One Last Movie - And A Race

So, we ended up sneaking in another movie last night, even though my plan was to go to bed early (again - I am always trying to go to bed early and I so rarely succeed), because, really, this is not a high-stakes race tomorrow and I am not a professional athlete and my running needs to support me and my life and not be my life. And this movie came in the mail today.

Troll Hunter (2010)
A Norwegian movie, shot cinema-verite style, about students who start off investigating mysterious bear deaths and end up following (and filming) a troll hunter. Way more fun than you'd think it should be. Too tired now to think what else to say about it.

Oh yes, I have this race tomorrow. The Hot Chocolate 15k. This race that I trained all season for... only to have my training go off the track two months ago, never to really return. This race that I want to love (because I did so much my first year)... but am so disgusted with the race organizers, and have been, year after year, that I just get angry thinking about it, and have no confidence that it will be well run tomorrow. This race I have planned for so seriously all year... only to realize that I need to radically rethink how I go about my training and my racing so that, as I wrote above, my running supports my life rather than being my life.

I have gone back and forth on whether to even do this all week, and if so, how. (In the end I am doing it because I regretted so much not running the Chicago Half after all, and I don't want to repeat that experience.) My original goal was 1:30 or less (basically a 9:40 pace). I am very dubious about my ability to pull that off, though I am willing to try. My first time at this race was in 2009, and it was my first long race since Buddy was born. I ran it in 1:39:26 (10:41 pace). I am in much better shape now than I was then, so I fully expect to do better than that.

My second time was in 2010, after running the marathon three weeks before. I ran it in 1:32:30 (9:56 pace). I don't have the endurance that I did back then, but I am actually faster. So I think it's possible to run it this year faster than that, and I guess, in the end, that's what I'm shooting for.  I've loaded up my iPod with inspiring music (I don't usually do races with music but I'll take whatever help I can get), I'm heading to bed soon, happy to take advantage of daylight sayings time, and I'll put my best game face on tomorrow and not let myself get upset by the surroundings.