No Easy Task

Some of you may recall that I registered for my second first marathon, to be held March 29th.

Unlike when I started training for my first first marathon, I've been pretty quiet about my running habits around here.  That's about to change.  (Fair warning, Sha.)  See, now I don't know whether or not I'm actually going to run the full marathon, and I need to make a good, long list of pros and cons.  Here they are, in the order they pop into my head:

Pro:  The marathon course is one I've run and volunteered on before.  I know it's pretty flat, and pretty.

Con:  Today, I ran my longest distance ever.  13.27 miles.  The race is 5 weeks away.  I haven't run enough miles.

Con:  My feet hurt.  My toes feel bruised, and one of my arches is bruised.

Con:  My calf muscles hurt almost the whole time I was running today.

Con:  A couple of weeks ago, my IT band issues arose again.  What if it starts hurting at mile 5 and just gets worse as I run?

Pro:  I know the folks in charge of the race.

Pro:  It's the only marathon I know of that is close enough to allow me to sleep in my own bed the night before.

Pro:  I'll have a lot of friends and family members there.

Con:  I planned to run 15 miles today.  I took a couple of wrong turns and realized around mile 11 that I was either going to come up short by 2, over by 1.5, or would have to run past my car to meet my goal.  I chose to cut it short.  What marathoner would do that???

Pro:  Most of my family members and running pals are confident that I can run 26.2 miles.

Con:  I am not.

Pro:  One of the worst things about today's mentally draining run (it was also physically draining, but mentally, much worse) was the dense fog that I was running through for the entire 2 hours, 24 minutes, 41 seconds.  (10:51 pace is pretty stinking far from my goal).  I was drenched from head to toe.  The hairs on my arms had tiny water droplets all over them.  I am not exaggerating when I say that I was dripping wet even before the temperature went up over 70⌠£╚.  (Gah!  I always forget how to make the degree symbol.  Anyway, you get it.  I'm not googling it again.  ²?  Ñ?  ◘?  ┼?)  My hair was hanging in these awful, stringy, clumps, and despite the blanket of wet, I was still red-faced, hot, and sweaty.  Discouraged, angry, sad, and sore.  Not a pretty sight, to say the least.  When I finished running, I went into our running group's clubhouse to use the bathroom.  I dropped my car key, struggled to get my shorts back up, had to wipe the seat afterward because of my sweaty backside.  The entire time, I was mentally berating myself for stopping after just 13 miles, while the wussy back of my head was all, "Thankyouthankyouthankyou for stopping!"  Anyway, as I was washing my hands and noticing in the mirror how thoroughly revolting I looked, I saw a sign hung on top of the mirror that read, "Smile!  You're a beautiful runner!"  I did.  Because I am.  I <3 WVR.  Then, I remembered about how pretty my hair looked after I had it colored and cut a few days ago, and that I don't always look like I just swam 13 miles in a hot tub while wearing running clothes.

My biggest problem with selfies is that I can't seem to look at the camera.  How is that possible?

Con:  Marathons are really hard.  I know this not from experience, but because I'm smart.

Pro:  I had a 5-day long migraine that made me want to crawl under my bed and cry.  That was really hard, but I got through it.  I even washed dishes and changed out of sweatpants after the 3rd day.

Con:  Running a marathon is a choice.  Being attacked by Satan himself with a hammer inside your forehead, scrambling all your thoughts, pushing you off balance, making you cry when your family members speak, and using a chisel behind your ears is not a choice.  I've found that when given the option, I choose easy rather than hard.  Case in point, today I ran 13 miles instead of 15.

Pro/Con:  If I skip the Tomoka Marathon, or switch to the half, then I'll wait until November to run a full.  Charming registered me for the Savannah Rock 'n' Roll as a Christmas gift, so I'm in for that one, but racing in November means training all summer.  Also, if I skip Tomoka, the not-enough-training I did do will have been for naught.  That's annoying, when I consider how much time I've spent away from my kids, how many times I've rearranged schedules to run, etc.  But, then, there's the fact that I didn't do enough training.  And then, there's the terrible thought that if I didn't do enough training for this marathon, then when will I step up and run enough to properly prepare myself for a race so long?  Which leads to the obvious question- how can anyone go to the starting line of their first full marathon and feel completely ready?  It doesn't seem possible.

Okay, that last point on the list was maybe not so concisely a pro or con, and maybe more like a glimpse into "Freaking Out" by Me.

I know that not every run is easy, or fun, or rewarding, or will make me want to run more and more.  But knowing that, and getting past it to run even more miles next week, are very different things.

Today's advice is to give me advice.  Should I run 26.2 miles in 34 days?



Check out the update to my previous post, if you haven't already.  

