Halfway Point

Today's run was remarkable.  14 miles.  I was pretty amazed and pleased with myself.  I ran those 14 miles like a boss.  When I started off I was pretty nervous.  Last week was 11.5 miles that I did mostly on my own.  That makes a 2.5 mile increase and I knew I would be doing ALL of it by myself.

I started off early because I was going to need to be home earlier than usual to keep an eye on the kids. When I was ready to go it was darker outside than I felt comfortable with.  I am extremely nervous about running outside by myself.  Some pepper spray might help with those nerves but I'd still rather not put myself in what I feel like is a dangerous position.  Anyway, once I saw how dark it still was I decided to run the first three miles on the treadmill and then do the rest outside.  As it became apparent that I would not be able to finish all of my run outside before I needed to be home to watch children I decided to just do all the run on the treadmill.  That would also allow me to take a short break anytime I needed to run upstairs and grab myself another bottle of Gatorade.  I went through three (or was it four?) of them, as well as most of a water-filled Gatorade bottle.  Running is thirsty work.

During the run I discovered that our treadmill stops itself off when it reaches 100 minutes.  I worried that I had burned it out or something but it went on running just fine once I selected a speed again. Even though I had several little stops during the run I am so proud of how I did.  I kept up a good pace and I kept going when I wanted to be done.  Two and a half hours is a long time to run.

After the run was done I was shocked to realize that my body felt really good.  I had taken a couple of pain pills with caffeine in them (LOVE those pills) to keep from feeling the intense pain I'd had in my ankles after last week's long run.   I'm sure the pills helped with how I felt.  As I stretched my muscles I marveled at how unfatigued my legs were and how not painful my joints were.  It was pretty great. Then I stood up.  MOTHER MINE!!!  Ow! OW!!! OOOOOOWWW!!!!!  The middle of my heels, which have been troublesome for quite some time, protested when I stood up.  They hurt a lot so I stretched them some more and they felt much better.  When I was all done The Hubs went out to do his yard work and I took over the watching of the children.  Sort of.

Not long after my husband went outside (he also took the two oldest with him) I had a recurrence of the intestinal troubles that plagued me for several weeks.  I thought I'd gotten over them because I had two weeks of no troubles after the long run.  It's pretty horrible.  I've spent more than an hour in the bathroom since finishing my run and that was less than four hours ago.  There are frequent trips to go sit on the porcelain throne.  I really hate it.

Along with the intestinal distress I was unhappy to experience chafing beyond anything I've had before. One of my exercise shirts rubs my arm and I have stopped wearing it to run.  Today I touched the bare skin on my back to see what was feeling strange there and I was met with a fair amount of pain. Ooooh, it hurt.  A lot.  The waistband of my running shorts (which I have been running in regularly for over a year and irregularly for a few years before that) left two long strips of rubbed-off skin.  Ow. Not cool, running shorts.  Not cool.  Once I took my shower I also discovered, thanks to the warm water hitting it, that my sports bra had also left a spot of chafed-off skin.  So basically my back is one big welt and it hurts to wear clothes.

If you have held on and read this far it's time to get honest again, as I promised myself I would.  It's possible that I'm done.  Well, that I'll be done as soon as I finish the half marathon I signed up for.  It's in three weeks.  As I was sitting in the bathroom suffering from intestinal distress and rubbed-off skin I said to myself that I don't want to do this anymore.  The only times I've ever felt so strongly that I didn't want to do something were all when I was in labor and about to give birth.  I get that feeling whether or not I'm medicated--it's just an inescapable part of the process of transition and every mom I know of goes through it with each birth.  I sat there in agony and wondered why people (myself included) are dumb enough to choose to train for marathons.  If it were just sore muscles and joints I'd be able to cope.  That's exactly what I've done for months now.  But the idea of feeling like this for another ten weeks is almost more than I can bear.  The sick really is horrible.

