A Week To Go!

Well, here it is, the countdown begins. I'm getting a bit anxious, but that's to be expected. Mostly, this week will be a lot of waiting, and me being exceptionally boring. I'll be going to bed early every night, running very little, and eating bland, carb heavy food all week. Well, maybe not to bland, I don't have to suffer, right?

This weekend was great! Friday, I saw Noreen's class project. Her class created a theatrical piece based on writings and personal stories about child labor in America. It was very interesting, dynamic and fresh. Afterwards, I surprised her with a laptop that I purchased used from a nice kid off of Craig's List. She was definitely surprised! It works great and she's now basking in her newfound digital mobility. Also, along those lines, we re-upped with Sprint and got new phones on Saturday. I ran, too, which I'll talk about below. We went out to an amazing dinner that night, and the food was scrumptious but the best part about it was the company(just Noreen, perfect). We had friends over for brunch on Sunday, I cooked up a storm, and Noreen worked on school work with a classmate(that's who came over). She and her fiancee brought her dog over, which didn't go entirely smooth at first, but by the end our dogs and the guest dog were like old chums, and thouroughly tuckered out. Then my brother came over for Easter dinner. A great weekend!

I ran Saturday, oh did I run. I got in 16 miles, and it felt pretty good, all in all. Now, some of you who casually, or more seriously, follow running will wonder why I thought it would be a good idea to run 16 miles 9 days before a marathon. Well, I have a couple rationalizations. First, I hadn't run over 10 miles in about 3 or 4 weeks, so physically, I just needed to remind my body what was up. Additonally, I wanted to test the knee at high milaeage to see if I'd have issues. I needed to get back into my pacing, which I could only practice at high mileage, before race day. And mentally, I needed to work on my fortitude, which I couldn't do under 10 miles. So, that's what I told myself ahead of time, and most of it was true and all of it was addressed on the run. But, the best part of the whole thing is that it gave my confidence a huge boost, and it felt great! I got through all of it, there was some minor discomfort, but I worked through it(proof that I could work through it). My time was pretty good too, not what it was pre-injury, but not as horrible as I thought it might me. Another good thing is that all that running wear and tear started again, toe calluses, toe nail stress, organ shifting(happens from all the shock being absorbed through the body), muscle aches, and all that stuff. Now, I had gotten used to all this through my training, but since I hadn't really trained in the past few weeks(don't worry, I'm referring to long distance running, I'm trained) all this conditioning to wear and tear had gone away. I'd become a bit soft! But, through running hard the last week and a half I started to get used to it again, which is good cuz I wouldn't want to meet all this discomfort anew during the middle of 26.2 miles. To sum up, the long run was awesome this weekend, and just what I needed despite it's contradiciton of accepted marathon training theory.

That leads us to training this week. Mostly I'm going to rest. My runs will be no longer than 3 miles all week. I'll refrain from running Friday and Saturday. In actuality, I'm not doing anything Saturday save sitting on the couch watching the tube or reading(with the exception of going downtown to pick up my race kit). Then I'll do a slow 2 miles on Sunday to limber up. All week, I'm shooting to get to bed early every night and get a lot of sleep. And, I'll be eating lots of carbs from now till Friday, and good clean proteins like fish and chicken. Oh yeah, lots of stretching.

At last we come to the other component of this whole thing, fundraising. So far, we have raised $2874.oo from some amazing people out there! Give yourselves a round of applause. Ok, done, good, you deserve it. But, we only have a few hundred more to go for that goal of $3500. So, let's finish strong with a big charitable kick at the end here!!! Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell everyone you know about the blog and to consider chipping in. We can do this by the time the gun goes off next Monday!!! It would be a great send off for the Horizons for Homeless Children team, and even better it'll be a great gift to all those kids. So, what do you say, about $700 in 7 days, easy, right?!? I thought so. Have a great week everyone!