Half marathon training is officially underway

Training for the Drake relays half marathon is officially underway, based on two factors:

1. The calendar.

2. My dreams.

This past week, I've already had two running-related dreams. The more recent one was pleasant and inspiration: I realized that while I'd been missing workouts, I'd been consistently doing my long runs, and doing them well.

Earlier this week, though, I dreamed that I was doing a half marathon, in which even my stop for a meal (?) didn't halt my momentum through mile eight or 10.

What totally derailed me in this dream race was reaching the indoor portion of this race. As soon as I got inside the building, I struggled to figure out the route and had a total and complete meltdown.

It wasn't even a PR-attempt race, but I told my boyfriend that I was DONE, maybe even insisting that someone (him?) come pick me up — I wasn't even going to finish.

Fortunately, week one of the training schedule more resembles the first dream I described, not the second.

More on that once I have a bigger sample size of runs with a purpose.

I may be taking the run streak too seriously

I dream frequently, and more often than not, the contents of those dreams make some sort of twisted sense. 

Either I'm in a place I go to often, and/or with people I spend time with; or I'm feeling the same emotions I've been feeling recently.

That said, I don't dream about running very often; I can only think of a few occasions that I've done so, the most recent being about a week before the Des Moines Half Marathon.

Last night I did. I was preparing to leave town at the same time as a group of friends — maybe we'd been on vacation together? — and realized my Holiday Running Streak was in danger. 

The mode of transportation varied from car to plane, but the jist of it was, if I didn't run before leaving town, I would arrive at my destination the next day without having run.

All of my stuff was packed, and I couldn't find the vacation friend who was also doing the streak until almost the last minute. But we did find each other, and we just ran wherever we were, in our street clothes, to get that mile in.

Just like in conscious life, though, I think running was a metaphor in my dream. Still, I'm glad my stress dream had a happy ending — hopefully that bodes well for my real-life to-do list.

That said — in a few weeks, if I keep streaking successfully, I very well might have nightmares that truly are about forgetting to run until it's almost too late.

This is how I know race day is coming

The first sign that race day is nearing is, of course, seeing it pop up in your weather forecast.

It's still in the 10-day look, which I only put stock in if the predictions are favorable, but I'm glad that being neurotic has some sort of payoff.

The second sign is the stress dream. That came last Friday night.

In the dream — yep, I'm gonna be that person that yammers on about dreams — I was waiting for the half marathon to start with my friend Ashlee, who in the real world loves biking but dislikes running.

We had to wait, because the race course was actually just laps, and the marathoners got to go first. (In fact, did I start too early with them, and have to head back?)

But bad weather struck, and the start was delayed. Just an hour. Didn't seem bad. We went our separate ways, for some reason, and kept calling a hotline to see what was up.

I decided to pass my time at a bar/restaurant while grabbing something to eat — a hamburger or something, because it was around dinner time — and watched the radar.

Everyone agreed it looked promising. The skies were clearing. It was a false positive, though; next thing I knew, a serious storm was slamming the area, and the race director was postponing the race indefinitely.

So naturally I went to work from there. The dream co-workers greeted me with a request that I work some overtime shifts (reflection of real-life work busyness), and I responded ... by slamming a fist on the desk and yelling about how I didn't even know when the rescheduled race would be, and I'd been training for two months for this, and I'd spent X dollars on it, and I JUST WAS NOT GOING TO WORK, OK?

(This is not how I behave at work in real life. I promise.)

As far as stress dreams go, it's not a bad one. No forgetting things, no showing up naked, no oversleeping. I'm sure the latter will terrorize me on the night before, keeping me tossing and turning.

It just exaggerates the very mild, very normal race-week nerves I'm developing: Oh crap, I paid to run 13.1 miles soon.

Ugh.

If the government does add licenses for runners, I'm apparently mentally ready

I have no idea whether this makes me normal or abnormal, but even though I'm a runner in my waking life, I almost never dream about running.

Last winter was the first time I could remember having a running-related dream that wasn't the short tripping-and-falling one that jerks me awake when I thud to the ground ... i.e., when I roll over in my sleep and jolt myself awake (doesn't mean it hasn't happened, of course).

That dream was an unpleasant one. It took me nearly a year, but I've had another one, this time more uplifting: My college roomie Ally and her husband, AJ, were visiting me at my parents' house, as were a whole bunch of other people.

Instead of socializing, though, AJ and I began examining a map/diagram as he explained the training program he'd lead me through so that I could get my running license. We all have snarky thoughts on what people should be required to prove before they're allowed to run, such as that they can tolerate it without playing music at ambulance-masking levels, but in this instance it seemed to be related to actual physical skill.

In real life, AJ is a serious runner who's making the leap to triathlons, so if there were such a thing as a running license and if it required serious training effort, AJ would be a smart choice to prepare me.

Mostly my dreams aren't worth analyzing — just a jumble of people and places I know, mixed up and out of order — and this is no exception.

I am, however, glad to recall that the idea of training for a big event (there were lots of markers on this map thingie) didn't frighten me in my dream: It was intimidating, but exciting.

No vague, subconscious negative association with running this time around!