The Arena of Success and Failure

That's a Big Mouth there!

"IT'S A DOWNHILL FINISH....." I yelled back at Lacey as we finished up our 15 miler.
My legs just took the momentum of the hill and moved much easier than they were moving the last 3 hills.
I fixed my eyes on this puddle to the right of the backroad we were on waiting for my Garmin to BEEP.
"BEEP", hearing it with anticipation I looked at our last mile, "Yes!" I was so excited, another sub 9m/m.
"Lacey, I am so happy!, I am so happy!" I said with excitement.
"I know you are.." Lacey replied letting me have my moment.
"We did it! We rocked that run..."
Lacey let me take a selfie of us to capture my euphoric state.
Doped up on endorphins, I rambled more on how stoked I was about our run.
"....You know Anita, I don't mind running faster but you really should let me know your plan..." Lacey was gentle in her words.

Lacey was right. I have more confidence in Lacey being able to hang with me than me being able to hang with her.
I secretly knew I wanted a stronger run, but I didn't share it with her in case I couldn't follow it through.
After the first 3 miles, Lacey could tell I was sandbagging.
I was hitting the hills and a LOT of hills.
At mile 11-ish the cat was out of the bag. I shared my little plan. Once she knew the plan she began pulling me, holding me accountable and even making me work harder.
Mile 14, Lacey picked up the pace making me work really hard. I wanted so bad to slow up but she wouldn't let me.
8:13min/mi.
My legs were so fatigued, my lungs were heavy, and I couldn't even celebrate because we still had another mile to go. And we couldn't call the last mile in or it would all be in vain. It would ruin our overall time.
So...we caught our breath, dug our heals in, relaxed the pace and finished just a little below our announced goal.
HAPPY..I saw our overall pace and YES! I was sooo happy.

Mile 9...Yeah..that was the culprit. We hit a really hard hill killing our pace. Lacey knew we had been running strong until we hit that mile. "It would be a great run if we could just erase that 10min/mi." Lacey said planting a seed.  That is when I decided we couldn't erase it BUT we could work really hard to recover from it. And that what we did. 

2 weeks until Detroit. My long runs have been great.

Its such a beautiful fight between my ears. The adrenaline rushes as you dig into the questionable arena of success and failure.
Pain strikes with curious blows. Curious as to how you will respond.
Today, I embraced it.

SMILE! One cheesy grin shared when you nail your run!

Memory Lane:

"When you put yourself on the line in a race and expose yourself to the unknown, you learn things about yourself are exciting." 

This time last year I was running my first 100 mile race..its all Fun and games UNTIL....

Its 2am, you just want to sleep, your cold, sick and did I mention you just want to sleep? 

But...Epic things don't happen when you sleep...

Sub 24 hour 100miler. A second wind at 3 am, a amazing crew and a lot of prayers. 

ANITA~