Anthem 5k

Race season officially began this morning with the Anthem 5k. Well...technically I guess race season never really ended since I did complete the three races of the Polar Bear Grand Prix in Dec/Jan/Feb, but now is when the SERIOUS racing begins. I guess however serious you can be when your race pace average is about a 10:30 pace but...whatever. I'm pretty proud of my second-best finishing time today. It was a great, sunny yet cold day to get out with 6k of my closest friends for the 3.1 miles this morning. I had no expectations going in, and even remember thinking on the course, "they can't all be PR's," and I'm okay with that. I did what has become known as my standard 4:1 intervals, and felt great throughout. Apparently I was hauling butt at one point during the last mile as I looked down to see a 8:10 pace. Whoa! I never run that fast. But... each consecutive mile did end up being faster than the last so there's that. Something about these last few years has me seeing a lot of negative splits - and that's a good thing. Of course, I'm still keeping up with the OTF workouts and started back to Yoga yesterday. I really have a love/hate relationship with yoga. I hate it while I'm doing it (I find it kind of boring, mundane, and with it being hot yoga, I feel sick and/or faint at times), but I love the way I feel afterwards. Since I've felt my body getting more and more tight, I felt the yoga was necessary as I really need a good stretching of this poor old bod from the last decade of giving it a beating.

My training for the Half Ironman races I have coming up will begin soon. I was going to originally do a 20 week training program, but seeing as I have one more whole month of unlimited sessions at OTF, and the weather isn't going to start getting consistently warm until April, I decided on a 12 week plan instead. Besides, I now know what to expect, and feel that a 12 week training for a half IM is doable considering I was training for the full during this time last year - the Muncie half being just a "bonus," along the way. Plus...I've been super stressed out about this whole home buying/selling business and it has me feeling really displaced. Not only because the majority of my stuff has been boxed up for the last 2 months, but also because I don't feel I can properly plan for anything until I know where I'm going to be settling - and maybe even settled altogether. At this point, my buyer has a few more things to submit to get the final loan approval (after already submitting paperwork after paperwork - I found out this morning that she originally wasn't going to agree to continue the process due to frustration, which I totally get, but after mulling it over it looks like she's going to get some additional things together on Monday to submit. Hopefully that's it and we'll be hearing some good news). I'm trying not to stress about it - doing a lot of meditation and telling myself, "there's no need to get all stressed out, there's nothing you can do about it." It helps some, but not enough always. So... in the meantime I'm going to channel my own frustration and anxiety into running, training, etc. I have a 7 mile training run with Karen and Ericka tomorrow in preparation for the Run the Bluegrass and KDF Mini coming up. So at least if (worse case scenario) something DOES fall through with the house, I'll be in excellent shape. Looking for that bright side. :)