The Dreams Have Started

Friday night, I had a dream about the half-marathon. In it, the race actually took place inside someone's house (it was a BIG house) and involved things like climbing up onto countertops. The route wasn't clearly labeled and there was no chip timing. At one point, the race "directors" were even unclear about which way the course went. The dream ended with me outside on some sort of carnvial ride (which was also part of the race). At this point, I left without finishing. The course was just too silly, and I couldn't figure out how they'd even know who won (not that this was a concern for me, as I was clearly not in the running for a top finish). Dean was in the dream, and I recall making a point of saying that I needed to research my next race a little more carefully.

I had another race dream last night, but I can't recall the upshot.

These race-related anxiety dreams started with my very first race--the 8K Turkey Trot. I had never run that distance before (a mere five miles) and was very worried about not being able to finish. I think that my longest run to that point had been close to three miles (if that). And, of course, as it happens, I ended up sick for that race. Fortunately, illness notwithstanding, I was able to run the entire race despite a rather dismal finish time. I'll spare myself from sharing the details here once again, but suffice to say that I ran my last 8K about 12 minutes faster than this first one.

After the November race, I ran anxiety-free until the April Lakefront 10-Miler was upon me. My runs the week before the race were nothing short of appalling. My nine-mile long run the weekend before had been a struggle that I was not excited to repeat. And my shorter weekday runs had been doomed by a bad chest cold, which had me coughing up a lung anytime I tried to run longer than five minutes. I know I had weird dreams in the days leading up to the event, but I can't remember details anymore.

The morning of the Lakefront Race, I moved away from any sort of time goal and just hoped to finish the damn thing. Of course, once I had finished, I was really, really annoyed with my time. The race felt anti-climactic, and I was dismayed by my back-of-the-pack age group ranking. I was even more annoyed by the fact that the weird old lady who was speed walking the entire race somehow managed to beat me by a few seconds. Man, was that lady getting on my nerves! It's too bad running isn't the kind of sport where you could tackle someone or give them a sharp elbow to the side.

So now, with less than a week to go to the half-marathon, a few things will happen: I will have weird dreams every night. I will cross my fingers that I don't get sick. I will curse myself for not training harder and longer now that I've actually run out of time. I will go back and forth between feeling like I'd be happy just to finish and feeling like if I don't finish in XX time I'll be pissed. And I'll worry endlessly about being picked up by the SAG bus. I'll also worry about the weather. Right now, they're calling for a "few showers" on Sunday. That I could deal with, but I'm not sure how fun running 13.1 miles in the pouring rain would be.

Someone remind me again why I signed up for this race!