Bottlenecking traffic for this abdominal car wreck

I live in Kansas. For those of you who are unaware, it's frakkin hot in Kansas right now. So hot that running outside is enough to make you cry, and that's when you get up at 6 a.m. Going running later results in the desire to cry, but self preservation prevents you from actually doing so as any additional loss of liquids will quickly result in your demise.

That was the feeling today on my 6 mile training run (2-3-1). The only thing that got me out the door was knowing that tomorrow is a rest day, and switching days to do this training run before my 16 mile run on Saturday seemed like a poor idea. It also seemed like a less than stellar idea to not go much earlier in the day, but my six month old decided midnight was as good of a time as any to go to bed, which was an awesome 4 hours later than he is usually asleep.

It's silly to even consider snoozing. I turned that alarm off when we hit 11:30 and I was still nursing and bouncing on that ridiculous pilates ball.

So at 9 a.m., I was out the door with the double jogger. Both kids were rocking the only-diaper look, because their mother's inability to wake up early is no reason to make them swelter unnecessarily. Fortunately my children were blessed with freakishly good looks, so many people are able to look past the white-trashiness of only wearing a diaper and see only the adorable they use to manipulate strangers into giving them things. I, on the other hand, had a sleeveless tank and shorts, thinking the lack of four inches of material on either arm would be enough.

In case you were wondering, that's a little bit of foreshadowing.

Two miles into the run, I had to turn it up a bit to get the three miles of goal pace +30-60 seconds. I'm hoping to run an 8:30 pace for my first marathon this fall, and pushing the double jogger at 9-9:30 pace usually isn't a huge deal. I had been feeling pretty good the first two miles, and actually had to tell myself to slow down a bit because I would look at the Garmin and see I was doing a sub 9 minute for a warm up. As usual, when I get cocky and prideful, something happens:

God laughs.

Just as I started my three mile stretch, the temperature seemed to climb ten degrees. The sun beat down like a psychotic oversized bird pecking at breakfast, and my perceived effort resulted in a pace that would have been shameful for even a warmup.

The mental game started. To go home? To do only four today? The kids were both napping, though, so that would have been a waste of a rare opportunity-- and entire run without a child screaming. I eyed my water bottles. The insulated one still had plenty of ice, and the other was already in the gross-warm range. I could use some of the cold water to douse my head and hope for the best, but that would be a waste of perfectly good hydration.

There was really only one option if I wanted to continue running this morning.

Off went the running top.

For this formerly eating disordered individual who has always identified the abdominal region as a problem area, this was a monstrous deal. Add to that the racing stripes my second child added with his 9 lb 2 oz at birth self and the Scottish heritage that results in any skin not regularly exposed to sunlight appearing fluorescent, this event can almost be deemed black-and-white-tabloid-in-the-grocery-store-checkout worthy.

It would be fantastic to say that once the top went off, I finished my three mile stretch almost effortlessly, glancing down at my Garmin to see I'd rocked a 7:15 pace the entire time. Truth is, though, the top went off, and I still had to talk myself into exerting myself to get to the 9:00 mark.

But I lived to blog about it. And to me, that's a pretty big deal.

Stupid heat.