2010 in review

It’s that time of year again. This wasn’t really a banner year for running, with less “firsts” and less PRs, but I knew going into the year that priorities would have to be priorities and running wasn’t always the top of the list or even close. Some notable events in my life this year were, in no particular order, finishing my master’s degree in nutrition, going through the very competitive process of applying for dietetic internships and being matched to my first choice program, learning to love our new puppy Oliver, excellent summer long run buddies Katie and Denise, being accepted into the Brooks ID program in March and subsequently being invited back to the Brooks ID PACE team for 2011, being a warrior, ran 18xx miles for the year (not done yet!), six year anniversary with Brian, bullying my mom into her first half marathon, and running two marathons including the awesome Ridge to Bridge Marathon and the kind of miserable ING Georgia Marathon.

Here’s how my resolutions for 2010 panned out:

Floss more. Success! I floss all the time now. Not even joking. If I’m at home, I can’t go running without brushing and flossing first.

Run faster. Failure! 2010 will not go down in history as the year I turned on the jets. I had A, B, and C goals for faster marathon times (under 3:50, under 4:00, and under PR of 4:12). I met none of these, but I’ll tell you that I might have if I didn’t have to take a crap in the woods during R2B. Or if I just trained more, but whatever. I think I slowed in general this year partly as a function of giving up the treadmill at the beginning of the summer. Next year’s goal: don’t get slower.

Branch out. Semi-success! I would like to think I was a bit more flexible this year. Definitely branched out in the eating department. I can’t say that I did a ton of exciting things in 2010, but short of skydiving or taking up a bunch of new hobbies I don’t have time for, I think I did pretty well.

Keep in touch with people I care about. Semi-failure! My hatred of the phone and reluctance to talk ‘n drive got the better of me this year. I talked to my siblings, but not some of the friends I had in mind when making this resolution. In some success, I did some casual mental whittling down of people that I don’t really think I need to be friends with.

Other stuff: not leaving things undone at night (dishes, clutter, etc), be better about keeping track of things/writing stuff down, less gossip, fewer impulse grocery buys, volunteer for something at least once a month, finish graduate school. Chill out, don’t be a jerk, be a good person. Hmm. Well, that’s a long list and I will probably be lucky to complete it before my time on earth is up, but I think I was pretty successful in each of this. I definitely improved on not leaving things undone, keeping track of things, gossiping less (or limiting my gossip – definitely still did some), doing some volunteering, and finishing graduate school. I was mostly not a jerk, although I had my moments as one is wont to do when blessed with a sarcastic nature, I suppose. I am still working on that. I was mostly non-offensive and minded my own business. 2011 could stand some more discipline in the grocery buying department.

moving along

Last week I was reminded that I’m not great at getting things done without a schedule and a plan. I still don’t have much of a plan for this week except battling the rain and running a 15k Saturday morning.

11/7 sunday – off
11/8 monday – PM 4.54 miles, 41:42 + 1.5 miles with spikey afterward, 14:25
11/9 tuesday – 4.00, 37:43
11/10 wednesday – tired, lazy, OFF
11/11 thursday – 3.25 miles w/ lisa, 36:19 + 2.07 afterwards
11/12 friday – 3.10, 28:56
11/13 saturday – PM 8.01 miles, 76:30 + skated 8.17 in 56:08 w/ lisa and carrie

total miles run: 26.47
total time run: 4:16:09
total cardio: 5:12:17

My skating buddy Lisa met me on Thursday to run after work. She talked a big game about how bad it was going to be, then proceeded to bust out a solid three mile run. Sweet.

