Out of the library and onto the road

Librarian on the Run is on her way to becoming Archivist on the Run. For the past year, I've been back in grad school studying Archival Studies with the hopes of being able to work in a library with a special collection. So I haven't had much time to blog. I initially began this blog in 2008 after I got my master's degree. It was the first time I wasn't in school, and I poured my mental and physical energies into running and writing about it. Now that I've been back in school, the blog has become an afterthought, but I have only 4 more weeks of class left!

In the mean time, I've been keeping up with my running. I had a cyst removed from my neck in July, which stopped all physical activity for that part of the summer, but once I recovered, I jumped into training for the Ride to Read fundraiser for the library. Once I finished that, I got right back into running. I don't think that cycling for the Ride improved my running per se, but it left me at a good fitness level, and my running training started off well. Three weeks after the Ride, I ran a hounds and harriers race with my fiancé's German shepherd, Anna. 

This was quite an experience! I hadn't practiced running with this leash with her enough, so we had a few kinks to work out at the beginning of the race, when she wanted to sniff every other dog there was - and there were 120 of them! The starting line felt like complete chaos, but everyone was actually very well-behaved. We got into a rhythm after the first mile, and it was quite nice. There were dog bowls at the water stops, and she forgot we were racing and wanted to drink from every single bowl. (After the third bowl, I nudged her to get back to running!) And we came over the finish line at 26:37.  Congrats to Anna on her first 5K!

After Hounds and Harriers, I set my sights on a new goal: The River Ramble Fall Classic 10K. It's organized by the local running store, and the 10K has a team competition. I had heard about Team Sparkle from other bloggers and thought that a sparkly 10K team would be a lot of fun, so I got together my running buddy, her sister, and another library runner to rock the River Ramble in sparkle skirts. We're Team "Blood, Sweat, and Sparkle." I can't wait! We're getting together today (after we all vote - Happy Election Day!) to run the race course so we know what to expect. In fact, I need to start getting ready so I'm not late meeting them... More to come about our awesome sparkle skirts and my goals for the 10k.