I just love my running friends. I bet I'm not alone in thinking mine are the best. On Saturday I was able to line up with two of my fabulous buddies for the 2016 Hippie Chick half and quarter marathon. Earlier in the week I was on a trail run with these same buddies Kelly and Leah when it came up that Kelly refers to me as a delicate flower. It is a term that both makes me chuckle every time we use it and that I wholeheartedly embrace as an accurate description. When Leah heard this name for the first time she asked how I had ended up with it. Neither Kelly nor I remembered specifically but explained it had to do with me knowing my body has certain limitations. "I actually think of Carissa as pretty tough," Leah contemplated. However, my race on Saturday proved otherwise. I am a flower, a delicate flower.
I shared in this post what a fabulous race I had last month. I was undertrained and my expectations were low and yet everything fell into place at the Vernonia half marathon. Since then I had leaned into training for two weeks before taking an entire week off running to hike through the beauty that is Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park. It wasn't ideal to skip six days of training but my husband and I hiked 50 plus miles and I convinced myself that had to count for something. When I got home I had a week to pick up where I had left off in my training and taper for the race.
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| Hiking in Bryce Canyon National Park |
The problem was that when I got home my fatigue showed up. Monday and Tuesday I was exhausted. On Wednesday and for the rest of the week I felt better. I was still tired but not like I had been for the two days prior. This turn of events gave me some trepidation about Saturday's race but I was determined to show up and run what I could run.