Last night I found out that I was matched to my first choice dietetic internship. Heck yeah. Not to brag or maybe to brag a little, but the match rate for the spring is less than 50% and the fall is about 33% (meaning 2/3 people who apply don’t get one), so I am super stoked to have gotten one at all, let alone my top choice. The other three I applied to were pretty random locations. Crisis move to the Midwest narrowly averted. Now I can stop walking around feeling like I’m going to have a heart attack at any minute, though I still won’t find out what city my DI is in for another week or two – at least I’ve narrowed it to a potential two out of 50 states. Crossing my fingers that it’s somewhere close enough to come home on the weekend.

athens half marathon

I ran the Athens Half this morning. This was the first year for the race and I think they did a really great job. The proceeds from the race are going to benefit AthFest music education programs, I think. They should have some impressive proceeds because the 2000 available registrations sold out; at $50 early and $60 late entry, that is serious (although I have absolutely NO idea what it takes to put on an event of that nature as far as cost). Putting on a huge annual event like AthFest probably puts them ahead of the curve on planning a decently sized race. They had lots of pre-race information available, a well organized, if not a little cramped, expo, nice shirts, chip timing and plenty of “honey buckets” at the start. Couldn’t hear a lick of the PA, though.

My “race” plan ended up still not much of a plan; run around marathon pace or so for the first 8 miles, then decide if I should go faster (if I felt great) or not (if I felt just okay). I ran the first few miles with my officemate from school, who made snarky comments about just about everything and that made the time go by until my ” very conservative” and his “first half marathon” strategies diverged and he headed onward (ended up finishing about 7 minutes head of me). I tried to stick with my main priority of not doing any lasting damage before Saturday and when I got to mile 9, I just kept going with no aspirations for speeding up. I don’t mind saying I walked in the last mile where the hill on Broad Street is and my pace for that mile showed it at 10:40, I think; I figured I was not going to finish in less than two hours at that point, but guessing by my actual time and the timing for that last mile, I was probably wrong. Oops. Totally used the marathon next weekend as an excuse to slack. Sometimes I can walk up hills faster than if I “ran” super slow. I finished in 2:02:50 (761 out of 1791 finishers). I thought about peeing for about 02:07:50, plus the ride home.

The main shortcoming of the race was that the water stations were kind of terrible with one or two tables set up together and it was too crowded to get water without stopping (the exception being the one on Boulevard). Several of them only had a handful of people volunteering with one or two handing out cups so it was mostly people stopping and grabbing a cup off the table and I skipped most of them for those reasons. It made me feel really bad for the people volunteering. I think they were supposed to hand out gel at mile 7, but I didn’t notice (or get it) because that station was super crowded with people stopping (had Shot Bloks anyway). Hammering out getting enough volunteers is probably rough, but they would have been a lot better if they had a table on either side or separate the two tables. The medal is a little dinky, but unless you plan on wearing it around, NBD. The course measurement was spot on – I stopped my Garmin at the line and it read 13.11. It was a cool event and I will look forward to running it again in the future.

I have been working on school stuff all afternoon and consider this probably the first day of a rough couple of weeks. The draft I have of my thesis is clocking in at 112 pages (including appendices)…MS Word just gave me a heart attack when I opened the document and it took a couple of minutes to show the full length. Walking the dog would probably be good for legs+sanity.

run softly and carry a big stick

It was a quiet week, kept pretty busy with school/work stuff and managed to overshoot my goal miles by about five. That is what happens when you’re practicing work avoidance, I guess. I felt pretty good after my long run on Monday and was going to take Tuesday off, but I have this class Tuesday night that starts less than fifteen minutes after my afternoon class ends. It’s right at 5pm, so traffic is horrendous and makes taking the bus difficult. There are three of us who are in both classes and we split up, one by bicycle, one by bus, and me by sneakers. I am proud to say that I won the race to class with about five minutes to spare, with bicycle coming in second and bus a distant third. We weren’t actually racing, but it kind of felt like it as I sprinted from south campus through north campus and downtown carrying my notebook. I felt like a huge nerd, but luckily did not see anyone I was too worried about impressing on my short trek. I wasn’t wearing my Garmin since it was not planned (but I do keep extra clothes/shoes in my car to limit excuse-making), so I used Google Maps and good old fashioned wall clocks to estimate my speed/distance.

