I wish

I wish I could say that the Pig has Flown the Coop.  But I can't.

I wish I could say I completed even half of my milage this week.  But I can't.

I wish I could say this weekend will be a nice peaceful recovery from the illnesses of last week.  But, I can't.

I wish I could say G didn't have homework/makeup work to do this weekend.  But I can't.

I wish I could feel confident that tomorrows run wasn't going to be, uh, "bad" in the stomach area.  But I can't.

I wish.... But, I've never let negative things stop me before, and whenever something tries to get me down there IS something I CAN say that I KNOW for sure:

It could be worse g.  You COULD have a broken foot.  So.... there's that.  See, life is good.

SPAM A LOT!!!

I've been a fan of MONTY PYTHON for years.  Love it.  LOVE IT.  Want to marry it.  Think it is the GREATEST thing since sliced bread.  So, that I know a song about SPAM is probably a scary thing... but the food isn't something I've ever tried and the junk in my e-mail inbox is NOT MY FAVORITE.

Do I need to say it again?  NOT my favorite.

BUT in my inbox today I saw something that made me think of all my missed opportunities.  Yes, it did.  Because really, it's all about MARKETING and IF ONLY I had thought of a way to market a simple notebook bought for $1 as a $15.99 DIET PLAN, I too could be a multi millionaire.  It was the Flat Tummy Journal.  A notebook you use to help you get a flat tummy. 

SEND ME $15.99 and I will send you the MAGIC secret of THE STAY AT HOME MOME OF 3 to GETTING FIT!  GETTING FAST!  GETTING A FLAT TUMMY!  ALL you have to do is write down how much you walk or run every day, note how FAST you do your run/how many miles you walked in the allotted time, and, keep a journal on the facing page of WHAT YOU EAT.... 

Seriously?  WHY didn't I think of marketing this genius plan?  I've been doing this for a while now.  It's how I track what to eat before a race... you know, "good run today" or "NOT GOOD RUN TODAY"... ok, so what did I EAT yesterday or today that lead to such bad stomach issues?  OK, don't eat RED MEAT or PIZZA or etc and so forth.  And, it's hard to stuff your face with 20 OREOs if you have to write down that you actually are about to eat 20 OREOs.

Dang.  I guess I need to look at all the places in my life where I could improve my marketing strategy.

20 miles AWESOME!

That was amazing.  What a feeling of accomplishment.  Perhaps it's because the other 20 was so hard, or because the weather was made for running on Sunday, but yesterday's run ROCKED.

So here's the short of it:

I started yesterday with a fever of about 100 even.  Yea, I know.  And I still went.  I didn't really want to dwell on it, but I did have one and probably had/have the Swine Flu. (cue the dramatic music).  I was afraid to fully confess it though, because I thought the crew might think is was crazy.  I am the dumbest of the diehards, it's confirmed.  Never the less, I finished my run, showered, rested off and on at teh ER waiting for my kid to be seen with his RUPTURED EAR DRUM and ta da!  No Fever Today!  (Poor kid has a ruptured ear drum, H1N1 and Strep - the trifecta of sickness)

At mile 1 I thought I'd lost my mind when T ran into the forest for a costume adjustment.  Just know this T, I will never drive down Gayton Road again without thinking about that - "hang on a minute" duck into the woods... I mean SERIOUSLY, what is J going to think?  "Hey honey, I'm going for a 4 hour run with G.  I've got the BODY Glide, she's got the DUCT TAPE..." and then you come home in a panti-less state?  

At mile 8 I freaked out when I realized I'd left my Cliff Blocks (HAVE I mentioned how much I LOVE THESE?) at home on the mailbox.  Thankfully my pals were good enough to go back with me for it.  And while that first 8 miles was awesome,  my head wasn't really into it until mile 8.5.  I had to shake off that "I've screwed up my run!" feeling after we went back, and in doing that I think I shook off some of the funk that was plaguing me.  (forgive the poor choice in words when it seems that Richmond is IN FACT infected with the plague).

At mile 10 I had a twist in my gut that made me question if I was going to make it without being sick (one way or another).  But Jack's nonsense chatting and FC's energy were enough to make me forget about it for a while.

At mile 14 I knew it was going to be "OK" and that was a great feeling.  

At mile 16 R joined us, and seeing her waiting on the sidewalk with the big red stroller made me so happy I could have screamed for joy.  

At mile 18 I watched everyone pull away from me and that was hard, so I mustered a bit of "dig deep" and caught up to everyone except T.  "Dig Deep" is what I say to myself when I'm struggling to get moving, and for me, it works pretty well.  It's also good that I routed the last mile to be a very gentle down hill which helped.

