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Proof That I've Officially Lost My Mind

The local meteorologists here on the Treasure Coast of Florida are the most optimistic I’ve ever come across. This evening, I heard one pronounce our weather as "beautiful."

The heat index today was 105 degrees.

Now, maybe I’m a glass-is-half-empty kind of a girl, and should just be grateful that we’re not being flattened by yet another hurricane, but I think "beautiful" is pushing it.

It is, as my friend Julie said, hotter than a snake’s ass out.

In other news, my father and I have signed up to run the Disney Half-Marathon in January.

Why are we doing this? I don’t know. And the weird thing is, it was sort of my idea ("sort of" in the sense that I badgered my dad until he said he’d run it with me).

Do you want to know how long a half-marathon is? 13.1 miles. See, I thought it was 12 miles. I know that 12 and 13.1 don’t sound all that far apart, but, actually, that's a considerable difference.

A 1.1 mile difference, to be exact. A 1.1 mile difference that comes at the end of 12 previously run miles.

I’ve never run 13.1 miles before. I’ve also never run 12 miles (I think my maximum distance is somewhere around 6 miles . . . as in half of 12. And less than half of 13.1). But for some reason 12 seemed doable and 13.1 sounds . . . long.

Last night, I had a dream that we were in the middle of running the race, when my dad insisted we stop off at Fleet Feet for extra running gear. We started trying on the running shoes for sale, and ended up getting kicked out of the race because we’d gone off course and weren't keeping up with the mandatory 16-minute mile pace.

(The rules state that if you don't maintain a 16-minute mile pace, you will be "picked up and transported to the finish." In shame. Presumably, in some sort of losermobile.)

I woke up, and couldn’t go back to sleep for an hour and a half, and ended up sleeping through my alarm and missing my morning run.

Obviously, I’m going to have to work on my training methods.

Posted 19 August 2005 at 09:20 PM