Catoctin was to be the first, and a redemption run. I ran it two years ago in not ideal circumstances, and came in 3 minutes over the 9:15 cut off time. This year, I thought I would give it another shot, and since I had been doing weeks of 18-22 mile long runs, it seemed a pretty sure thing. Yeah...no.
My head was not in the game and while I made the first few cut offs, by the time I was headed to the Manor area, I pretty much gave up. This is a tough race to begin with, and being a million mental miles away for the first half did not help. As I arrived at the stream and tried to gracefully cross it, the aid workers told me there was no hurry, and that was not what I wanted to hear. But I admitted defeat and spent the rest of the day floating in the pool.
My next race was the summer edition of Rosaryville. I did this last year and was pleased that I finished in a not horrible time since it was a)summer and b)hot. The course is MUCH easier than Catoctin and there was some other members of my running group going, so it looked to be a fun day. And then this:
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and this:
It wasn't looking good. I loaded my hydration pack with ice, took an extra bottle of ice, and wore next to nothing, but was still baking just 10 miles in. I tried so hard to tough it out for the full 50K, but somewhere after 15 miles I just shut down, went back to the finish and settled for a 25K medal. Not my proudest moment, but I had puddles in my shoes and just could not drink enough to rehydrate.
So that left me with the last of my 50Ks for the month, and I ultimately had to drop out of that due to family schedule things.
Since July was less than successful, I have decided to take August off, at least until the A-10 the last weekend and concentrate on just running for fun. I'll wait until September to start worrying about the 50 miler I signed up for today.
