4 Thoughts 4 days before the Baltimore Half Marathon:

1. Once again, I'm panicking (big surprise, right?). I'm a worry wart by nature and this time I have 1,000 questions racing (haha... corny Dad joke) through my mind. Did I taper too soon? Will my body remember how to finish 13.1 miles? Will I still have this nagging pain/feeling right at the point where my knee and quad meet (I forget what it's called) on race day? Will I make it to the race on time... wait. That deserves it's very own thought.

2. Many of my thoughts are revolving around how I'm getting to the race. The issue is that the half starts at 9:45. The marathon, however, starts at 8:30 and streets all around Baltimore shut down at about 8, which means many of the routes to the race will be closed. I also hear that traffic backs up for miles as people try to get to get into the city for the race. I've been driving my hubby crazy about this for two weeks already. He told me he'd just drop me from a plane so I could parachute in. I considered it. I think he has come up with a better plan that throwing me out of a plan now. We're dropping our son off at my in-laws at 7 a.m. and will then drive to the B-more Metro or Light Rail so we can avoid traffic and parking issues. The problem is that it will be a 45 min to hour drive to the station from my in-laws and then possibly 30-45 minutes to Camden Yards and then another 15 minute walk to the Start Line. I'm totally freaking out that I'll be in a mad rush though and won't be able to use the bathroom. Which brings me to my next thought.

3. I hope I don't pee myself at the race. I know. TMI and what am I? Three years old? But two 5Ks ago, I went to the bathroom 2 times before the race started-- I'm talking 20 minutes before the race started. At the halfway point, I got the overwhelming urge to pee, to the point that I had to stop racing and run across the street to the fire house and beg to use their bathroom. Again, that was only a 3.1 mile race and I was 15 minutes from the start. I'm praying my thimble bladder (or Thimblelina as my running partner Erin calls it) will hold out at least to a port-a-potty that isn't disgusting.

4. I'm really excited to meet my goal of beating my last half time, which I feel optimistic towards accomplishing. I trained hard since July, but I'm worried about the last two weeks. I took a few days off running to heal my knee. I hope it doesn't hurt my race. (And I really hope the race doesn't hurt my knee.)

I'm going to try to take a few deep breaths and keep all this in perspective. I know I can finish the 13.1 because I have before. Keeping calm seems nearly impossible, though. I'm an emotional mess for a variety of reasons, but more on that later.