There's a part of me that hates the idea of "giving up".  There's another part of me that tells me I'm freaking amazing and that what I've done is sufficient to prove to me that I've done what I set out to do.  I feel like I do when I'm on the treadmill and debating with myself whether or not I should slow the pace.  The is always a conflict of thought that goes back and forth between "if I keep up this speed I'll finish faster" and "if I slow down I'll run longer but I'll feel better in the rest of the time I have left".  The second one usually wins because it will only add a minute or two onto the time and I'll feel good instead of cruddy for the 10-20 minutes still left to run.  It all comes back to if it's worth it or not.  I mentioned in another post that included wanting to quit that I wasn't sure if, come marathon day, I would be disappointed for not doing it or if I would do a happy dance that I hadn't chosen to subject myself to that kind of torture.  On a somewhat related note, every new school year I do a happy dance knowing that I'm no longer teaching.  There's an enormous amount of relief associated with thinking training will be completely done in three weeks rather than having ten more weeks of misery.  There is also some disappointment in myself in the thought of stopping, though that feeling isn't nearly so strong.

One thing that has kept me going when I wanted to stop was my desire to prove to everyone that this is something I can do.  I'm very stubborn and one of the best ways to encourage me to do something is to tell me I can't.  No one has told me I can't or vocally expressed doubts, but I'm self-conscious enough to believe that if I quit something there will be some jerk out there feeling smug and pleased to see me fail.  I talked to the Hubs about my thoughts.  He has been enormously supportive of my marathon training.  I never would have gotten this far without his efforts and encouragement.  He, more than anyone else, is the one I don't want to disappoint.  I was completely honest about what I'm thinking and why.  I told him I didn't know what I thought he'd say or even what I wanted him to say. Smart man that he is, he spent a while thinking before saying things to suggest that he'd be fine with either choice.  I wasn't asking him to make the decision for me and he didn't.  He knows me so well.  :)

So right now I feel comfortable with saying that my training will be finished after I run the Mt. Nebo half marathon in three weeks.  Is that a permanent decision?  I don't know.  It's amazing to me that my muscles and joints can stand up so beautifully to 14 miles of running but the aftermath with my digestive tract is enough to leave me moaning and miserable.  As I've been typing my body has started to recover and the sick is going away.  Huzzah!  That may also be because I've been sitting still and it could come back with a vengeance as soon as I stand up.  Not looking forward to testing that thought.  When my body feels better I'm less likely to want to stop.  The difference with what I'm feeling in this very moment as I type is that if I stop with the half marathon that I won't be quitting, just stopping.  Perhaps that's a fine line but, again, at this very moment, my mind doesn't immediately reject the thought as it usually would.  Right now what I have done feels...sufficient.  That's the best way to describe it.  It's the same way I felt at the end of my mission as I pondered whether I had been diligent enough and worked hard enough.

I am helped along with the sufficiency thought by what felt right as I was registering for races this week.  I really wanted to sign up for the Mt. Nebo half.  I expected to run that with my running buddies.  They won't be running it because they've got other things going on in their lives.  Imagine that. :) I still wanted to do it and I was excited to sign up.  So I did.  I went to register for the full marathon because the price was going up.  I couldn't do it.  I felt like I shouldn't do it yet.  So I didn't.  I was even feeling really confident about the marathon that day.  Whether that was an impression or not, I simply don't know.  I'm not yet ready to say that this is as far as the marathon training will take me but, as of today, it's looking that way.  If that's disappointing to you then I apologize.  If you feel smug about it then please keep your feelings and looks to yourself or I may have to blow a raspberry in your general direction.  In the end I'll make the decision I think is best and makes me feel peace. That's what I always do.  We'll see what exactly that decision is.

Enjoying a Run?!?

