you will do it and you will like it, dammit

I am in full on fool myself mode here. Since I am in exile in SC, I have all of my and Brian’s music on a hard drive and finally figured out how to load it into my Itunes (actually, he told me – I didn’t figure anything out). Brian has over a month’s worth of music and I have about 20 minutes, mostly consisting of Fergie songs. For a while I thought my songs weren’t loading in and then I realized that I just literally have 1/1000th of the music he has…anyway, it took me an hour and a half to make a Houston Marathon playlist with a second little playlist of music that makes me feel good to listen to on the plane. I’m not going quite as far as to say it’s music I want to hear if the plane goes down, but I did just to happen to call most of my loved ones today…just in case.

It’s not that I am a firm believer that something bad will happen; it is that I think if I take every precaution and throw it out there into the universe as many times as possible, it will not happen. So, at 11:11am this morning when I looked at the clock, I wished that I would have a good [fun] time in the marathon…and-not-die-in-a-plane-crash. Am I the only person who makes a wish on the clock like that (2:22, 3:33, etc) and then always tries to jam in a second wish? Usually I wish for something and then tack on something about not dying so that I am not on my deathbed thinking, “WHY DID YOU NOT WISH TO DRIVE TO THE BI-LO WITHOUT GETTING HIT BY A SEMI-TRUCK, YOU DIPSTICK?!” Not sure if that qualifies as superstition, paranoia, or something else entirely.

Also contributing to my positive mental attitude is drinking some Michelob Ultra with the hopes of falling asleep sometime before midnight tonight. My flight is at 5:30AM and as you might surmise with my recounting of absolutely no long runs for the past couple months, it’s not a time of day I’ve seen in a while. The gas station attendant totally tried to poo poo my out of state license. She was going to sell it to me, changed her mind, and then got the manager to come over and okay it. I was like, woman, do you see these fine lines and wrinkles? Do you think this is a freaking sting operation? There is a line of five people behind me. I am 28 years old. Give me the mother loving light beer and let me get out of here because my reheated frozen pizza in my crappy apartment is getting cold.

Perhaps this is also a good time to admit that today I was cruising around being kind of bored/lonely and I thought, hmm, I kind of like it here. [screeching tires] What? There is absolutely nothing to do, but I also never feel like I should be doing something else. I don’t feel rushed. There are not zillions of college students everywhere. I kind of like driving down Irby Street every day and seeing the same weirdos, waving at the lady dressed as a blue M&M, homeless black dude with super white beard riding a bike, mental man who is always speed walking with his mouth open. Today there was someone dressed as a dalmatian outside of a vet’s office. Never been to a place that loves to employ people dressed up in ridiculous outfits to wave at traffic like Florence, SC.

Okay, time to pack. See you in the future with my tales of triumph, woe, misery, and various unsavory characters in the southern USA.

prepare to be unprepared

Chevron Houston Marathon is this Sunday and I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how to up my mental game while knowing my physical game isn’t quite there. I’ve been running, but not “marathon training” since Ridge to Bridge at the end of October and my body is definitely not in as good a shape. I am still running, working out, etc but taking a closer look at the miles I have run the past couple of months solves ye great mystery of why I don’t feel as fit as I felt six months ago. It’s probably been said over and over for the past couple of months, but finishing grad school/out of state move/starting my dietetic internship were obvious priorities over long runs most weekends and weekdays. It is what it is – I know some people who despise that phrase, but I like it. Simple, basic. Nothing to it.

So, the world and I are in agreement that I have not scientifically coordinated my training to culminate in ultimate physical prowess this Sunday in Houston. Now what? Now my question is, what can I do? Do I start at what feels like a reasonably safe pace until I feel like I’m going to yarf and then slowly deathjog it in? This is actually my usual “strategy,” so maybe I need to downgrade to starting really, really slow…and tapering, as the saying goes. Then I wonder, how slow does my finish have to be to rank as disappointing or acceptable? Certainly I will be very happy with any finish and I don’t think it’s a given that you will always finish because you never know. I don’t think I’m in any worse shape than I was for my first marathon, but now the difference is that I know better! I know that 13.1 is not really halfway through, “only 10k to go!” can mean an eternity, and they can find some real bastard hills to slow up the last tenth of a mile, possibly even in flat Houston. One single goal: have funskies. I am going to try to start extra slow for real; unfortunately lately even running slow does not feel that slow which is kind of a concern. Also, the weather forecast is calling for chance of thunderstorms and has not broken this information down into hourly predictions yet. Harrumph.

Other complaints: I hate flying and haven’t flown anywhere in over five years. I panic and sweat and cuss and grip the armrest and think about what a dumbass I am to be in some POS aircraft 40,000 feet off the ground. I can’t think about it right now or I will not go – in historic 2010 when I entered the lottery for the race, I thought I would either be living in Houston (my second choice internship was there) or sitting at home doing nothing if I didn’t get matched to a DI and I would drive out there. Flying wasn’t on my mind. The worst is going to be when I get there and realize that I have to fly home. The good part about that will be that I won’t be expected to run a marathon shortly thereafter and I am plenty old enough to have a drink on the plane.

Tomorrow is the last day of my first internship rotation in food systems management. It’s been real. I start a new rotation at the hospital Monday morning. I am sure I will make a great first impression when I can barely descend stairs, still have salt crusted to my eyebrows, or can’t write anything because I have fingers the size of bratwursts. Whee!