Where's the Beach?

I know it's winter, and winter is cold. I get that logic. However, I live in the south where winters are typically mild. We have only a handful of days that dip below freezing. We rarely see any good snow, you know, the kind that actually sticks. Usually we get ice, gray, dangerous ice. We worry more about power outages from ice storms and being stranded because the roads are too slick far more than we worry about any need to shovel our driveways. Our weather is notorious for crazy temperature swings. As an example, I ran on Sunday in shorts and a tank. Yesterday and today it was 2 layers on top and bottom with ear warmer (headband thing), hat, gloves with mittens over the top and my neck warmer. This morning was 14 degrees. I realize that for some, that's a mild heat wave. For us, it's almost unheard of. In fact, it's so rare to have these temps (and so many days of them) that I only have 1 pair of fairly thick running tights. I did purchase a new pair this year ...

Well, I wasn't sure about doing this post today. Normally I'd be posting about pre-race jitters. How I'm feeling about Saturday's CASA Half Marathon really doesn't even have anything to do with jitters this time around. Now, I know many of you will automatically want to disagree with me when I say that I feel very under-prepared.  It's true though. I've been putting in the miles, yes. But since my last half marathon , my runs have slowed down some and I've not pushed out any tempo runs other than the 10-Mile Treadmill last Saturday. Yes, my body knows the distance. I'm not worried about that. I guess I'm worried about this sudden slow down of my pace. I know, shake your heads if you will, it's still how I'm feeling about Saturday. Slow. The thing is, my last race was in very ideal weather conditions. It was in the 40's, sunny, no wind. So while the course was hard, the weather was perfection, especially coming out of the h...