end of the (13.1 miles long) road

It's December which can only mean one thing! It's Christmas time! New Year's Eve is approaching! My birthday is almost here! Time to illegally acquire fireworks!  Egg nog lattes with every meal! Time to stress about gift shopping!  Oh shit, is the cat eating the tree lights? Shitter was full!

It's time to run my last half marathon of the year!

Before we get into the boring parts of this let me warn you that apparently 12 half marathons in so many months is what it takes to break my brain. After leaving the race I stopped at a 7-11 for a bathroom break/coffee stop. I walked into the bathroom, saw urinals and thought "weird that those are in the women's room." I proceeded to go into the only stall ("Why is there only one stall?") and noticed on the back of the door graffiti advertising a phone number to call for cheap bjs. ("ha, someone wrote that in the wrong bathroom!" Y'all, I really thought that.) I then left the bathroom, walked over to the coffee area where a giant lightbulb finally went off and I realized I had just used the mens' room. 

There were some changes to my race calendar for multiple reasons and I ended up staying in town for my last half, the Hits Endurance Festival on Dec 14th. This was my first time running this particular race and perhaps the first time this race was held in Austin. The race was at the Circuit of the Americas, which is a Formula 1 track and that provided for an interesting race setting. 

Empty seats as far as the eye could see! Concrete! Lots of turns! Hills! WTF, HILLS?!? But there was plenty of good too. Since it is a track they were able to pipe in music for us over the P.A. system. There were not many people running the half and full distance so no dodging people slower than me. (If we're being honest, this was mostly because there is no one who runs slower than me.) The weather was great. Strong head wind in some inconvenient places but otherwise cool and delightful. 

I think I could have PRed this race but thanks to lots of sharp turns I wasn't able to run the tangents and I over ran the distance quite a bit. I realized I was going over for time and distance when I was at the foot of a pretty beastly hill, thought "aww screw it," and walked up to the top. Could I have run that hill? Maybe. Do I regret taking my time? No. Dude, I had already run up lots of hills that day, skipping one wasn't going to kill me. What I really needed out of this race, more than a PR, was to have fun. My last few months have been tiring and I've been dreading running lately. I really needed to get back to loving it and this race really did that for me. I felt strong the whole time. I felt fast (even though I wasn't). I crossed the finish line and actually thought "yeah, I could keep going."

So 12 in 12! Hell yeah!

But, um, now what? I'm feeling a little lost without some stupid challenge on my horizon. Could we all tell jparks I'm doing another challenge and I'll just go on vacation every month. You'll let me sleep at your house, right? We can marathon drink and eat. You better start training now because I'm already a pro.