The Good, the bad and the ugly???

First, congrats to all who participated in the inaugural Zumbro 100k and 100 miler, the reports and pictures sure make it look like a lot of fun, maybe next year?

Now for this post I decided to steal the title from one of my favorite westerns as it best describes my weekend.

The Ugly, my plan was to take a 1/2 day off from work on Friday and get in 3 loops at Murphy. Good plan, but a terrible result. I only made it 10 miles when I pulled the plug. I was dead, the legs had no energy, the back hurt, nothing was going right. After a terrible and somewhat painful first loop, I convinced myself to go out for the second loop, I walked for 5 minutes to try and get my act together. It only got worse. I ran easy for another 5-10 minutes and finally gave up. I hobbled back and thought to myself that the folks running Zumbro would look like I looked, minor difference they would be finishing a 100 mile event and I was finishing just 10 miles, ouch. I thought long and hard about Chippewa and how miserable that would be if I felt like this. One of the reasons I aborted was the reality that this run was going to do nothing whatsoever to help me there. I am in mediocre shape and this run won't help.

The Bad, I ran with Karyn on Saturday, we again ran the Big River Regional trail into Fort Snelling along River Road through Minnehaha Falls and back. I felt not so good to start the run but after Friday, I had to do this run. As it turned out, I felt ok, not at the start mind you but after a few miles I started feeling almost normal. So why was this the bad, well, I wore my Rucky Chucky's and I developed a nice blister on the top of my foot and felt like I was getting poked in the ankle from something. Weird place to blister and a weird pain in the ankle, what if this was Chippewa, that weirdness might be a real problem as this was only a 14 mile run. Another reason it was bad, Karyn struggled much like I did on Friday, so maybe it was just a bug of some sort that we both had.

The Good, after eating too much candy and then too much brunch, my system finally recovered and I decided I still had time to get in a quick run in Lebanon Hills. I got there around 6:45 PM, I wanted to run at least 5 miles and thought about doing 7. One minor problem was I didn't bring a headlamp and I was flirting with the sunset. So, I decided to take it a mile at a time, sure enough when I got a couple miles out, I could see that darkness would be a problem for 7 miles so 5 it was. It was about then that I thought to myself that I felt good and had been running fairly hard. I told myself to finish it up even harder. I actually did keep a reasonable hard pace and felt good the entire time. So this gave me hope, maybe I still have a chance for a decent day at Chippewa, all I want to do is beat last years time and I gotta believe I can do that as long as it doesn't snow, I do hope that it doesn't snow, I really hope it doesn't snow, who knows maybe it will be hot.

So despite a lousy final long run there is still a slight ray of hope for Chippewa not being a disaster, regardless I will enjoy the course and as long as there is at least one cold beer waiting for me at the end, it should all work out just fine.