Well, it seems I may have turned a corner.  There I times I actually (gasp!) look forward to my next run.  Weird.  It's not generally for treadmill runs, but I do seem to enjoy running outside now.  It's more pleasant to actually see the ground moving under my feet than just to stay in a single place and run until I'm done.  The change seems to have coincided with when we started to run down the canyon and when The Hubs downloaded Zombies, Run! onto his phone for me.  It gives me something a little more exciting to run to than just my regular playlist.  All I have to do is steal his fancy pants phone when I go on a run. :)

Today's run was 12 miles...almost.  It came up to about 11.5 when I was done.  I had driven a route the night before and got everything all planned.  When I actually ran I missed a turn and it cut 2 miles off the course.  I was cursing the stupid GPS on the phone because I thought I had one mile left and it told me there were still three.  You want to know what's demotivational when you run?  Realizing there are two extra miles to go when you thought you were almost done is pretty disheartening.  I added in some extra running spots to try to make up the mileage I'd lost.  By the time I got to 11.5 I was almost at my front door and I could see that I needed to get inside and shower lickety-split if we were to make it on time to the family activity at my in-laws house.  So I decided that 11.5 miles was good enough. Besides, at that point it was all I could do to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  One of my neighbors told me she saw me running around our block and I was a little embarrassed.  By that time my form had broken down completely and my pace was comparable to a sloth's.  I was so tired and sore in muscles I didn't know I had.

The good news is that I finished and came close enough to my distance goal to make me happy.  The bad news is pretty much the same as it always is.  I start to question and wonder about the decision to run a marathon.  Do I really care about doing a marathon as much as I need to so I can finish?  If I were to quit the training would I, on race day, be disappointed in myself for not finishing or would I dance a jig and be pleased I wasn't putting myself through that misery?  Hard to tell.  What I do know is that I'm one that just keeps putting on foot in front of the other until the run is over.  That means I would certainly finish the marathon if I went--even if I had to walk the whole thing.

**Continued two days later**

There was some pretty good news about Saturday's run along with the discouraging thoughts.  Most of the day Saturday I was sore and tired (I'd just run 11.5 miles, how else was I expected to feel?) and walked a bit gingerly.  Sunday was a huge surprise.  I expected to be hobbling around, sore and tires, as I usually do the day after a long run.  I didn't.  My body felt pretty good.  Even more exciting to me was that the runners diarrhea I've experienced for the past several weeks never showed up.  I can hear the heavenly choirs rejoicing with me.  I love not feeling like I have to be parked on the toilet all day.  Last week I only had half a day of feeling sick and I thought that was pretty good.  Not sick at all is about a million times better.

The biggest surprise of all came this morning when I got on the treadmill for a four mile run.  I did awesome.  I expected my legs to rebel against me and refuse to cooperate.  I got the four miles in 41 minutes.  That's really good for me, especially because I run on a little bit of an incline.  We'll see how it goes tomorrow when I run six miles.  I'm expecting to do pretty well though I doubt I'll be able to keep the same pace.  It's all stuff to look forward to.  After my last post I had a really difficult running week.  Last week was great and this week is shaping up to be even better.  Also, by the end of tomorrow's run I will have reached the gold level of the fitness challenge I've been doing.  I originally signed up with the goal of finishing at silver level, which is 170 miles.  After a good week of running I looked at my projected mileage for the marathon and saw that I could reach the 220 miles of gold level. I was super nervous, but a challenge isn't a challenge unless you push, right?  Well, I'm 4.9 miles away from gold level and I've certainly pushed it.  I'm pretty proud of myself.

Houston, We Have a Problem

The marathon training hit a major snag today.  Well, the snag won't come for several more weeks, but I found out about it today.  Neither of my running buddies plans on finishing the marathon training. That means there will be 2-5 weeks (depending on how long they choose to continue running) where I'll be on my own for the long training run.  I don't do solo runs.  I'm glad they told me now so I have a bit of time to see if there's someone else I can run with or so I can figure something else out.  But after today I wonder if I won't just choose to stop the training also.

