saying goodbye.

Since the beginning of October, I’ve been spending a lot of time with a mysterious English woman. We usually meet early in the morning, often before sunrise, when she would spend a half-hour whispering sweet nothings to me in that amazing accent.

“Warm up.” “Run!” “Walk.” “Run!” “Cool down.” Spicy stuff, right?

But as I progressed through Couch to 5K, I noticed that my English friend was talking to me less and less each week. As the walking sessions disappeared from the workouts, she became … distant. Sure, she sounded as enthusiastic as always, but something just wasn’t the same. So after my run last Saturday morning, we broke up.

Oh, and I finished C25K the same day.

And that means I was just a week — and now about 48 hours — away from my first actual race on Saturday. I know I can do this, but I’m nervous and excited about it anyway. The course isn’t hard — I’ve walked it before — the weather’s going to be great and it sounds like I’ll have a couple dozen friends joining me for the race, something I’m grateful for. I can’t wait for Saturday morning, but there’s still some doubt, too, even though I’ve already run the distance a few times. I don’t know why this is bugging me so much, but I can’t wait until Saturday morning to go run and dispel the doubts.

And in the meantime, I’ve found a new woman to run with. She’s the voice in the Nike Plus app; she seems nice, but she’s all business, chattering about pace and distance and blah, blah, blah. I guess I’ll stick with her for a while, but I’m kind of missing the nice English lady.

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If you’re joining us on the Jingle Bell Run, you can pick up your packets early at the REI at South Side Works, or you can just grab them before the race. And if you’re still thinking about joining Team Crappy, you can do so here. See y’all Saturday!