What I'm Reading, Hearing, Watching, and Doing

Reading:
My reading list, as usual, is as exciting as it is excessive.  I actually only spend about 20 minutes reading each day, so the fact that I'm carrying around and placing by the bedside all these books is pretty ridiculous.  But if loving so many books is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

I haven't actually started the newest addition to the culinary mystery series I love, but it's a library book, so I have to start and finish it quickly.  I'm almost finished with "The Gifts of Imperfection" (it's my nighttime book) and I'm about halfway through "The Shining" (one of two daytime books).  I purchased the sequel, "Doctor Sleep", as my pages-in-waiting.  The author of the book on my kindle is an old family friend, Darin Michael Shaw.  I believe "Chronicles of War" is his first novel, but his second published work.  I selected the giant book about the Vanderbilt ladies for my book group.  It was one of the more interesting-seeming titles that came up when I googled "books to make you smarter."  So far, I don't feel much smarter, though.  It seems to me that the Vanderbilt family was like a much earlier version of the Kardashian family.  I find myself disapproving of their long-ago extravagant parties and constant building of expensive houses, and not necessarily on principle.  I feel that they're a big part of the reason today's society is so celebrity-gaga and so shallow, as a whole.  Unfair?  That remains to be seen.

Hearing:
From Rip Claw: "Do we have any fun plans for today/tomorrow/the weekend?"  I don't know how or exactly when his obsession with "fun plans" started, but he was literally asking me that question every.single.day.  I figure there isn't anything wrong with wanting to know our plans, or with wanting them to be fun.  I was really tired of hearing the question, though, so I came up with this:

On the chalkboard painted portion of his bedroom wall.

In typical mom fashion, I included chores and additional school work (I give him advanced math problems, reading or writing assignments when we play school) in the fun.  Muah hah hah!

From Cupcake: "NO LIKE IT!" It's a rather long story, and not all that interesting, so I'll sum up: she has to drink some different kind of non-dairy milk that she isn't used to drinking.  We've tried soy, vanilla flavored almond, coconut, and lactaid milks.  Finally, after several days of bribing, cheering, rewarding, bargaining, begging, and attempting to disguise the flavors, she drank some soy milk without throwing her cup and yelling that dreaded phrase.  In addition to being a picky drinker, she is becoming a very finicky eater.  Perfect, considering she's off-the-chart small and her pediatrician probably thinks we're trying to cultivate an early eating disorder. ("Mom, what's it called when people say the opposite of something to try to be funny?" Sarcasm, son.  You'll hear a lot of it in our family.) It's hard to get her to eat enough protein and fat, so I'm very much okay with her love of hummus, guacamole, and peanut butter.

Ignore the messy counter top in the background and focus on the fact that she was licking fresh, homemade guacamole from her fingers.

Watching:
Okay, I'll be honest.  I wrote the title and the first half of this post about 9 hours ago, and now I can't remember what I was going to share about this subject.  You know how frustrating it is when you lose your train of thought mid-sentence?  This is like that, only a little worse.  I've been sitting at the computer for 40 minutes now, asking myself repeatedly, "What am I watching?"  I keep coming up with a few things that I know weren't IT, but will have to do.

• Parenthood- It's a show about 4 grown siblings and their own families.  Charming and I are getting thoroughly spoiled by watching it on Netflix, because we're still not caught up to the current season and can therefore watch 3 episodes a night when we are awake enough.  I dare you to watch and not find yourself relating to at least one of the main characters.
• Progress.  Charming is well on his way to his first ever half-marathon race!  His dedication to the training program and the ease with which he seems to achieve greater and greater things are just so thrilling to watch.  He'll be running the Swamp House Half Marathon in March.  You should, too.
• Potential paydays.  I am officially an approved substitute teacher for our county's schools.  Some of you may know this already, but many of you probably missed the blog post about it that I deleted a couple of days after publishing it.  (Curious, now, are you?  Let me know in the comments if you want to read the gory details and I'll see what I can do to satisfy.)  Now that I'm an employee, but not actually working, I'm spending time each day watching for jobs to open up.  
• Pigging out.  The 2 weeks of clean eating made me aware of my awful piggish habits.  I've been watching my junk food and overall calorie intake, these days, and I've only gorged myself a couple of times.  

Doing:
Really running!  I was surprised by how long after my tibial stress fracture I was running tentatively.  Like a slow, scaredy baby.  Also surprising was how long the mild soft tissue pain can last.  After long or fast runs, I still see swelling around the spot that was fractured, and the muscles in my calf and shin on that leg are much more tender than those on the other leg.  Apparently, though, this type of pain is not unusual for up to a year after an injury like the one I had.  I've been building my weekly mileage back up, and I've had some very successful long runs that have left me feeling like a real runner again.

Really cleaning!  Long ago, I made myself a cleaning schedule that looked so good on paper.  Well, it's actually on Google Calendar, but you know what I mean.  Turns out, following the schedule makes my house look good, too!  I (almost) always regret procrastination; I hate that I put off the tasks that I know I need to accomplish.  I decided recently that I would really, truly, not-just-saying-so, try to procrastinate less and try not to waste so much of my free time on nonsense.  It's a hard thing to do, to be productive, but it really is worthwhile.  What a wonderful feeling of relief comes when the laundry baskets, washer and dryer are all empty!


What advice should you take away from this post?  Read the books I'm reading.  Turn the tables on your kids when you hear things from them that are annoying.  Remember the information you want to convey.  Running is fun, even when it's scary.  Finally, go do--whatever--now!  Don't wait.



Best way to break a bad habit?

Best way to remember your own ideas?