Sunrise (which is way to early in January) at Old Tucson

You know what I've been doing for the past few months? Training.

No, really.

The idea of running another race became jammed in my brain. I picked a race far enough out that I could work up to it, and then I did it. All the working up and all the racing.

Miraculously, more than actually running the race, I kept to my training schedule.

Seriously. I did. I didn't miss a single run.

It wasn't much, but three runs a week, progressively getting harder. And while I can't say I successfully completed all of them, I tried. Like, really freakin' hard. Through Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's and birthdays and visiting to see Dan's parents over the break, I ran three times a week.

This race wasn't anything fancy or difficult. It was a four mile trail race through Old Tucson Studios, the place where all the old westerns used to be filmed, but now, the place us locals take our out-of-town relatives.

And I did it. Ran all four miles on a ridiculously chilly January Sunday morning. I even beat my goal time of 48 minutes (my 12 min/mile pace) with a time of 46:24. Not impressive for a runner, but impressive enough for me. {Sidenote: it was a fun run, but I don't think I'll do it again. Because it was a trail course, it was a little too claustrophobic for me to be comfortable.}

Although, I did start to feel like a runner in the last few weeks of training. Mainly, unfortunately, due to my injury. I tweaked something in my hip and with each run, it got tweakier, if you know what I mean. By the day the race rolled around, I was already starting to limp a bit. However, it didn't hinder my running, so I pushed through. Four miles of running made my hip its tweakiest, though.

Afterward, I limped pretty severely for a week and a half. That was a fun conversation to have with each and every one of my nosy coworkers. Yes, I'm fine. I just pushed myself too hard running because I am terribly out of shape and this is my body rebelling against me.

Several weeks later, the limp is almost 100% gone. Last week, I started working out again, anything but running, to let my hip get some additional healing. This week is the scary week, though, because if I plan on trying the Cinco De Mayo run again this year, I have got to start training again. I've got to add two miles to the end of the Old Tucson distance, which will not be an easy feat for me.

We'll see how it goes. Getting a hip replacement at 28 years old doesn't exactly seem reasonable in order to run a 10k...