Everything else has been more or less standard. The weather is improving and I’m feeling good about having stuck it out in the heat all summer. Almost got eaten by a Newfoundland with about 20-30 pounds on me, but what else is new. This week coming up is another peak week (55) so we’ll see how that goes.

sunday 8/22 – PM 4.01 miles, 35:51 (avg 8:57) + 2.09 miles w/ dog 20:23 (avg 9:46)
monday 8/23 – AM 17.01 miles, 2:50:04 (avg 9:59)
tuesday 8/24 – PM 1.2 to class/1.2 back, ~19:00 total (guesstimate)
wednesday 8/25 – 7.12 miles, 1:06:11 (9:18 avg)
thursday 8/26 – AM 3.10 miles, 28:20 (9:09 avg), PM 4.30 miles, 39:15 (9:08 avg)
friday 8/27 – PM 9.12 miles, 1:26:33 (9:30 avg)
saturday 8/28 – no run. skated 10.22 miles at SE clarke, 1:10:38

total miles run: 49.15
total run time: 7:45:37
total cardio time: 8:56:15

june recap

Hello, ignored blog. I have been pretty busy for the past few weeks with work+research so I haven’t kept up online super well, but I have had a pretty good month of June. Data collection is really draining. There is a lot of talking involved, more than I would generally prefer to do, and sensitive subjects (food, body weight, finances). We are more or less halfway through, I think. It’s been hot as a beast and I am happy to have made it through the first hot month of summer while keeping most of my runs outdoors. I am feeling a little slow and suffering more than usual, but hopefully that will pay off when the temperatures cool down…you know, four months from now, if we’re lucky. I have adapted a bit by running more days of the week but with shorter runs so I can wait until later in the day.

I had kind of an interesting short run the other night where I saw an armadillo, one of the few I’ve seen in person, much less scuffling along in the grass next to me…came home and had my second post-run allergic reaction in a week. Not sure what that is about. The first one was just my eyes, but this one continued into full blown swelling of my face. Our puppy had an allergic reaction to something the same night. He went to the vet because it persisted; mine went away the next day.

We’re getting some reprieve today with temperatures only in the mid 80s. I need to get up and do something, but I really want to take a nap! I am not feeling the computer today.

Here’s what I ran last week as well as my totals for June!

6/20 sunday – off
6/21 monday – 6.61, 60:35
6/22 tuesday – 4 miles, 37:02 (I actually got up really early to run instead of going at night and this was easily the grossest, most humid run I did all month)
6/23 wednesday – 7 miles, 62:29
6/24 thursday – 3.12, 27:21
6/25 friday – 13.03, 2:09:08 (ran the course for the Athens, Georgia half that is in October. I didn’t get up that early – started at 8-ish – and it was so, so brutal, although the course is pretty nice)
6/26 saturday – 6.62, 60:00

total miles run: 40.38
total run time: 6:16:55 (avg pace 9:20)

total miles run for June: 158.09
total run time for June: 24:13:20
average pace: 9:11/mile
YTD miles run: 900.3 (almost 100 miles ahead of this time in 2009)

good day for a run

I have been taking it easy this week for the most part. ING Georgia is four weeks away and it seems like about the time that I usually start feeling a little burned out. You know when you aren’t sick, but it seems like it might not be too far off if you don’t watch it? So, I have been chilling out and trying not to catch anything. I retired some old shoes with about 500 miles on them and got a new pair this week since I’ve been having some achy feet lately. I’ve done two runs in the new shoes and my feet are feeling alright so far. Usually I wear Saucony Progrid Guide 2s, but I have exhausted all the women’s color options besides white/baby pink and I bought the 3s instead after seeing them in Runner’s World, which said they were pretty much the same shoe with some minor tweaks. There’s nothing wrong with pink shoes, but I was not having a pale pink kind of week. I’ll let you know if I ever do.

