when wine enters the picture

be stubborn about your goals. be flexible about your methods. ~ unknown

So this week marks the first time I’ve deviated from my Long Haul 100 training schedule, which is nothing short of miraculous given my history of sticking with a plan for two or three weeks at most. When I first chose Bryon Powell’s plan from Relentless Forward Progress, I made the admittedly far-reaching decision to stick with it until today's Wineglass Marathon, and despite a nasty ankle roll last week, I was able to keep that commitment. Go me!

Anyway, this Wineglass trip has been one of several firsts: my first time to the northeastern part of the country, my first time to experience a New Jersey train, as well as an NYC cab ride, and my first time to uninhibitedly drink stupid amounts of wine until 10pm midnight (maybe 1am?) the night before a marathon. Yep. The girl halfway through unwavering training, dutifully running every prescribed mile, has seemingly thrown all responsibility out the clown car rental (yes, our rental looked like the subject of a bad joke) window. I could argue that my plan was to run a five hour race, an hour slower than my average, but slightly faster than my ultra pace, as practice for LH100, justifying my, uhh, relaxed attitude, but that would be a 10% truth. The other 90% is that we are sharing a house with a fun ass group of runners, all of them wine drinkers and only one of whom had a shot at running well…. or so we thought, but more on that later. In any case, we had no reservations about pulling those corks and chasing it with some local microbrews. At some point (nobody knows when), someone (we’re not sure who) wisely made the first move upstairs for bed, and the rest of us began to follow.

Now fortunately, that whole drunk thing doesn’t do it for me, so I maintained enough sense to cut it off before the buzz kicked in – for what that’s worth. And just what is that worth? I’ll tell you… not much much because I didn’t put my glass down before having enough to fuck with my sleep and hydration levels, and if you know me at all, you know that I need no help fucking with either of those. In any case, thank all holy things for insomnia reinforced by the internal clock of an East Texas rooster because I was awake and dressed for the race before my alarm even sounded. My bib was in my pocket and I couldn’t find my hair tie, but the clothes were on, and they weren’t even inside out! Oh. Should I mention that I got to wear brand new socks and shoes because as our plane was taking off, I realized that mine were in Oklahoma, or is that just so “Adi” that it’s not even worth noting? And so it goes…

I could give a full race report, but honestly, it would be boring. We were bussed to the start where we stood trying to keep warm in the 40˚ wind chill, I ran the first mile in a trash bag (again trying to stay warm), and crossed the finish line in 4:28. It was a pretty course, but nothing spectacular…. certainly not spectacular enough for me to keep from holding myself back to run as slowly as I wanted. The other side of the chute was what made the race worth it, though. Wineglass stayed true to its identity and offered an after party, obviously centered on a wine tasting, at a pretty incredible museum. It wasn’t fancy, it wasn’t famous, but it was full of amazing pieces – the kinds that catch your eye and won’t let it go. In case you’re wondering, the wine was only okay.

After making our way through the museum, we popped over to a local microbrewery, but we realized that that’s not where we wanted to be. There were eight of us – seven marathon runners and one supportive husband – and we had reason to celebrate. One finished 26.2 despite a nagging injury, one finished feeling good after worrying about a nagging injury, three finished completely untrained as life got in the way, one of us (me) was just celebrating the success of sticking to a training commitment, and one of us (my rockstar runner man) set a PR of 3:29, despite a month full in which travel overshadowed running. With all this, we decided to take advantage of the good weather and the beautiful back patio at our rental. We made our gazillionth stop at the local Wegmans for seven steaks and a hunk of tofu (yes, I'm that girl), another trip to the liquor store because WINE, and in about another hour, we will gather around the table to continue sharing the miles. In the meantime, as our non-runner finishes the grilling, our 3:29 marathoner is showering, and everyone else is resting, I’m enjoying a bit of solitude with my pen before we pop the cork on our swag bag champagne. Cheers until next time.