At mile 20 I kept running for another .6 miles, and could have run another 6.2 miles IF I'd stopped to visit a 'honey pot', refilled my hydration, etc and so forth.  

And, I got home to discover that I had a nifty race number assignment waiting in my mailbox!  I am disappointed that even though I called to correct the problem with my registration last November, I've still been placed into the slowest corral.  I'm signed up to run with the pace group for 4:30, so regardless of where I'm assigned I will simply start with that group, but I do have a "slow bib number" that starts with a 4.  ("4636" to be exact.)

Rituals

Clothes laid out, bottles filled, phone charged, route printed... duct tape handy incase it's needed, new socks, old shoes, BODY GLIDE - because if you have duct tape you really REALLY should have body glide handy...  yes.  I'm ready for 20.

I thought the ritual of preparing for my run tomorrow would extinguish the nervousness.  It has not.  I'm apprehensive for a lot of reasons.  For one thing, the last 20 miler didn't go so well.  In fact, it went so poorly that I spent a lot of time on that run thinking, "well hell.  How am I supposed to go 6.2 more miles".  I spent an equal amount of time on that run thinking, "what the frick was I thinking signing up for a marathon?" and "If I lay down on the side of the road people will think I'm dead or dying so I can't do that... or can I?"

One of my concerns now is, "what if tomorrows run is that bad?  How will I mentally force myself to finish the marathon if tomorrows run sucks?"  Of course, it's SO easy to SAY, I'm just going to finish because I'm trained and I can. But, when you're in the moment, feeling the pain of each step and your muscles are tired... it's hard to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  AND that's the perspective I gleaned on a 20 miler, NOT on a marathon.

So where was I?  Oh right, on to why tomorrow's run isn't going to suck.  OK.  Probably shouldn't start that paragraph out with the fact that I'm actually sick, and have been battling, uh, unmentionable stomach issues associated with the H1N1 flu all day, huh?  Ok then, it's not going to suck because this was a light week.  I'm fairly well rested and had a lovely taper last week.  I ate well today and drank a ton of liquid today to try to counter act my sickness.  Oops, I forgot we weren't talking about that...  OK, so "I hydrated today to prepare for tomorrow run".   I had a positive outlook on the last 20, and that didn't really seem to help, but I've had a positive outlook on this one all week - so hopefully it DOES help this time.  

I'm going to make some decaf tea to soothe my tummy, and tomorrow I will wake full of energy and ready to go, with a stomach of steel, legs ready and fleet feet. 

Mel's give away!

Hey folks, Mel's giving away more good stuff - check out her blog, Tall Mom on the Run!

Heeeeeeeere PIG!

(I can hear the Jaws Theme Song...)

The H1N1 flu is now at my neighbor's house... 

(the song is getting louder)

 it's on the bus... 

(the song is getting faster)

it's in my oldest kid's girl scout troop...

(and faster and louder)

 it's in my son's classroom... it's in our preschool...  

(so here I am, a sitting duck, on the calm water, while there's churning below.  It's coming for me, and the only question that remains is this:  Am I going to be attacked or am I just here for the added suspense of the audience?)

It's only a matter of time.  I wiped the surfaces in my house down with Lysol... including the toys, the phones, the light switches and door knobs, the remote controls and computer keys.  I've rubbed hand sanitizer on myself about 8 times today and restocked the bathrooms with new antibacterial soap and new towels.

And all this sounds like it should be OK, its a mild flu and we'll be fine.  We're a low risk family.  Except that I'm training for a marathon.  I can't get the flu!  I can't!  It will ruin my race!  All this training will be in vain.... the stress of worrying about trying not to get sick is making me ill.

not the Popular Kid

I am not the popular kid at school.

When B arrives somewhere, particularly at preschool or Stroller Strides, her friends shriek and scream like girls in the vintage footage of The Beatles.  "B!!!!  It's B!!!!" the girls scream in high pitched happy squeals of joy and delight.  "B, B?  Look here, play with us, let's have fun, sit by me!!!"  Yes, B is a popular kid and I'm glad for her.

Me.  Yea, Not as much.  B and I are alike, we're outgoing and talkative, but I spend my time chatting with the professors at school.  Enough that my Professor, who we'll name Dr. Forest (wait, that's a real name isn't it? Huh... well that's not his real name, maybe I should go with Dr Tree...), So where was I?  Oh right, Dr Forest, who doesn't seem to know many students in the class, knows my name.  Seriously, he knows my name, and the guy who sits in front of me who we'll call Mr. Ecks.  

