ummmm, i'm a L-A-M-E-O!

ok, so after giving all the other family bloggers crap about big expanses of time without blogs, i missed a full month! life has been good and crazy busy with holidays and finishing the fund-raising and all, but i'm still a lame blogger. rather than give a full training synopsis, here is the extremely abbreviated one....did 10 miles in a little over 3 hours, went home and then couldn't get out of my car to go inside to change. not that it hurt or anything, just couldn't communicate to my legs the series of events that needed to happen in order to stand from a sitting position, they had temporary amnesia. also, made the mistake of scheduling 2 clients for massage that day. the first one was unbelievably tough, my legs shook throughout the entire session, though i spent a lot of time on her neck, which coincidentally is much easier to do when sitting (hooray!!!). then, my second client called to tell me that she wasn't feeling well and needed to reschedule. i've never been so happy to have a cancellation :). did the regular 3 or 4 midweek mile trainings, then went to Tampa for Christmas and training with dad and the suncoast team. there, we did 12.5 miles. we meant to only do 12, but dad and i got a bit lost on the route and did some back and forth doubling back stuff for a little bit. the distance was tough, but it was really nice to train on flat ground. i missed the recovery of the downhills, but my cute butt didn't miss the uphills of VA at all! also managed to get a great lesson on band-aid adhesives and petroleum jelly which will prevent delays on race day (they say to do all of your trial and error stuff in training, that was BIG error!) got home to do the tapers, no problems with the training, legs and lungs feeling good, got lots of rest over the break since i didn't have to get up for work for a few days, tried doing the 2 pair of socks trick to alleviate the blister problem which is working really well and will be a race day addition (as well as a handful of blister band aids and NO bacitracin!!!). went yesterday to Dicks to stock up on Gu and Stingers and bought my $5 disposable sweatshirt from Target for keeping warm before the race and a really fuzzy fleece for after. and now it seems, that with just about a week left, i'm ready for race day!

so here is what i have taken from all of this. there is a really long distance between "not easy" and "hard" and an equally long one between "hard" and "impossible". i knew this would be hard, in fact at times i thought it would be impossible, but i have come to realize that there is great joy in pushing to those places and seeing that i can survive. and not just survive, but really be good. maybe not right away, i certainly didn't feel great while giving that massage on the day of the 10 miles, but i did it. and my client never knew the difference. i pushed myself beyond what i EVER thought i was capable of and not only didn't just die, but went on with life as usual with a slightly weird limp. (to be honest, it wasn't even a limp, i just couldn't get my knees to work so i walked like a gingerbread man all day, which was actually highly amusing to me!). and during the 12.5 mile trek, when my band aid kept falling off and it felt like a steak knife was rubbing up and down on my heal, i just kept sitting down and trying to fix it. because i kept thinking, "well what are you going to do? just go home because your foot hurts? your didn't get up this early and put on these clothes and come out here to go home without completing this distance, now get it together and fix this silly problem!" that's new. that's what i am taking from this and i can't wait to apply it to other parts of my life. to know that once something is no longer easy it doesn't necessarily mean i need to give up on it, that maybe if i dig in and work a little harder, i can succeed. i can't tell you how much that is worth to me. certainly more than the amount i had to fund raise to get here. i have taken far more from this than i ever expected.

thanks pops. thanks sister.