Necessity is the Mother of ...

... self-inflicted torture?

First, the good news ... no, make that the great news ... I didn't gain any weight over the holidays. Woo-hoo! That is all I was hoping for.

Now, the bad news. Air travel sucks. My family and I were scheduled to fly back from Seattle to DFW Friday afternoon on the 2:50 PM flight. Unfortunately, that flight was delayed until 4:30 PM (due to mechanical difficulties) and then subsequently cancelled all together. (Of course, on a positive note, I'm very happy that the plane troubles were discovered before we boarded or were in the air!) We tried to get on the 4:00 PM flight, but it was oversold and our standby attempt was unsuccessful. So we got booked on the 11:40 PM red-eye flight - to arrive in DFW at 5:20 AM.

Luckily, my sister-in-law was available to pick us up at Seattle-Tacoma International so we weren't stuck at the airport for 9 hours. We all had a nice dinner, did a little shopping at Tar-zhay (okay, Target - for baby food :-P) and the Southcenter Mall, and then back to SEA-TAC (hugs and fairwells - take two).

The 11:40 flight had a couple of delays of its own; it finally left Seattle at 12:30 AM and arrived in Dallas just after 6:00. However, we landed in terminal D of DFW and our checked bags were over in terminal C. Was "fun" lugging our carry-ons and two sleepy kids onto the DFW "Terminal-Link" shuttle bus to reclaim them. We didn't get home until almost 7:30.

Getting back on-topic, in addition to the annoyances of flight delays, our late arrival made me miss my Saturday training run. I was supposed to meet the "Ranch View Gang" marathoners group of the Fort Worth Runners Club at 7:00 AM for an 18-mile run (with a large percentage of it on the actual Cowtown Marathon course). I obviously missed that appointment. Very bitter since I really need to get in some long runs - the Cowtown is less than 50 days away!

However, by some miracle, I did NOT crawl right into bed immediately after getting home. (Sleep is overrated - 3 hours on the plane is plenty. :-P) Instead, I drove to the Keller Natatorium (site of the Monster Sprint Tri) to do some running on the trails around there on my own. I ended up doing about 16 miles (15.87 according to the Garmin 305 stats) on the Keller park trails (which, incidentally, are very nice – 7+ miles of concrete trails and sidewalks with very few road crossings - I can't believe that I am just now discovering them after living here for more than 3 1/2 years) and surrounding neighborhoods.

So after all the bad news, I am quite proud of getting in my longest run ever. The pace wasn't very fast (10:00/mile overall due to a lot of walking for the last 5 miles), but at least I got it in. This way, I still have a fighting chance of keeping up with the rest of the RVG at their next long run.

It's amazing what you can do when you are scared silly about being unprepared for a marathon only 7 weeks away.