run this amazing day

I love this race. It's early, it's windy, it's flat and hot and I always have a good time.  This year I flew down late Friday night instead of Saturday morning as I've done in the past.  It didn't net me any more sleep after flight delays but it did make the pre-race logistics a bit easier to navigate Saturday morning.  I met up with several of my athletes for brunch, and then we made our way through packet pick-up and down to the race site.  For the first time, I used ProBike Express instead of flying with my bike and after this weekend I am officially a convert.  Wes parked at the race site and made life so easy, plus we had a place to meet and hang out all weekend and I didn't have to pick a fight with a single airline representative over how many times they were going to charge me and for what. Tapering for this race had a normal amount of I really don't think I can hold this power/pace for an entire race  workouts, but similar to last year, I fel

I almost didn't go to Arizona (and let the selfies begin...). In the week before I was supposed to depart, everything that I had planned in terms of travel & lodging went completely to hell.  I lined up a bunch of plan Bs and then half of that fell through, I was frustrated, to the point where I ended up standing in the backyard picking at my half marathon blisters while explaining to Michelle that I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to listen when the universe wings a wheelbarrow of bricks at me.   She told me, in no uncertain terms, to tell the universe to go fuck itself, to drink a glass of wine and get on the (delayed by 3.5 hours if it was leaving at all) plane.  And I did.  The universe made a couple more half-hearted attempts to keep me in Colorado but sometime after 1am, I gratefully collapsed onto a futon in Scottsdale and said good night to one of my best friends, Jen, who wins an award for saving my but I swear I was so organized I had everything lined up

Last year I raced here and I felt lucky to have a breakthrough  kind of race.  Nearly every step felt light and quick, add a couple of hard miles at the end and hey presto: PR.  It wasn’t quite that simple at the time, but in hindsight, it feels like I moved calmly, maybe with a little bit of restraint, throughout the day.  And I loved the race, running down through the canyon makes me never want to run a race on city streets again.  I was happy in the sunshine and it's definitely up there as one of my favorite half marathons.  So when my athletes rallied together and picked a spring destination, I was glad that it brought me back to Moab with them.   Going in, I didn't taper like this was a high-priority race.  And a few days out, I was bitching and moaning about how much fatigue I could still feel, I wasn’t shedding it like I am accustomed the week before, but the thought that comforted me was this:  Michelle knows what I want.  She knows what my goals are and I trust her