Mr. Ecks and I have been sitting together since Kim, the dumb sweet girl who sat between us bailed on the class.  He moved in front of me, and I think we bonded because in general Mr Ecks is a lot like me.  Bright student, not a genius, who tries hard, is married, and doesn't think a lot of "red headed stupid girl" who doesn't deserve a special snappy-blog name.  RHSG sits in the back of the class asking stupid questions.  

But G, I thought there WERE no stupid questions?!?  Well, that's only true if you show up for class on time, and don't leave 45 minutes into class for a 20 minute smoke break.  I swear, Dr. Forest now waits for her to leave the room before saying things like, "what I'm about to show you, will be on the test, written just like this, all you have to do is memorize the answer."  (seriously, he's done it more than once in the past 4 weeks).

SO- Dr. Forest likes me.  I am, apparently, the teacher's pet.  Last week, when he realized he'd left the class sitting in the dirt at some point, he called on me and had me come up to the front of the room to write the equation on the board.  Uh.  OK, sure, but I did feel really hot and red (and no, I don't mean sexy) as I stood up there writing out the X times X over Y times Y over Z equals XX number of Z's equation all while explaining to the class why Y went on the bottom.  But I did it, and I stayed after class to answer questions from another student.  Come test day though, I was really thrown for a loop.  Here I was, the "one who gets it", and I was the 2nd to the last person done... and it was HARD, and I was unsure of about 7 or 8 of the questions, so if I'd missed them all - I would have had about a 65 on the test.

I was late to class on Tuesday.  This never happens, but it happened on Tuesday.  I was 3 minutes late and dang - it, I missed some stuff.  But it's OK, I slipped silently into class, grabbed my test off the prof's desk, and sat down in an empty seat until I could move to my own chair.  My test, I was pleased to see... was scored on the top with a big FAT "EXCELLENT!!!" and 90 + 10 =100!

Class continues, we discuss the test, Dr Forest explains that he gave everyone credit for one of the answers if they answered it the way the top graded student answered it because "I knew she had a full understanding of the material and if she got it wrong, then I should consider how it was worded".  I look down at my test, and realize he's talking about me.

After all is said and done, Mr Ecks asks about my test and I returned by asking Mr Ecks how he did on the test.  

"Well, I got one of the 65's...  You know the whole class got 65 or less, except for the 1 person who got a 100?  She blew the curve right out of the water.  Oh...." he trails off.

"Oooooooh...." I thought.

Mr. Ecks pokes me again, "Well, what DID you get?"

"Oh.  Um." I said.  Followed sheepishly by, "I got the 100."

I think it's safe to assume, I am NOT the popular kid this semester.

which is which?

Today I was struck down by a nap.  I mean it too.  One minute I was perfectly fine, and the next minute I was crawling to bed for a 20 minute nap with my favorite dog.  For informational purposes - my favorite dog is the one who doesn't pee on my pillow when she's po'd at me.

And twenty minutes later I was "fine".  Yes, I could have slept longer, but homework and housework are calling, and I know if I get too deep into sleep I could have a hard time waking up later.  But here's what I'm trying to figure out.  

Was today's nap the product of MommyHood (aka chronic sleep deprivation) or Marathon training?

I probably will never know, but I'm sure the 5am wakeup call (B) today had nothing to do with it.

runningmates

I had a realization a few weeks ago, when I was reading someone else's blog, that I have run 100% of my "official" marathon training long runs with my buddy.  Sure, many times we have additional support runners, who join us for part of our miles, but for much of our running we've been together alone.  A duo, a pair of running mates, taking the buddy system to the next level. "Do you have your EXIT BUDDY?"  I only JUST realized this week that she knew it too.  I think we deserve some KUDOs for sticking together through rain and sickness, sunshine and humidity, a healthy dose of nervousness, followed by a serving of confidence, with a side of fun.

Between us we have 6 (yes, SIX) kids, ranging from 9 years - 9 months, 3 dance classes, 1 soccer team, 1 hockey team, 6 college credits requiring homework, 3 jobs (or is that 4?) not including mommyhood, 2 pants sizes recently lost, 1 home business, 2 political views, 2 subscriptions to Runners World, 2 husbands (and frankly, that's enough), and approximately 128.1 miles of weekend running.  

(Holy Carp T, just writing that makes me want to celebrate how much we rock!  In case I forget, before this post is over - This whole process of running together & training together makes me infinitely grateful for you.  Because I know you've had moments, as have I, where we both questioned the sanity of our decision that we made 11 months ago... of course, yesterday was not one of those days!)  

Just consider the schedule juggling behind getting together every weekend for 3 months to run... and we've done that, and since we've made it this far, it seemed CRAZY to shake things up with only 4 long runs left until the race even though T had to work yesterday.  So, despite the 39 degree with rain forecast, we ran 10+ miles and then joined up with T's job for the last 2 of our 12 (she was leading the "8K training team" who, for lack of better words, are learning to run).

