Day 3,928* —Potawatomi 200 Training Starts Today—

Day 3,928* Not sure when I duplicated a day but looked at my main streak counter and I was a day off. 

Perseus woke me up at 5 a.m. this morning wanting to be fed. A little after 6 a.m., when I had finished putting on my running clothes, my five-year-old walked into the room. I gave her a hug and told her I was trying to start early so I would be able to be back before she got up. She didn’t give me hard time for leaving and went to lie down with her little brother.

When I started running, I was almost skipping because one of my legs was too sore to extend the way for my normal stride. I forced myself to run normally and both my legs felt fine after a couple of minutes. I went towards the train tracks because I wanted to get some pictures of the sunrise there. On my way, I ran on more ice and snow and couldn’t help thinking why I didn’t think to bring my Yaktraxs to put on my shoes, but there was a lot I did remember and a lot that went right and that’s easy to forget when you cannot help thinking about the screw-ups. I did eventually borrow another runner’s Yaktraxs who had completed the 100k, so by the end of the run I was finally running through the ice with a little more confidence.

But that’s the thing, I have only ran in Yaktraxs a handful of times, and it was years ago. I also never run with polls, so I had to do two new things on the run over the weekend. I finished 7th out of 8 finishers, so  I am a little disappointed I didn’t finish faster, but I am also very thankful I finished and didn’t hurt myself. I am still only one of two people to have ever gotten under 24 hours at Shippey, and now I have more evidence to suggest that I am a novice at best at running in the cold and the ice, but I am getting better and if it happens again next year, I will know what to do.

Potawatomi roughly translates to “those who tend the hearth-fire,” but it still seems strange if that is a literal meaning. I wonder if it is symbolic at all. You know, the “hearth-fire” standing in for something else. I cannot help but to start to think more about how I am going to run 200 miles. 

I started working on the video for the Shippey yesterday! I think it is going to be a great video with all the shots of snow and ice! It was so pretty!