My last swim class was Monday. The pool I swim in was hosting the SEC swimming and diving championship this week, so I haven’t been over to swim since. No spin, either. My gym has been having a fundraiser for Haiti this week where you pay $5 to reserve a spot in advance. Classes fill up really fast, so I haven’t had the heart to schedule around getting to class only to find out it’s full. Maybe tomorrow; I am definitely missing going to class.

This afternoon I met up with Melissa while she was visiting Athens and went for a run in the most perfect, perfect weather we’ve seen in months. Short sleeves and shorts! She was super nice and it was fun to run with someone for a change. I have to credit Melissa with making it pleasant enough that when we finished, I decided I might as well do my long run today instead of tomorrow since I was already six miles in. She has a really good attitude and I have a terrible one! I figured my feet might hurt or I might be a whiny bastard tomorrow (forecast: likely), so no time like the present to get it done. Running in town is so much different than running out here in the sticks and a lot more entertaining. Also, getting to stop at stoplights is pretty awesome. At mile 9, I stopped by Georgia Cycle Sport for two Hammer Gels and at mile 15, I stopped at the Golden Pantry for water and some Lifesavers, which were pretty much the most delicious things ever, except for the package being rife with the green flavor which immediately got chucked. Another thing that is awesome about running in town: places to buy things so you don’t have to carry them. I ended up back at my car after 18.xx miles (can’t remember exact time, average pace was 9:24) and called it done. Nothing too notable happened except that I saw the engine on a UGA bus explode on Milledge Avenue. I can just feel my student transportation fee increasing.

This is not related to anything – well, it kind of is because it’s part of why I have been stressed/not running as much – but I had my first statistics exam this week and miraculously scored a 19/20. The class is scored out of three 20-point exams so I was pretty stressed about doing poorly on the first one and having to scramble the rest of the semester. Somehow, I ended up taking this class with a bunch of people from my department even though none of us took the prerequisite course and I only had one undergrad level stat class. I’m not a math person, but I like statistics well enough; it’s easy to say that now that the test is over.

weekly round up

Wednesday night was the first night of my swim classes. I didn’t get demoted to the beginner group on the other side of the pool, so I considered it to be a raging success. We mostly did freestyle laps back and forth, working on something different each time (being streamlined at the start, holding our arms the right way, breathing, kicking from the knee). I never really learned how to breathe while swimming freestyle (with other strokes, it’s pretty intuitive) and so that was the hardest thing for me. I’ve worn contact lenses since I was eight years old, which I think has something to do with being so lackluster in the water because I try to avoid going under no matter what since I can’t open my eyes under there. Obviously for the class, I’m wearing goggles, but I didn’t go to the pool with goggles as a kid so I’d just shut my eyes/try to stay above water. My eyesight is somewhat horrendous and I wouldn’t be able to see enough to swim without contacts/glasses. Anyway, so I would swim from one side to the other and be all winded from trying to breathe minimally, but I think I was getting better by the end. The next class is Monday, so I need to get my gumption up to go practice over the weekend; I might go with school buddies.

This morning I went to a senior center near Monticello with one of my friends from school, who was giving them a nutrition/physical activity lesson. There were a bunch of cool “older adults” (the preferred term in gerontology; elderly is not really used) there. I like how the ladies are usually kind of sassy and the men just are quiet and smile. My favorite lady was tiny and wearing a black beret with a lavender sweatsuit. We did a little bit of exercise using resistance bands and they were all like, “OH! WHEW!” afterward in a really funny way. The drive there and back was twice as long as the actual time spent at the senior center, but Katie is an RD as well as very speedy marathoner, so it was pretty easy to fill up the time talking about food and running (two topics I have a hard time shutting up about).