The 10 miles ....  was the best BEST BEST run of this marathon training cycle yet!  So fun, the conversation was easy, the run was easy, the weather even cooperated for the most part and there wasn't actual rain, the speed wasn't even a factor as I never checked our splits, and NOT ONCE did I look at my Sexy A** Garmin while thinking, "how many miles have we run?"  I glanced at it once to check that it was on & functioning properly, around mile 3.  I was having so much fun that I even confessed that I might one day (next fall, if school pauses as expected) do this again.  I KNOW- can you imagine THAT I would even say that?  But yea, I did, because seriously, I was having THAT MUCH FUN.  

All because I had my running-mate with me.  

oooOOOOH K

Tonight was a, uh, interesting.  You see, I'm a non-believer in psychics.  After the psychic who read my palm after Ron Eughbanks and I broke up told me I would never marry or have children, but that I would have many lovers was so wrong, I have been a "non-believer".  (I met H shortly later, sadly that limited my number of lovers)  Sorry, I generally think psychics are full of it.

But tonight was just weird.  The "psychic" AKA from this point on as the "scam artist" was strangely accurate on her assumptions about my life... which made her look down right scary as she predicted a terrible future for me and my husband, an unknown man, my soul mate (who GOOD NEWS, gets to live happily ever after in this lifetime), my unpublished book, etc.  More good news though, was that my 3rd child was given a good outcome, she will be great, while the other two didn't have enough energy to read tonight.

Skip to the end if you don't want to know every stupid detail.  SO OK- it started with the usual, "what is one wish you would like to make?"  My response, "success with my education".  This provoked a response.... eerily accurate...  "You are... a medical student, but you failed when you were quit business school.  This time you will succeed, do not quit, it is important to your future."  ***eerie because I am a nursing student who was a business major about 12 years ago***  "You will succeed where you attempt a new challenge."  ***I'm thinking marathon here.***  "You are a writer?  You will succeed if you try to write again...."  ***eyes closed, a quick nap perhaps?***  "I'm reading a husband- your husband is tall, with a beard... or a goatee, and he has a long face.  How long have you been married?"  (almost 12 years)  "Hmmmm.  The last 5 years have not been happy.  ***really?***  "But you should stay with him, you keep him alive.  He is not good for you though, unless you can learn to answer his questions..." ***kinda vague on that, wtf does that mean?  "...when you don't finish something, he has questions.  He is not your soulmate, but he is your life mate.  Things are not good, but you must stay with him even when he is not good to you.  Your soul mate, you know who he is, will live a happy life."  ***GOOD NEWS there again, just... not for me.  But it's nice to know that SOMEONE GETS A GOOD LIFE***  "A man will come into your life, John, Jonathan?  Does this name mean anything to you?  (no one in my life named John)  "OK well he will come in and save you, not as a romantic person, BUT he will make a huge difference in your life, he will be your guardian angel for both you and your husband.  You have a heart of gold, you are a good person, but good things don't always happen to good people.  I think we should exchange phone numbers so I can give you a more accurate reading in your home."  ***and I think I read her aura correctly when I heard her think, "so I can milk some more money out of you at the very least, at best I can case your house."  Now, here's the clincher, "Your 3rd child Brittney, will have a good life, even though she challenges you now."  

my response, by the way to the phone number question was, "I'm sorry, I can't do that.", but what my aura may have said was "hell no, crazy lady, do I look like I was born yesterday?"

Initially I was a little creep'd out - seriously creep'd the F out.  OK, I admit it.  I was...  but my husband is perfectly described that way, I never told her how many children I have and I wasn't wearing a charm bracelet with my kids birthstones or anything, my 3rd child is a challenge, and her name is not Brittney, but it's BRI- name.  So sure - I freaked a bit there for a minute because it all sounded pretty spot on and I AM A NON-BELIEVER.

After thinking it over, though, I've decided that she got lucky.  I mean, after all she did 14 readings, about 7 of whom were before me, some of those readings involved 2 people (pregnant mamas), so eventually she had to hit on one.  AND if I have to take the bad, since we now can assume that H is "not good for me", at least I get to have success in my MARATHON and Nursing school!  Yay!

Bye Meeeeeee!!!!

Ok, so I'm not trying to make fun of my kid... but... I can barely type I'm laughing so hard right now.  Today afterschool during the homework rush, G stabbed his hand with a pencil.  He was "bouncing to his back pack".  

