screwwed, yet still going...

so, I am facing impossible odds towards finishing, with decent "marks," the quarter at work... so I'll be working mostly every waking moment. I'm taking a break tonight, tomorrow night (St. Paddy's) & wed (climbing, yay!)... and will go to a party Sat night. Otherwise, I will be working. Working, working, working, working, working....

Well anyway, as part of the working push, I stayed up until 1:30 AM last night & ended up getting 4 hours of sleep. My big problem is that I haven't really done well with the whole training thing and the Cherry Blossom 5K is on April 5... that's 3 weeks away. EEK! So I figured I could give running a try today. Due to lack of sleep, I was highly skeptical that this would even work since my scheduled run was 20 mins straight through (first time I've done this since September). Doom! The first half-mile I was pacing at 8 mins/mile. Then for the second half-mile, I developed a stitch in my side I started pacing out to average 9:30 mins/mile. Things were not looking good. Traditionally I have mental issues at this point... I don't wanna do it, I'm not gonna make it, I won't be able to keep it up.... etc, etc. But I had set myself to go as far as the mile point, turn around, and then see how far past the start I could go in 20 mins. As it turned out, my normal breaking point never came. I just kept plodding along. After a while I felt like I was plodding, but in the 20 mins, I went 2.129 Miles and it averages out to about 9:30 min/mile. This is pretty darn good in my book - especially since last year I paced out at 11:44. That's marked improvement and it feels good. Guess I won't be running an 8 min mile for the race! : ) If I do the same as last year and pace out a little faster than my normal (i.e. faster than 9:30), I might have a hope of being in the top 100 of women. That would be cool. The absolute best part was that eventhough, by all intents and purposes, I should have been grumping at myself by the end... I wasn't. I was a little slower, but I was warmed up and the stitch had gone away and I really stopped because my watch said to. I felt like I could have kept going. I'm sure that if I had to run it today, I could complete the 5K with no worries. This makes me happy. I did learn one lesson though... I can't spend the day drinking tea & soda before I run. Most of the last mile I spent with my fingers crossed that I wouldn't wet my pants... If I need caffeine for race day, I might look into a pair of Depends. Also, I need to stop losing my form (i.e. losing my concentration) in the middle, otherwise I'll crap my knee out.