Where my Running is at right now....

I haven't talked about my running much lately but I am still running.   I decreased my miles significantly for a few weeks but have been back at it again for the past two weeks or so.   My muscles are a bit sore from it but I am running for a reason.   I have two races in my future.   I am doing the Bock Point 5 miler on March 3rd.   It is going to be awesome because they give you free beer after you finish.   We all know my love for some beer.  

Another race that I was very skeptical of even mentioning until I official sign up for is the Oshkosh Half Marathon.   The deadline to sign up at the reduced rate is February 20th and I plan to sign up on February 19th.   I am very nervous to sign up for a half because I haven't been running as much lately and many of my runs have been on a treadmill.  I'm also terrified because I have never ran further than 10 miles.   The 10 miler was a few months ago now and I've lost much of that endurance.  

I did have one stellar run on Monday night that was 5.18 miles at a 9:20ish pace (good for me) but I felt great and enjoyed it AND it was outdoors.   The weather was pretty awesome and I actually ran based on time, not distance.   I ran for 50 minutes exactly and didn't even have a GPS tracking my distance.  I went home and very carefully mapped my run and was happy with the 5.18 miles.   Yay!   That means I'm right on track for my half training plan. 

The only picture I have is from the gym last night.  I tried to secretively take a picture of what the view is of while you run on the treadmill.   I slowly grabbed my phone, turned the camera on, looked around, turned the flash off, and snapped.   I was running and I am surprised I didn't trip and go flying off the thing but I managed this picture. 

In the reflection you can actually see the guy next to me....

My mom goes the gym with me a couple nights a week and when I told her my angry thoughts while I ran, she sort of laughed.   She later told me that her thoughts are all roses.   She told me she actually thinks how nice it is that families are down there playing basketball, that it's nice that the families get out and do something active instead of sitting at home.  How lucky those kids are that their parents are interested in doing that with them.   Etc Etc Etc.   Unless my run is amazing, I rarely have happy  thoughts.   I pretty much have to talk myself through every.single.run.   Is that at all normal???  Should I not be a runner??!?!?

We also have the luxury of having our own TV on the treadmill which is totally a bonus.   I love it in comparison to my treadmill that I wonder to this day how accurate it is.   Don't ask me to calibrate it.   I am not smart enough for that.