cinderella needs new running shoes

So, today was The Day.  I actually pulled out the ol' Visa and registered for the Walt Disney World Princess Half Marathon!  I did that AND one further- as a spur-of-the-moment decision, I registered for what's called the Glass Slipper Challenge.  The Challenge is the half-marathon of course, but it also includes a 10K race the day before as well.  Because apparently I'm sick in the head.  The whole event isn't until February so I've got plenty of training time, as long as I take advantage of it!  I've got the Tower Of Terror 10 Miler in 4 months, so it certainly seems do-able.  Here's the thing, though- I haven't run in almost a week.  

We've had this little "rain event" hanging out over the state this week and they're calling it Tropical Storm Andrea.  I haven't heard from the news exactly how many inches of rain we've gotten, but any memory of the dry season this winter and spring is long gone!  I went outside tonight to clip some parsley from my herb garden (Tangent: Scot wanted me to make some alfredo pasta with "the fancy cheese" -aka parm reggiano grated into curls- for dinner so I decided to grab some garnishes as well.  Tangent over.) and the pool is almost overflowing!  The water is level with the top of the coping!  All day it poured rain and we had some pretty gusty winds, too.  The eye of the storm passed north of us so we didn't get the really strong winds, maybe 40-45 mph at the worst, but lord have mercy did we get some rain!  This storm sucked so much moisture up from the Gulf and dumped it on us that we've had some local flooding and the past 2 days have been consumed with tornado watches and warnings.  I was all prepared to hide under the front desk as work today if I had to.  Yeah, I was still at work.  Bonus points for you if you can guess how much I actually got to get paid.  (If you said "zilch" for flying and a couple piddly hours of ground school, you'd be right.  God bless Netflix on my Kindle!)  Hence why I haven't been running.  We are officially into the rainy season so I'm going to have to figure out how to get some runs in if the weather looks bad.  I'm too much of a princess to run in the rain!

I've found a new running path in the fancy-pants neighborhood of Baldwin Park in Orlando.  It's literally like a mile from work so all week I've been super prepared with my bag and clothes and shoes and stuff, Clif bar and energy water included, with plans to run after work.  It happened once.  Then the rains came.  Anyhoo, the path goes 2.5 miles around a lake with plenty to look at and lots of people, so I feel quite safe.  I can do 2 laps so far, with the jog from and back to my car, for a total of just under 6 miles.  The thing now is that while I have the breath to run more, my legs are just too tired after that distance.  I totally had plans to go ride my bike on Monday to work on my leg strength, but since I'm pretty good at falling off of it in good weather, it was probably a good decision to keep it in the garage and out of the rainy weather!  Fingers crossed this stuff blows out of here tomorrow.