When I got home from my afternoon run (8 miles), I saw a little brown box at the front door. Excitement. I usually approach the door mentally willing the package to be addressed to me and not be something Brian didn’t tell me he was expecting. Selfish, right? My super cool brother and sister-in-law sent me a pair of cycling shoes – so awesome! Now I will be all, click-click-click in spin class. They are Specialized Motodivas. I’m excited to see how much of a difference it will make to clip in versus wearing sneaks. They said it made a big difference for them when they switched.

I registered for the ING Georgia Marathon today. It might be a little early for it, but advance props for having an XS shirt option for the smallies. I’ll probably get there and be handed an XL.

Finally, thank you to the person who found my blog by searching “blueberry muffin marathon.” I can’t think of a single thing more pleasant sounding than “blueberry muffin marathon” and actually searched it myself to see if some such wondrous thing might exist and if I might pay $$$ to participate. When it didn’t, I cried and then I made a batch and a half of delicious blueberry muffins and have been eating them for days. Thank you for undermining my exercise efforts with the slightest mention of one of my favorite carbohydrate-rich breakfast treats.

all over the place

Spring semester starts tomorrow. I’m ready for this after nearly a month off. I’m taking statistics, kinesiology (exercise and aging), proposal writing, and then my “special topics” class where I meet with my advisor about my thesis. It will be weird taking no nutrition courses (I’ll take the last of those in the fall). Hopefully it won’t be too bad since my two office-mates are in my statistics class, so I will not be floating around in the ether by myself. I’m really looking forward to the exercise and aging course after I read a few papers by the professor last semester for another project, but also a little nervous because it’s my first graduate course outside of my department.

Last weekend was a wash for workouts after going out for New Years Eve and over to our friends’ house for dinner/drinking on New Years Day. We had a good time, but I pretty much splayed out on the couch all weekend after that. Apparently, I’m not as young and resilient as I used to be. Can you believe that? I picked it up again Monday for 6.53 miles, 8 miles Tuesday, and then a quick 2.3 miles before my spin class this evening. My spin class has switched from being semi-dark/blacklight to being lit and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I really want the loudest, meanest instructor that will yell at me.

On the topic of things I want other people to do for me, figure out what races I want to run this year and when. I feel pretty tied to running ING Georgia (3/21) just because it’s so nearby, but it’s relatively soon. I would like to run another marathon maybe six weeks (give or take two weeks) afterward to capitalize on whatever fitness I have at that point before the summer heat kicks in. Repeat in October/December pending life not getting in the way. I’m not really excited about any halves because I don’t want to deal with traveling, though I would like to run more halves if it was convenient/inexpensive. There is this thing called the Run and See Georgia Grand Prix (link is to a Facebook group, the best source of info I’ve found on it), which gives you points based on your placing in your age group in races that are in the yearlong series (about 400 according to that page) and then lists the top 25 per age group at the end of the year. I was 18th in my age group; I’m not really sure how to interpret that. Mostly I guess it’s pretty good because I didn’t run too many of those races and I assume there are just a zillion people with a handful of points from running a couple of races that aren’t listed (my AG ranges from 1,011 points to 143). If I ran more of the races, I might be disappointed about it. I will admit it makes me want to run more of them to get more points! But that’s the point – to get you to run more races, which can be expensive.

There are two races that I was wanting to do, but didn’t realize until yesterday that they’re both this weekend. Twilight Stroll by the Granite Bowl (“You can run it or you can walk it!” according to the flier, which I love) in Elberton on Friday night and the Winterville 5 Miler on Saturday morning. Elberton is cool because it’s nighttime and small and cheap. Winterville is a little longer and requires getting up in the morning. It’s allegedly going to snow tomorrow and you never know how that’s going to go over around here, but I’d like to do one or the other just for fun.

old year, new year

I ran an easy 3.1 miles this afternoon in 27:15 to finish out my year of running with 1640.32 miles. Since I have never kept track of my miles before, I didn’t really know how much to expect. I had some ups and downs this year so averaging a little over 30 miles per week for the year sounds about right (because it is!). It is nice to finish out with no injuries other than the occasional aches and pains. 2009 wasn’t a happy year for a lot of people, but it was a pretty solid one for me.