There are several reasons I'm torn about the decision.  For one thing, in my book it says that if I follow the training and advice I will complete a marathon.  That's pretty exciting and I trust it entirely.  On the other hand, I'm tired.  So tired.  Our run today was 11 miles.  We ran 8 down the canyon and 3 more in town.  I started to get some stomach cramps three or four miles in and those were pretty uncomfortable.  It was hard.  The opposite of that, of course, is that I never expected this to be easy.  Every hard, worthwhile thing I've ever done has always included a time when I wanted to give up and quit.  I'm a rather stubborn and prideful girl, which makes me balk at the idea of just saying I'm done without finishing.  Then there's how I feel after the long run every Saturday.  The runner's diarrhea is bad enough to make me question if I am willing to feel it every week until the end of October.  That's 13 more weeks of miserable Saturdays.  On the other hand (I'm starting to sound like Tevye), if I don't do this now it is unlikely that I ever will.  How will I feel in 13 weeks knowing I had planned on running a marathon that day but had simply given up during the training? That thought grates on me worse than any other.  However, there is my family to consider and that is a HUGE consideration.  The Hubs has been so wonderfully supportive of me in my attempt.  Every Saturday he makes sure he's in charge of the kids and the house while I run and then take a couple of hours to recover and shower.  Even after that I'm fairly useless because I feel cruddy.  By the evening or the next morning I'm fine, but it's not a fun way for the Hubs to spend his one day that is completely off.  There are times when I can see the strain and I feel guilty knowing I'm the cause.  I also know that he would never ask me to stop.  The kids don't seem to mind that I'm gone though.

So now that you know what's going on in my head I'll move on to the big run itself.  I actually really enjoyed most of it.  I didn't urn my music on for quite a while because I really love listening to the sounds of the canyon as I run.  City sounds aren't my favorite but it's had to beat the sound of a mountain stream--so peaceful.  We've been running down the canyon to keep cool, to have an "easier" run, and to train the muscles we don't usually use in a city run.  We learned about those running muscles last week. :)  We've talked about running the Mt. Nebo half marathon and this is great training for that.  Not to mention that the marathon I intend to run is also a downhill canyon race.  There doesn't seem to be a better way to train than to actually do something identical or similar to what I plan. Aside from the oh-so-lovely stomach cramps, I think I would have been quite pleased with the run had it not been so hard on my running buddies.  It was pretty hard on them which, in turn, got me thinking about what was difficult for me.  Not a good way to feel confident.  The plus part is that I made it to the top of the final hill by chanting, "I am a marathoner.  I am strong.  I love to run." until I made it all the way up.  That little mental trick works wonders.  Really what I need to do is focus on me and what's going on with me to keep totally positive.  I think that will give me the best idea of my body's capabilities.

Above and Below Average

I'm still on the running kick.  Most of my sewing has been on hold as I've been doing other things. The marathon is the big goal for the next three months.  But I will be making some shirts and a pair of pants as Blue Eyes gets ready for Kindergarten in the fall.  Gah!  My baby is growing up.  :(

Anyway, I was talking about the marathon.  The only reason I started running as because I needed to lose weight and having an end goal kept me motivated.  That was why I started training for a 5k last year.  Marathon training lasts longer and, therefore, keeps the motivation up for longer.  Moving on.

I was reading through the new chapter in my book and part of the chapter is about nutrition.  In the section where they talk about how many calories are used there's a line about "the average 120 pound female runner."  That's where I burst out laughing.  I am way, way above average on that count.  I weigh almost half again as much as the "average" female runner.

Now for the below average part.  This week has the miles for the two short runs of the week bumped up to four miles from the three I've been doing for the past several weeks.  The book said I wouldn't even notice it.  I was amazed to find it was true!  I was still sore from the 10 mile run on Saturday (we ran almost all of it downhill and used muscles we're not generally accustomed to) so I expected the four miles on Monday to be akin to torture.  I was shocked at how easy the four miles were.  Today's medium run was also bumped up from five miles to six.  It was very challenging.  The worst part was the last mile.  It was only sheer force of will that kept my legs going.  "You won't even notice it" my foot!  It was miserable.  I felt like I'd hit the wall after hitting five miles.  But I was pleased with myself for pushing through regardless of my desire to stop.

