They all can't be "easy" runs.

5:45 am start. 0.8 up. 5.5 in 43:11. 7:51 pace.  (Honestly, this was 4.5 miles @ 8 minute miles, with a 7:11 last mile.) 1.2 down. Weather was awesome. Orange groves were fragrant. I scared an armadillo away with a loogie. Good times. Good times. 

5.5 miles. Hood route. 6:30 pm start. Super hot.

7.5 miles. Hood route to Legacy Trail and back. 5:45 am start. 

6 am. 3.5 miles. hood route. For a short run, this was interesting: I was momentarily chased by a mockingbird. I smelled some awesome Confederate Jasmine blooms. And I was thrown backwards by the largest spiderweb I have ever encountered. I mean, that spiderweb was devastating. I must have looked like a nut from the other side of the street with the freakout moves I was doing to get the web off of me. 

Race day is a week from tomorrow. I am all over the place with race goals. I am also all over the place with what to run tomorrow. I'm not exactly an anti-taper guy, like Flatlander. But I think it is possible to go into a race TOO relaxed. 

7.5 buttery smooth miles without incident. Hood route. 6:30 am start. Last 2 in 13:46, without even pushing it. I needed this run.

5.5 slow hood route miles. Then boy #1 confirmation. Then outback for lunch. Then beach. Then back to church. Good day.

3.5 miles. Hood route. 6 am start.

Raceday weather forecast: 40 degrees and raining.

5.5 miles. Hood route. Weighed in this morning. 185 lbs. That puts me @ 3:29:xx finish Saturday. I feel better than that. My long runs have been really good. My intervals and tempos have been adequate, I think. The st. Paddys day race would indicate that I am in PR shape. Spouse thinks I'm in PR shape, because of what she`s seen this training cycle. We shall see. Last post for a while.

I'm stoked to meet Matt S. Tomorrow!

Mutual of Omaha Corporate Headquarters - Omaha NE.

Lewis and Clark Park and Overlook - Council Bluffs, IA.

Sioux Falls - Sioux Falls, SD. Really, Really beautiful! But, what's that smell? Oh, they're slaughtering pigs next door? Neato!

Devil's Gulch - Garretson, SD. According to Garretson lore, Jesse James evaded capture just outside of town by spurring his horse to leap the ravine -- a feat that everyone agrees is nearly impossible. Most historians believe that it is impossible. The town thinks that its impossibility only makes its reality more wonderful. Once you get past the idea that it is unbelievable garbage that he jumped the ravine, you can appreciate the beauty.

Palisades State Park - Garretson, SD. We climbed a ton of this park and took about 100 pictures. Simply an amazing place!

Brookings, SD. Checked out the place we were staying. When we called the owner of the place to find where we could meet to transfer the key, he said “The door’s open. The key is on top of the fridge.”  Brookings is another world, in terms of security, in a good way. We then had a delicious Mexican- American dinner with the Schreiber’s.

2 miles, 7 am. From our place to the race start/finish and back. 

Raining most of the day – Toured Brookings and SDSU.

We did an architectural tour of homes by car. Had ice cream at the dairy bar on SDSU campus (they invented cookies and cream, so I went with that.) We went to the school store and bought some Jackrabbits stuff for the kids. We heard through the interwebs, that you can get a key to the bell tower on campus, and then climb it. So we went to the police station and asked for the key. They gave it to us for an hour. We climbed the tower and took a bunch of pictures on a rainy day.  We gave the police the key back and they gave us a certificate for climbing the tower. Seriously, Brookings is another world, in terms of security! We were laughing at the “no way is this true” of this situation. Then we checked out some key locations along the race course by car, and we went to packet pickup. The race shirt is totally awesome, the best I have ever received at a race. So nice, in fact, that Spouse picked one up after the race for $10. Do you know what I had to do for MY shirt? Then we had dinner at Mamma Mia’s. They were overwhelmed with runners. We got there early enough that it wasn’t really an issue.

