I'm Nervous

Tomorrow is my last day of work this week. This after last weekend went from a scheduled 4-day weekend to a 5-day weekend because of weather (rain, not ice). Friday morning, I'll be driving to Alabama to get ready for the Cheaha 50k trail run on Saturday.

I am very nervous about this race.

Why? Part of it is the distance. I've run 26.2 miles before. Well, I ran about 20 of those miles and then started taking occasional walking breaks after that. 50k is the same as 31 miles. Thirty one miles is longer than 26.2. Thirty one is 11 miles longer than 20 miles, which is the farthest I've ever run without stopping. I think I'm more nervous about the terrain. This race is in a slightly mountainous region of Alabama where you run up to the highest point in the state. There's a lot of climbing. I'm not good at climbing. I'm a big guy, over 200 lbs. I also live in a place where it is impossible to train on similar terrain on a regular basis. That's not ideal training.

There's also the fact that I ended up with a serious chest cold this weekend that still hasn't completely dissipated. I got winded walking up a single flight of stairs on Sunday. Add to that the fact that something weird happened to my foot on Saturday when I stepped on the threshold of my front door on the way outside and twice had a sharp shooting pain that felt like a wasp was stinging me from inside the bottom of my foot. It felt a little bruised a day or two later.

Luckily all of that is passed or passing. I ran again yesterday and my foot is fine. My chest is clearing up in a hurry, partly because I went to the doctor to speed up the process, although I'm still not 100 percent there. I spent a lot of yesterday's run trying to figure out how to run through coughing fits. It's harder than it sounds.

Despite these worries, I'm really looking forward to the challenge. I'm not sure I've been as excited for a race since my first Peachtree or my first triathlon. We'll see how things turn out.