Color Me Obsessed

I finally got around to looking at official race results, and I can't for the life of me figure out why my splits were so horrendous. Even my early splits are bad. Now granted, I went out trying to take it very slow (like, slower than I thought I should run). And my stupid Garmin read the race as 28 miles, which means that my pacing has been off for like forever (which is beyond frustrating--a tenth of a mile here or there makes no difference when you are running a 5K, but it adds up quickly over the long haul). I have calibrated it a million times, and my new best guess is that the track I have been using to calibrate it is actually wrong. Wouldn't surprise me actually.

People keep congratulating me on the marathon, and I keep feeling like I should say, "Wait--you realize how slowly I ran it, right? Because I think pretty much *anyone* could have ran it at my pace." Stupid, I know, and I'm totally cheating myself of the whole aftermath glow of the experience. So many factors to consider: trying to go out conservatively, my faulty Garmin, my missing gels, the heat.

Still, I can't help feeling like jumping right into that November 15K. 9.3 miles seems like nothing to me at this point, plus I've got three weeks to train. That's six miles for a long run this week, eight next week, nine the following week... Easy. If I weren't so loathe to pony up the $60 and deal with the headaches this race had in store last year, I would so be there just to prove to myself that I'm faster than this.

Hmm...