Boulder Half-Marathon: 3 Days Left to Go

The Rudi's Organic Boulder Half-Marathon is this Sunday! I can't believe its go time! I think that I'm more nervous about this event than I've been for any of my other ones. I know I can do, but it's going to be grueling.

One thing I'm really worried about is heat. I've been watching the weather forecasts like a hawk and it looks like the weather on Sunday is going to be in the 70's with the possibility of gusty winds in the afternoon, hopefully once the race is over. The ambient temperature is going to be pleasant, but the sun beating down is going to be brutal and the warmer I get the more my energy is sapped. This is the curse of running with MS.

Boulder Half Marathon: Strategy, strategy, strategy...

Four weeks left to go until I run my first half-marathon and my training is now all about strategies. I know that physically I can run the whole thing just fine, I have the strength and endurance to run long distances, but now I gotta figure out how to run smarter.

This whole time leading up to the half-marathon, I haven't really followed any set training routine. I just went with what my body told me, I'd run for time and distance when I could and ease up when it felt like I'd pushed too hard. Reading up on running tips and techniques for training for a long distance run I learned that I should have been following a set schedule; oh well, not much I can do about that and honestly I think I'll be fine with the way I've been doing things. However, armed with more information I'm figuring out the best way to run a half-marathon; running smart not hard.

Living with MS my way

I've been noticing that the majority of this blog lately has been about training and preparation for various events. I don't know if its unusual for people with MS to do these sorts of things or not, but I can imagine that it might not seem to some people that having MS is that big of a deal. For me, having MS is a big deal,  and what I'm doing now is living the best I can while my body is allowing me to do all of these things. MS hits people differently, sometimes it hits hard and fast and never goes away to the point where someone can be active and athletic and other times it hits hard and retreats and sometimes it never hits really hard at all. 

I think that how MS effects our lives depends on how we live with it, and we all live with MS the best ways we know how. I don't think that running marathons, doing triathlons and riding an insane number of miles on the bike is THE right way to live with MS, or that if people with MS did all these things they wouldn't have it so bad. This is just the right way for me to live with MS and I'm sharing and recording all of this so that when or if it gets bad again, I can go back to these posts and remember what I did so I won't have regrets about what I didn't do.

That being said... onto the latest in training....