Randomness Wednesday & Pre-race Anixety

In keeping with my new Wednesday theme, here are my random thoughts for the week (albeit most are race related).

• I made chocolate chip cookies for a work function last night and I binged on sampling them. I say binged because it made me feel gross last night and even worse this morning. I ate like 6 or 7 of them. I miss the willpower I used to have when I could make a baked good for someone else and not even sample it.
• I'm on the straight and narrow the rest of the week. I literally felt hungover this morning from all the butter and sugar, but the scale was OK this morning, so go figure.
• Friday is the final weigh in for the house challenge. It's already determined I will lose the competition, but I hope to lose a pound or two to round out my amount of weight loss over the last 6 weeks.
• Sunday is also the 6 year anniversary of my brother's death, which is just always generally makes this time of year hard.
• The biggest thing on my mind by far this week is race day. In 72 hours I will have (hopefully) have completed my 4th half marathon! Crazy. What's even crazier is that I have at least one Triathlon and 3 more half marathons on the calendar for this year...Wow!

I'm pretty much suffering from the worst pre-race anxiety ever. I have a storied past with the Country Music Half Marathon. In 2009, was my first half marathon I ever did and it was miserable. I had never even done a 5K, but I trained as well as I could have for it and on race day the temperatures were in the 80s by time I finished with my 4 hours and 18 minute time. The course is hilly and unforgiving and when I finished I swore I would never do another half marathon again. Of course we know I took that back when I completed the Mercedes half in Feb. 2011, but for some reason the CMM still freaks me out. We have unfinished business and I'm scared it's going to kick my ass again.

 KG and I getting off the pre-race shuttles in 2009.
(PS: this is KG's FIFTH year doing Country Music...hollar!)

 Group shot before the race in 2009.

Deep down I know I'll be fine, but I think maybe I'm pressuring myself too much. I signed up for the race with an expected finish time of 3:15, but not-so-secretly I am hoping to crush even that time.

The weather report is a big part of my anxiety. The forecast has been all over the place - from a high of 85/low of 65, down to a high in the mid 70s and lows in the 50s, now to this:

Not ideal, but if the morning starts out in the 50s, and I'm finished by 11 am then I shouldn't want to die too much.

Basically, I can't control the weather so I need to stop worrying about it. I'm completely trained for the race and there's nothing else I can do except visualize the 13.1 miles and in the wise words of Nike, just do it.

Enough of my randomness and anxiety - I'll post the results of the house challenge Friday and of course I'll get that post-race report up just as soon as I can. For more real time updates on race day, make sure you're following me on Twitter - @emtucky.