Brookings - Marathon #11, 
Usually, I finish these things by saying thank you to Sasha for putting this blog together. I thought I should start with that this time.  This blog has connected me with some exceptional runners. But what I’ve found is that it also connects me with exceptional people.  So since I would have never heard of Matt S. without this blog, and I would have never heard of Brookings without Matt, thanking Sasha is where  I should start.
Okay, the race stuff. This course is NOT flat. There is a hill at mile 9 that made me laugh.  I was braced for some rough weather at the start. When that did not happen, I went out at 6:50 pace for the first 2 miles. Every mile after that was slower, and slower. 
At mile 6, I took my first gu. It was a while until the water after that. For some reason, the sugar made like a bubble that made breathing difficult. I stopped to cough and spit for a bit. I didn’t take another gu for the rest of the race. Not being able to breathe is a freak out moment.  After that, I was cruising easy until the half. Once the halfers split off from the full runners, I was really alone. It’s hard to describe the difference between the second half of this course from the first. It is like a whole new race. The first half is about as “urban” as Brookings gets. The second half is isolated, and feels like you are running through the plains. It is much hillier. There are more surface changes. The wind really picked up. Mile 13 was through mud. The. Whole. Mile. I ran through a puddle at mile 15, and yelled a few swear words. Right after that, I realized a kid relay runner was right behind me. Oops. A woman started using me as a wind screen late in the race. It kind of ticked me off. So I didn’t hold a straight line. She said “yeah, I’m totally using you.” I said I couldn’t understand how the wind was in our face, no matter which way we turned. Then she started telling me about Boston, and I let her go. I didn’t really feel like hearing about how horrible someone else’s last race was, while I was falling apart in THIS race. It is really a scenic course. The rain started at mile 20, and never stopped. It was scheduled to be sunny at the finish.
 Honestly, I don’t know how much of this time to put on running through mud, grass, rain, bridges,  wind, curb hopping, etc. And how much of this to put on to me mentally breaking down. I fell apart, plain and simple. Miles 20 -26 were a nightmare. I finally saw Matt on course at mile 25.5ish. He was directing traffic in the rain. They put a -ski on the end of my polish last name at the finish. Spouse could see that I was pretty disappointed in my time. I would have hung out at the finish line longer, if it weren’t stupid cold and raining. The food and drink spread was exceptional.
It’s amazing that I saw spouse so many times out there. She got a bit of a work out tracking me!
By 2 pm the weather was excellent. 53 degrees and sunny – the weather I was expecting at the end. 
I have completely changed my preconceptions about South Dakota. This place is beautiful. Maybe not the whole state, but I get why Matt likes it here. Some of those paths I ran on late in the race were fantastic. If I lived here, I would love running here. 
I met some 50 staters on this trip. I don’t really fit their mold. I actually care about my time. And this time isn’t up to snuff. On the other hand, this trip with spouse was amazing. Signing up for races in foreign places, and getting new experiences with people you love -there’s something to be said for that, regardless of race time. There has been more than a few times I didn’t run the race I wanted, but the trip more than compensated. I have been told that racing for any other reason than a faster time is stupid.  I disagree, but would still like to be faster.
Where do I go from here? I don’t know on a couple of levels. First, I don’t know what race is next. It seems I am a crappy weather magnet. Birmingham, Sugarloaf, Savannah, were all just awful. I would like to some day race without rain, wind, or life-threatening heat and humidity. I am also unsure how to adjust my training to get back to 3:15. Did I lack in long runs? Total mileage? What did I miss? I feel like I had a solid 4 month build up. Is it really all about weight? I have to re-think some stuff.

Drove from Brookings SD to DeSmet SD to go tour https://www.ingallshomestead.com/ Spouse and I are old enough to have watched little house on the prairie when it was on TV.  The Ingalls family moved a lot, to many states. It is based on those experiences, that Laura wrote her books, which led to the show. One thing I hadn’t considered until visiting this spot – if there are no trees around, how do you build a house on your new 160 acre homestead in the late 1800s? You create a “dugout” cave, and line the walls with old newspapers. What a harsh life that was! Anyway, there was no one but us there. There was a sign on the gift shop door instructing us to lock the exhibit doors when we were done viewing them. South Dakota is another world, in terms of security! There was a lot of walking, but the views and the church were just beautiful. It is so strange seeing the horizon in all directions, but not being out on the water.

Drove to Mitchell SD to go to the Corn Palace. http://www.cornpalace.org/ On the way there, we saw a cool piece of civil engineering that we stopped and took pictures of. The Lake Mitchell Spillway.

Anyhow – The Corn Palace! I don’t mean to diminish the amount of work involved with growing 100 acres of corn, and then cladding that corn to a building, with a new design every year for the last 100+ years. It is really a fascinating work of art. However, the need to have a web cam? It is a web cam of a building that gets covered up by a new corn mural every year. We laughed pretty hard, thinking of the guy that watches the Corn Palace web cam all day! So, we decided to act like true imbeciles for the entertainment of a web cam viewing guy we will never meet. Highlights include me walking around like a gorilla for a bit and acting like I was picking bugs out of spouse’s hair. She has never been prouder of me, for sure. Good times. Good times.

The whole time in SD we tried to find Kuchen – the official state dessert of SD. Sadly, NO one sells it.

Drove from Brookings SD to Omaha NE to fly home. Because of bad weather, our flight was delayed. So we went to the Bob Kerry pedestrian bridge over the Missouri River. That was kind of cool. You can stand with one foot in Nebraska and one foot in Iowa. Then the rains came, and we got lunch. Then flew home. We got home after midnight. 

hood route. 6 am. still sore. 

3.5 miles. hood route. 6 am start. this felt really smooth. about an hour after running my calves are getting tight again.  I haven't been running much since Brookings because my calves have been very tight after running, like I just finished the race again. Also, we were busy last weekend with Boy #1's birthday, and our 24th anniversary. but still, I could have run if I weren't hurting so much. While I'm running, it's great. Later on, not so much. 

3.5 miles. hood route. 6 am start. no post-running calf stiffness today. Man, the last 2 days' runs have felt great. 

Another 3.5 miles. Hood route. 6 am start. I think I have worked all the kinks out at this point. Since it's been raining for eleventy consecutive days, this morning's run was about insect consumption. Mmmmm. Yum!

5.5 dishwasher miles. 6 am start. Last day of school was yesterday. The kids are super stoked. Unfortunately, the rain is scheduled to continue for several more days.

10.2 Miles. Hood route to Legacy Trail to Colonia and back. 7 a.m. start. Started with a drizzle and ended with the rain. Passed an alligator with 1 mile to go. With all this rain, he must have been disoriented and was in a ditch. Must have been a 6 footer. Needless to say, I finished strong.