I did a 10-mile race yesterday. It's part of the work-life balance plan I mentioned earlier. I take violin lessons and I exercise 4 days per week. Technically, I'm also writing my NCTE talk. Naturally, at this moment, I'm blogging instead.

Anyway, I didn't really have any intention of signing up for the Monster Dash, except that my friend Sheila convinced me. "It's all downhill," she said.

"How is that possible?" I asked.

She explained the course.


As you can see, it actually is almost entirely downhill. So okay.

My longest run in advance was 7 miles, so I decided to be conservative. Except then my friend Molly told me I wasn't giving enough credence to the downhills, and I should really go out faster.

Hmmm. I decided to try to go with the pace group that was running 8-minute miles. As it turned out, that felt fine, even though the pacers were actually shaving 2-5 seconds off the pace per mile. "We're just building a little cushion," they explained sensibly.

At 8 miles, I decided to "put the hammer down," as I say to myself during races (isn't that ridiculous?!), and I picked up the pace for the final downhill 2. I finished in 1:18:20,gave my cool skull-and-bat medal to Mac when I got home, and folded laundry for the rest of the day.

Did I work on my talk? No, I did not. NCTE: today's the day.