10 is better than nothing

I had intended to do 12 miles on Saturday, but that did not exactly work out. However, I did log 10 miles and that is not bad. You see I made a big boo boo in terms of my course planning. I went the hilly way instead of the pretty flat way. Well I had never done the hilly way for long distances before usually only a mile or 3. Well I determined that the hilly way is actually 6.5 to 7 miles long. Up and down ....uuuup and down .... uuuuup and downnnnn. The altitude changes alone are enough to make one's stomach do flips. Well, once I made my round tripper over the hills I was at 6.9 miles and then I hit the streets for the remainder of my run. But I was spent. I am not a good hill runner and I broke myself on the rocks as it were. I am pleased as the half miler on Sunday will be a pancake so I won't have to worry about the ups and down. In the end here are the times:

Mile 1: 14:12
Mile 2: 13:45
Mile 3: 14:15
Mile 4: 14:54 (I start to suffer right about here, my tongue is dragging and it is everything I can do to keep any kind of pace over the next 4 miles)
Mile 5: 15:07 - I find a water fountain about mile 5.5 and this saves my bacon as I can hit on the way back as well. Phew, I was getting pretty dehydrated. The 70+ percent humidity didn't help things any as I chewed my air along the way.
Mile 6: 15:52
Mile 7: 14:35
Mile 8: 14:25
Mile 9: 14:39
Mile 10: 14:50

I was trying to pace myself and I think I did a good job overall. The hills just sapped by strength and when I came out the other side there wasn't much left of me. I got through the last three miles on pure will. There was no juice in the tank only a little bit of experience and some kokoro (heart of all things- Japanese). It was all I could do to get to 10 miles. Sorry to report a relative failure on the 12, but I am happy with this hard 10. The difficulty factor was probably a 7 for me compared to the 2 to 4 of my normal run.

Cross Training
I have been working hard outside of running on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Friday was an hour and a half of martial arts practice with some standard pushup, crunches and dips type exercises thrown in for good measure. Saturday was an hour of kicks and punches with some differing combinations and Sunday I pumped some iron. I mentioned before that cross training has been the holy grail of my running confidence and performance.

7 days to go
The remainder of the week is pretty lax in terms of my preparation. Just make sure my legs don't get weaker or my cardio. Monday - 4 miles, Tuesday - off, Wednesday - 3 miles, Thursday- off, Friday - 2 miles, Saturday - off, Sunday -Race. Well it is set now, lets see how it all turns out.

100 posts
I thought I might want to do something special for post 100. But instead I just wanted to end this post by saying thanks for reading along through my own personal struggle.