After I was all done and showered and recovering from a difficult run I took another peek in the book. The reason that last mile was so blasted horrible was because...I wasn't supposed to do it.  It was still supposed to be five miles but I jumped the gun and didn't check the schedule.  Silly me.  But hey, if my weight is above average at least my intelligence is below.  ;)

10 Miles!!!!!

Last time I said I needed to have a good run.  Well, I can check that off now.  I've had two GREAT runs in a row.  Actually, I guess it's three.  Last Tuesday's five mile run was so much better than I expected.  It certainly wasn't easy, it was just way better.  I was worried during the run that I hadn't had enough to drink because I was hardly sweating at all.  Turns out I was sweating profusely from my head and it all went into my ponytail.  When I finished I was able to wring it out.  Three times.  And I felt great when I was done.  Thursday's three mile run was the same but with less sweat.

Today was my first ten miler.  We started out going down the canyon single file with one of the husbands following in the car.  There was some concern about being mauled by a bear or a mountain lion. It was also nice to have someone to whom we could give our cast off items we didn't want to carry (long sleeved shirts for them and a waist pack for me).  That took care of the first 6.8 miles and the rest were done in town.  It felt great!  There were obviously parts where I was tired or thought it would be nice to just walk for a bit, but it is easily my favorite run of all time.  Who'd have thought I would ever say that about a 10 mile run?!  We did stop a couple of times to stretch or walk for a bit and for me to go to the bathroom.

Now comes the honest part.  As great as he run was and as terrific as I felt immediately afterward, I'm still paying for it hours later.  I'm pretty sure my intestines are angry I bounced them around for two hours and are now wreaking their vengeance.  Last week I thought I'd figured out why they were so mad at me.  I must have been mistaken because it's all the same this week.  Stomach cramps are not my friend.  On the plus side, I can eat anything I darn well please today and tomorrow.  I probably burned at least 1800 calories on this run and my...uh...urges...will be gone by morning.

Princess Festival

One of the prizes Q-ball got at the Baby Contest was a pass for this year's Princess Festival.  He didn't use the pass, but the girls and I did.  We even got to bring along some friends.  It was pretty terrific. The kids and parents are invited to dress up as princesses and go on adventures.  That's where the sewing was involved.  I didn't make anything new for the girls because they already had short sleeved princess dresses.  They didn't get a choice about which dress to wear because they each only have one dress in their size without long sleeves.  The girls didn't mind me dictating which costume to wear.  Blue Eyes went as Cinderella in a dress she got from her aunt and Pink Blur went in her Snow White dress from Halloween.  I was able to bring along my niece.  She was in the Cinderella dress my mom made for her.  I was also able to bring along some neighborhood friends and their mom to join in the festivities.

The group of us at the end of the day.  Looking at all that blonde hair I feel like singing "One of These Things is Not Like the Other Things".
L to R: D (my niece), Me, Pink Blur, T, friend C, M, and Blue Eyes

 The only sewing I did specifically for the festival was my shirt.  The skirt I wore for my brother's wedding made for a great start of a Sleeping Beauty costume.  I found a t-shirt pattern and grabbed some fabric from the box of blue fabric at my parents' house.  I made a half-hearted attempt at adding white things to the sleeves to really look like Sleeping Beauty.  As half of an attempt tends to make for failure, I abandoned the sleeve embellishment as it failed the first time.  It was also midnight when I decided that "good enough" really was good enough.

You can't really see the shirt well, but there it is.  We're getting autographs from the Cheshire Cat.

