dig

my baby got sauce...

anyway, today was a short, easy run. i went down to 34th, up hickory, along 41st, down beech, up 36th, down chestnut and home. barely even 18 minutes. eeeeeeeeeeeeasy. i just have to keep these clod-hoppers moving so that they remember what it's like to move on saturday. SATURDAY!!!

3 MORE DAYS UNTIL THE MARATHON!!!!!!

wow. saturday. i'll probably enter some zen-like state once i finish. my dad might not be able to come, since he's recovering from some out-patient surgery. :( that's sad. but i want dad to be resting and feeling better. i'll see him in november anyway, and we'll share all kinds of stuff then. but mom will be there, and that will be huge. i wonder what she's thinking about this. i'd love to do some kind of event with her, like a 5K walk or something. i've always had runs to share with dad, and i want something with mom too.

chris will there on saturday. he should be able to get a lot of grading done while waiting for me to finish. :)

right now, i'm trying to quantify this marathon. what does it mean to me? (you can tell that i've been teaching to the SAT too much--my questions sound like the damn essay prompts...) anyway, it's huge. i'm thinking about this past summer, how i moved up here, and it became one of the first things i put on my plate. i really didn't know what i was doing, and i didn't know anybody in the running community. i jumped back into church at 2nd Pres., and i was desperately seeking work. training for the marathon was a constant and really kept me going on some days. it made me be stronger on the days when i just wanted to cut out and cry. then there were the bumps. those breathing attacks really scared the shit out of me. did i have asthma? would everything i worked for get shut down so quickly? would i have a condition that would stick with me for the rest of my life? and then that fall on key highway--did i break anything? would i be able to recover in time? would the drugs mess me up? those things worked themselves out. i don't have asthma. i do have 3/4ths the lung capacity of the average woman my age and build, but dr. sam says that i'm very far ahead of the game, since i've been an athlete for so long. and i didn't break anything on that fall. instead i just bruised it, got messed up because of the drugs and then got un-messed. so i've recovered. i've beat those rough downs that would try to pull me under and keep me from doing anything productive.

so this marathon is... a testament? i think, once i have my body and mind back in one piece after the race, i'll see it as a history of my strength. it's so tempting to say that whatever we do is unremarkable because we don't want to sound conceited or anything, and we often self-efface to our detriment. so i think i'm going to have this be something that i'm extremely proud of, especially considering the hurdles i've cleared. i'll also have this be a jump-off point. i'm planning on doing the mardi-gras half marathon in New Orleans in February. then i'll probably focus on 5 and 10K's during the spring. i want to see how much faster i can get...

and off she goes!