Believe to Achieve

Yay. Its over. Marathon soccer day and marathon early morning run day. Yah we left about 420am. The roads to ourselves(almost). Got to see a cop pull someone over just after our first mile. Thought he was after us. We were actually at a pretty quick pace for starting out (8:30) so we cooled it down a bit. By mile 3.5 we were at a average 8:50. Since Brooke hadn't run her more than 13 yet and has had to bail out on SGM twice in the past I thought it wise to go easy. It was however a hilly course as PG, Highland, Alpine and Cedar Hills terrain have enough of them. It was about 9 uphill and 9 down. With just over two of flatter terrain. Well we stopped probably a total of 11 minutes. She had her GARMIN. First experience having a GARMIN at my side. Somehow after mile twelve stop it was turned off. We noticed this after about two miles or 17 minutes on my watch. So after restarting it and getting back to home we were at 18.78 so we added 2 miles and rounded down in case it was just under two miles. So total miles= 20.7. Average pace with all the stops 9:38. So with 11 minutes of stops calculated off the pace that makes our running pace average at 9:05. The big uphills we took it real easy on but our last three going all downhill were at 8:15 based on my watch. The weather was perfect. I got home to my husband ready in the car to take off to the first of three soccer games. Our other car broke down the day before so I had to quickly switch shirts, grab a snack and take off for game 1. Middle daughter Brooke scored four goals. Then played goalie most of second half and didn't get to touch the ball. Troy left me there to get to our oldest daughter's tournament game. Needless to say I arrive 10 minutes into the game (got a ride to field from Brooke's coach) with one sick child (she spiked a fever while watching Brooke's game) but she kept me warm as I was chilling in the cool dew morning. Sadly we lost (1-0) as I had to take a potty break (the bathrooms are on the opposite side of Discovery park, a journey). I get back in time to see my awesome goalie forget her position and go to kick a wet ball, miss and the other team score. She loves being goalie and does well. She just forgot to use her hands two minutes into the second half. She played offense the first half. We tried to score and dominated from there on out but the refs looking at their watches blew the whistle. I was timing it too and they ended it two minutes early. I was a sore loser coach. The refs have done this at a few games because they look at what time it is not their timer. ARGGGHH!!! If I was just ten steps earlier/closer to my goalie she would have heard me say "use your hands". It is not up to a goalie to win so I knew we could score. But darn those refs. And thank goodness this is only 5th and 6th grade. Bur our team had worked hard. And we beat the team they lost to last twice. So it was hard to take. This is why I like running. It is solo. You can speed up or you can slow down. You are your own captain. You set your own PRs and you can control yourself. As a team you got to do it together. If one player decides to stay up until 2am and another has a baptism to go to an hour after the game so doesn't come, the team is weakened. I love team spirit. But running will always be my first love.