I am ever so glad I didn't try to go over the top with my costume.  It ended up not being too hot to wear and was super comfy.  But I won't be wearing it anymore.  I'm not a huge fan of the length or the cut but it was great for its intended use.  If we go next year I'll have to get myself a different dress. I could have fun with my very own princess dress.  The pattern I used was 5-10 years old, when shirt length was shorter.  I survived being slightly less fashionable.  :) 

Here's a better view of the costume.  The tee is just a basic V neck with gathered sleeves.  Nice and comfy.

The girls are using magic to work together and fix the crown.

I had briefly considered wearing my Arwen costume from several years ago and I'm so glad I decided against it.  The sleeves would have been ridiculously hot.  It was also fun to see the costumes the princesses had.  The mermaid princess costume was phenomenal.

Blue Eyes wasn't the only one who wanted to touch the costume and see what it was made of.  I'm just the one of us who respects personal space.

It was a fun time.  I'm glad I made the shirt so I would have a princess costume to wear.  I also really did enjoy seeing the other costumes and getting ideas for things to make in the future.  

And now I'll leave you with a few more pictures because they were really cute.

The photo prop of death.  Before this picture it had already fallen down once, which is why my friend C is in the back holding it up.  After we finished taking pictures it fell over on Pink Blur and pinned her underneath.  She was unhappy about that.  We let it stay face down after that.

All set for the carriage ride.  I had abandoned my curly hair piece by then.

Rapunzel was very sweet after D fell down and got a nose bleed.  D was pretty upset about it and I was just glad her parents happened to pack a little hand towel in her bag.  Brilliant!

Fatigue

Oh, how I wish I had a really encouraging, uplifting post to cover the past few days.  But I promised myself I would be completely real.  I am in serious need of a good run.  Maybe I should say I'm in serious need of an easy run.  There have been quite a few truly difficult runs over the past week or so. The 8 mile run on Saturday just about finished me off.  It was partly the distance, partly my lack of water, and mostly the heat.  I'm not so good with heat.

We took a new route that none of us had ever run before.  There was a big section of straight and flat that my running buddies really hated.  Because I'm on a treadmill the other three days of training a week that wasn't so bad for me.  But my body just kind of gave up.  At one point I thought to myself that it would just be easier to get pregnant and deal with that instead of the run.  Obviously I wasn't thinking very clearly.

The last mile or two was pretty bad.  I started to get a bit light-headed and had to walk while I downed some fruit snacks.  Then I pretty much hobbled the last little way back.  I was not helped along by the fact that there was some idiot standing around right by where we were going to finish that started heckling us.  I had a couple of choice words saved up for him until I realized it was the husband of one of my buddies and he was cheering us on.  And he had ice cold water bottles.  Then I decided he was my new best friend.

This morning was another 3 mile run.  It was hard.  My legs were so tired.  I guess that's to be expected after only one day of rest.  Tomorrow I have a five mile run so we will see how that goes.  I just need to remind myself that I don't need to be a hero or a speed demon.  Saturday is a 10 miler.  I've asked them if we can keep it to 9 miles because I'm not sure I'm ready for 10 after last week's run.  The other part of me wants to just push forward.  It will be an easier run because most of it will be down hill through the canyon and earlier in the morning so it won't be so hot.  As I write that out I feel a little more confident about doing it.

I've been trying to think of ways to encourage myself and get past the mental block, so here goes.  I'm no stranger to doing hard things.  There is always some point at which I think I can't possibly go on, that I don't want to, that it's not worth it, or any number of things that make me feel like simply quitting.  Quitting would be easier but there would always be regret that I didn't finish what I started.  The big thing I keep trying to remember is that I built a house.  While I was pregnant.  There were several times I felt like we would be building forever and never actually move in.  Moving day was a year and a half ago, so obviously we did finish building.  I tell myself that this is just one of those times when I feel like I'll be training forever and never cross that finish line.  That helps me get through.  If I could build a house while pregnant I should be able to do anything.  The mental game is just as important and the physical one.