Some notable events from the past year are finishing my dietetics degree, applying to grad schools (and being accepted everywhere I applied … okay, I applied two places, but still, those are good stats!), five year anniversary of dating Brian, finishing my first marathon in March, PRs across the board (some by default, some not), getting game MVP in two games after I stopped actually playing derby, ten years of the red dog, my first 50k bike ride in the pouring rain, visiting with family in May and November, and participating in some new community activities (bike/ped task force, aids athens, POUR food drive, the senior farmer’s market nutrition program). Everyone in my family made it through the year in one piece. I’m pretty stoked. Here are my resolutions from last year.

- Run a marathon. Done! I ran three marathons, three half marathons, an 8 mile, three 10ks, a 4.1 mile, and four 5ks. Also, you know, the other billion times that I ran for fun and misery. Success.

- Stop cussing. Hmm. Not so much, but I have cut back. This is going to stay on the list, but I have the feeling I’m never going to completely cut it out. I’ll be a little generous and call it semi-successful, dang it.

- Go visit my siblings. Semi-successful; I visited my brother in Houston once and my brother in Dallas twice, but didn’t make it to Colorado, mostly because I still don’t like to fly (I drove to Texas both times). I’m going to have to work on the fear of flying thing, but between people putting explosives in their underwear, general ineptitude of airport workers/management/policy, and basic concepts of physics and gravity, I’m guessing that I will not be excited about flying any time soon.

- Read more! Yes. Done. I read a ton of books this year, but didn’t keep track as well as I wanted to and then gave away most of what I read to friends, so I’m not positive exactly how many books. Success.

- Other stuff: dog walking (eh), two servings of fruit per day (yes), better attitude (work in progress), and minding my own business (work in progress). Dog walking and having a better attitude were topping my list for 2010 resolutions, so you can imagine my dismay when I realized I had casually tacked them on to my list of resolutions last year. Whoops! I think I need to substitute dog walking for ten minutes of something unproductive per day because I definitely have an extra couple of minutes when I look at it that way, but it’s easier to get lost in doing other things. I’ve tried to keep myself busy with things I enjoy doing so I don’t spend time being nosy or gossipy or whatever.

New resolutions for 2010.

- Floss more. Duh. I got much better about flossing after I went to the dentist and he told me my teeth were prone to decay, looked good on the outside and were bad inside. Basically, just short of telling me I had teeth like one of those Kentucky kids who was weaned on Mountain Dew. However, it dropped off a bit after I went for my second visit this year and he told me my teeth were in great shape and I had superior genetics for healthy teeth (and denied ever telling me my teeth were going to rot out of my head). I’m going to try to bump it up to flossing twice a day.

- Run faster, of course. I am pretty haphazard in my “training” as you might notice if you’ve ever read this blog for more than ten seconds. I ended the year with my fastest marathon time of 4:12, so in the spirit of A, B, C goals for races I’ll say my A goal for 2010 will be a marathon time under 3:50, B goal under 3:55, and C goal under 4:00. I would also like to improve my 5k time, but it’s been so long since I ran one that I’m not sure what a good goal is. I’m a wimp about running as fast as I can and tend to hover in semi-comfort instead.

- Branch out. Do different things, just in general. Have fun doing things whether they turn out as planned or not. Make more homemade foods.

- Keep in touch with people I care about. The internet makes it really easy to have insignificant contact with a zillion people that I could do with or without, but also seems to make me less likely to pick up the phone and have a conversation with someone that I actually want to maintain a friendship with. There are some people I want to be friends with 20 years from now and I would like to focus on actually having better friendships with them now. Many of them are people I’ve already known for a long time and that means phone calls or visits, and for the rest, that means actually getting out of the house and hanging out.

