...and I'm spent

I did it. It took a water bottle, copious use of the iPod, and some creative visualization, but I actually made the half-marathon mark today.

And in 1:58:00 to boot.

What everyone says is true - running is a mental game. Promising myself incentives ("You can have water when you reach five miles...") got me through the first part, but the last ten laps were willpower more than anything else, as I'd only planned to do ten miles today. To top it off, I started getting hazy somewhere around the seventh mile, but that cleared, fortunately. I can only imagine how bad it gets around twenty.

I'm a bit sore now, mostly in the usual spots, but as an annoying side effect, I've been flushed all day. The fun part came when I rested for a moment before walking home and caught up with the two high school girls who had been doing laps as well. I'd been lapping them for the better part of an hour, and so they asked me if I were training. I said yes and explained that I'd done thirty laps around the lake, and their eyes bugged.

Someone actually thinks I'm hard core. This never happens.