For those of you who are following my running progress it is time to declare defeat.  After five weeks of 90+ degree weather, three weeks of travel and a good 12 days of virus hell, I have decided not to run in the 1/2 Marathon on Sept. 23rd.  That decision was confirmed this morning when I ran (if you can call it that) for the first time in weeks.  There’s always next year - right?

6.5 hours ago I finished running 9.5 miles. Upon my return I said to my dear husband (before telling him how far I had made it), “I want you to tell me how cool I am, how amazed you are, how you can’t believe I could do it AND how you always knew I could. I want shock and awe here!” I was pretty high. It was indeed a perfect day for running - sunny but not too warm, breezy but not to cool and I wanted to take advantage of that. I really didn’t know I could jump from 5.8 to 9.5 (and I admit, right now my legs are a little stiff) but now I know I’m in the race. How much harder could 4 more miles be? Right?

I woke up this morning to what can only be described as a chipmunk playing the bongo drums three feet from my head. Right outside our bedroom is a wonderful, huge maple tree which I love because when the curtains are pulled back (which is most of the time) it feels like our bed is in a tree house. Late morning to late afternoon is spring and summer the room is filled with dappled sunlight and in the winter the mid-day sun floods the room making it a perfect place for cozy winter naps. However, there is a branch well loved by little critters just a few feet form the head of our bed which is where, at 6:03 a.m., this particular chipmunk was playing the bongos.

I can’t say I minded that much though because today was a glorious day and it was a perfect morning for a run. Having come of my depressing 5.8 mile run last weekend, I started out this morning with new determination and have added wind sprints to my training. Marion Winik writes in her book Above Us Only Sky - the () are mine and I skipped #3 intentionally - also I HIGHLY recommend the full essay for descriptions of each number

As it turns out, all any neurotic layabout needs to do to achieve radiant physical fitness is refocus her God-given obsessive tenden­cies on exercise. Forget your eyebrows, your pie crust, your chil­dren’s social lives, your career, or whatever compulsions you’re wasting your time on now, and get crazy about working out. In my case, for example, there was a little drug problem, some al­cohol issues, an eating disorder, the usual slow-cooker of self-de­struction simmering between the ears . . . but now that I have finally filled the gaping hole left in my life by eliminating those behaviors with exercise fetishism, I’m so rehabilitated I can’t believe it.
1. Make exercise a habit (like a heroin habit).
2. It is okay to think you suck.
4. Pray. There are no atheists at mile twenty-six.(or in my case mile 13)
5. Make friends. As with other habits, peer pressure is help­ful, at least when you’re a beginner.
6. Don’t improve-at least not consciously.
7. Lift weights.
8. If it doesn’t get you high, you won’t do it. So don’t do anything or think anything that ruins your high. Protect your plea­sure in the way you would protect your drugs or your chosen mate. Crave it, move toward it, get flushed, breathe hard, drip with sweat from head to toe, get in the shower under the hot water, then cold. Do nothing that doesn’t support your rush. If you are the kind of person who thinks drugs are good, but medication is bad, you must make exercise your drug, not your medication.
9. 10., etc. Let nothing stop you. Grab it like somebody’s trying to take it away from you, which is true: time and age and death and your own limiting voices and all the many more important and less selfish things you have to do today. Fuck ‘em. Let your inner Sick jock drive you to sit-ups on the cold tile floor of a hotel bathroom. To swim at dawn. To run twenty-three miles with a leg cramp.

Exercise turns out to be a mental challenge more than a physi­cal one. It is all about what you have decided you can do. The mus­cle you stretch most thoroughly is your will, and just as the physical rewards you receive spill over into other areas of life, so will the tough­mindedness. So remember: The obstacles are in your head. The fin­ish line is in your head. Even your thighs are in your head. If you have a will of steel, you can have abs of steel. If you have a will of marshmallow, you can make s’mores. Get out of the fat, into the fire, and burn, baby, burn till you scream like Jane Fonda on MDA.

I offer these tips in the spirit of passing the bong. Just try it this once. You’ll like it. It’s really good shit.

So if you see me out pounding the pavement - look closely. I’ll probably be chanting, ‘this is my drug!’

I’m training for a 1/2 marathon this fall.  I know… you know… you’ve heard me talk about it.  There is a strategy there - I figure the more people I tell, and the more people who know, the more likely I am to keep training even when the training gets tough.  And the training got tough this morning.  According to my training schedule, by now my long runs are supposed to be topping out at 8 miles once a week.  This morning I ran for an hour and 20 minutes and when I clocked it later today it was just shy of 6 miles.  I wasn’t expecting it to be 8 but I really hoped for somewhere between 6 and 7!  Depressing….

Just in case you want to know, the race is September 23, 2007.  It starts in Menasha and ends in Riverside park in Neenah.  I’ll be the one limping across the finish line.