- Other stuff: not leaving things undone at night (dishes, clutter, etc), be better about keeping track of things/writing stuff down, less gossip, fewer impulse grocery buys, volunteer for something at least once a month, finish graduate school. Chill out, don’t be a jerk, be a good person.

Thanks to everyone who has commented on my little blog over the past year with my off and on posting. I hope you have an awesome 2010!

stoked

I had a nice dusky run tonight. There was nothing really special about it, but it felt pretty good; either running from the sunshine through twilight to darkness, or finally having completed most of my major projects for the semester left me feeling especially light and relaxed when I was finished. I took two laps around the campus 5k route, coming up a little short of 10k (6.09, I think) even though my office is a little ways off the route. Most of the time I forget about running on campus unless it’s in the middle of the day and I’m trying to fit a run in or just take a break from what I’m knee deep in that day, but the quietness tonight was nice compared to the bustle of the daytime. I ran into my old coworker and her not-so-tiny-anymore son while running past my old lab in the vet school and saw a few other people I know. Weird how Athens isn’t huge or tiny, but you can rarely do anything without seeing someone you know from somewhere. Sometimes, you see those people while they are nearly hitting you with an oversized motor vehicle. Sometimes, those people are strangers.

Last week I gave my presentation on sarcopenia and obesity, which is the central project for one of my classes, and it feels so good to be done with it. Talking in front of people really stresses me out, hearing that quiver in your voice, and I get caught up into trying to learn every single thing about every single element of the topic (in this case, oxidative stress, cytokine production, and insulin resistance). Having the presentation done (and getting a perfect score on it! boom, sorry I had to brag) is a huge weight off my shoulders. On Thursday, I had another presentation for seminar with two of my classmates. It’s less intimidating because you have two other people with you and only have to talk for 15 minutes each, but a little more intimidating because it’s to the whole department (faculty and students, whoever shows up) and not just your class. I don’t think we blew any minds with our vitamin E and inflammation presentation (by the looks of it, we put a few minds to sleep), but I didn’t choke and I presented some studies on information I was not previously that familiar with (single nucleotide polymorphisms, gamma-tocopherol v. alpha) without looking like a total ass (or so I think. it’s relative.). I have a bad habit of picking things which look interesting to me, which are almost always interesting because I have no base knowledge in the subject (like genetics) and then I have to learn all this crazy stuff to present it. My evals came back pretty good and I got some positive feedback via email from two professors that I like a lot, which was really nice. I feel like I am basking in some momentary satisfaction. To boot, I had a tough test on Tuesday that I felt like I did really well on. Everything is downhill from here.

I didn’t realize until this week that next weekend is the half marathon in Pinehurst, so I will have to drive up to my parents’ house next Thursday or Friday. I’ve been trying to think about this massive hill that was in the first couple of miles of the race last year while I run uphill. I remember thinking I had never run up a hill that big before (it’s big). Uphills are my goal to conquer for this race. I’m not trying to get a very fast time, but for once I’d like to just have fun. I’ve never run up a hill and then been like, yeah, I really wish I had walked up that hill. No. Not really helpful. But there are so many neighborhood-y hills in this one. Can’t really describe what I mean by that. I’m going to quote my classmate’s husband and tell myself to “harden the f— up.” I think that’s the quote, anyway. Of course, it’s easy to tell yourself to harden the heck (?) up while drinking white wine on the rocks in your jammy jams. Haha. Anyway, that’s next Saturday and then I will drive home at some point and Brian and I will leave for Dallas for Thanksgiving (and another turkey trot – tofu trot in our case). Not really pumped about all this driving, but whatever. I’m thinking about signing up for the Big D Texas Marathon next April since my brother lives there and I like the area, but I’ll have to wait and see what my schedule is looking like next semester. I think marathons make me brain dead for a few days, minimum. I’m going to try and do some cruising around White Rock Lake while I’m there. Brian will surely love me leaving him alone with my family so I can go running for hours.