Kid triathletes? Awesome. Me? Not so much.

In my experience, there are a few kinds of runs: You have the good and great runs, where you feel amazing and finish feeling like you could keep on going. You have the okay runs, where you make it, but you are definitely ready for it to be over a little while before you finish. You have the pretty bad runs, where you struggle, but you feel great about yourself once you push through. And, finally, you have the truly bad runs, where you can't hack it at all and you finish feeling a little (or a lot) demoralized.

This morning was a truly bad run. By 3 miles in, I felt terrible and it just never got any better. I had intended to do 18-20, but very quickly decided to scale it back to 16, and I probably walked close to 40% of that. I'm really not sure what made it so bad. In part, it was the heat and humidity, which spiked again after several weeks of cooler weather. I've also had a hard time getting back to regular aerobic workouts since my appendix incident and the return to classes. While my strength is back, I'm definitely feeling a decline in my cardio fitness. Finally, I think my newish shoes might not be working so well for me and I may need to consider a switch before the marathon. Despite my extraordinarily tight budget, I just booked myself an hour-long sports massage for tomorrow. Hopefully, that will help exorcise this crappy run and put me in a good place to start the new week on Monday. 

The one bright spot this morning was that, for part of our run, we shared the trail with the bike and run portions of a kids' triathlon. From what I could tell, there were three age groups: under 8, 9-11, and 12 and up. These kids were awesome. They were trying so hard and looked like they were having a great time. I made a point of cheering for every kid that passed me. While a few of them seemed to wonder why a random adult was yelling at them, most of them grinned from ear to ear. After I reached my turnaround, I ran back and saw them all gathered at the finish with their parents and their medals, telling their war stories and looking so proud of themselves. 

I hate to end this on a negative note, but I have to comment on the behavior of some of the other adults on the trail. While most were supportive of the kids, and many clapped and cheered, I definitely saw a few grumbling about sharing the trail. At one point, I even saw two adult bikers refuse to slow down and almost clip a couple of the kids. Seriously? This is Saturday training on the B&A trail; its neither the Boston Marathon nor the Tour de France. Get over yourselves and support kids that are pushing themselves and doing something positive. As Jillian, Katie, and I would say: walk it off!