat of the summer.  I am also going to begin training for next year’s Dopey Challenge.  I emailed Jeff Galloway today to get his assistance in putting together my training schedule based around my race schedule.

I just found something on Twitter than helped inspire me as I go pick out what to wear for tomorrow’s race.  @GeoffSmith1984 said “Go out and enjoy it, if you enjoy something you’ll be good at it, says @GeoffSmith1984 #MysticHalf” He’s right.  I do enjoy running.  I enjoy the time with my friends and I haven’t had the chance to run with Kimberlee yet.  We always see each other but never run together so that will be fun as she, Diana and I continue on our quest to earn our jackets for the Triple Half Challenge!