He was in hysterics.  I mean, absolute HYSTERICS, and to be honest, I was having a hard time not actually laughing AT him as I got out the "bag of stuff" we'd use to dislodge a splinter or bandage a minor cut.

"What are you going to use?"  So, I hold up the tweezers, mistakenly thinking that this will calm him.  Yea.  About that.  "NOOOOOOOooooooooo!  No NO noNOONONONONONOOOooO!"

"Well G, it's got to come out.  Here, hold this ice and numb your hand a bit, that will help a little."  And after a while I set out to remove a microscopic piece of lead (graphite).  So, I'm manipulating his little hand and I had to get out the scissors (medical type) to nip off a tiny piece of skin and he sees the scissors and I swear he almost passes out as he's gasping, "bye, meeeeeeee!"  Um.  Bye?  As in, this is it?  Uh, I don't think so.

H walks in about now from work, "OH MY GOD WHAT HAS HAPPENED???".  me, matter of fact - replies in a quick sum up  "G...pencil lead...hand... almost got it...blah blah..." to which H shouts, "OH MY GOD!  DO WE NEED TO TAKE HIM TO THE ER???" 

So.  I guess we can see where G gets it from.

Dr. Suess?

It's been a LONG time since I posted a people watching comment, but yesterday I saw a woman who was blog worthy.  No.  I was NOT in Walmart.  No.  Her Bra Straps were not showing.  No.  She was not wearing any leopard, cheetah or zebra.  I took my kids for their annual dental consult for braces etc. at a local medical building.  For all intensive purposes, she was perfectly normal... or at least was before what appeared to be a plastic surgery addiction.

Holy smokes, this woman was about 40/45ish and she dripped with the phrase "new money" and "I only have this job so I don't go insane from boredom".  She had obviously had her entire face done in some kind of major lift, fill in, neck tuck, nose job, lips, cheek implants - you name it... until the finished result was a WHO from WHOVILLE.  I'm not kidding you.  Her entire face was the shape of a heart with giant cheeks, a tiny nose with a bulb on the end, and her mouth was so filled that it jutted away from her teeth in a sharp little point with lipstick on the peaks.  The CRAZY thing is that I saw her last year (or maybe the year before?) at my children's dental apt (she's the office manager at a local dental office) and she had been an attractive woman.

This is just further proof of why people who have too much money to use good sense, should give it to charity, start a college scholarship program, or if all else fails, give it to me.

Day 3564 of the Sleep Deprivation Experiment

Yea, when you put it that way, it doesn't seem so strange that I'm forgetful, stressed out, fearful, neurotic... did I mention tired?

a theory about running slow.

I have a theory about running too slow, and while logically it doesn't make sense, it really does when you consider the mental implications of running 20 miles.  Here it is:  

If you run too slow, you might not get the endorphins that trigger a second wind.  

Thus, no second wind means making you run slow for longer.  Making you feel slow.  Not only that, but now you're out in the elements suffering for a longer period of time.  I don't know.  I just kept thinking at some point, "but if we'd been able to maintain any kind of pace today, this run would be over by now".  And seriously, our pace was 'off' on mile 1.  And mile 2.  I knew it, but I thought, "s'ok, we're just having a slow start, any second and we're going to pick it up."  We never did.  In fact, our pace fell off the 11m/mi all the way at one point to a 13+.

So.  Yesterdays run was just about the worst in the history of me.  By mile 12 I was sad.  We stopped for "route support" somewhere in mile 13.  All I'm going to say about that is "THANK GOD FOR A BERMAN".  It was hard to get going after that reprieve, but, we knew what we had to do.  Fo a few minutes there, between 14-15 I started thinking, hey... now, I can do this.  And at mile 15 I definitely thought "only 5 miles, it's only 5 miles.  I run 5 miles all the time".  Well, those turned out to be a LONG 5 miles.  And what's terrible is that our route was one of my favorites, saved for this occasion, so I wasn't able to enjoy it at all.  I wish some bastard had driven by and pissed me off at that point, I could have used the adrenaline.  But alas, there was no traffic for road rage.  Just a bitchy biker.  But the other 200 bikers were SO nice, so the one bitchy biker didn't piss me off enough to give me a boost of energy.

I actually (SERIOUSLY) thought about lying down on the side of the road at mile 19.  I looked at the grass.... hard... and thought, I could stop and lie down.  Do you know what stopped me?  Not pride.  Not self worth of any measure.  Nope... T.  She was right behind me, and if I stopped and passed out in the grass, she would think something was seriously wrong, not that I was a loser who wouldn't run any more, and she certainly would not leave me "asleep" on the side of the road, so she would probably not finish her 20, and a good running buddy would not do anything to stop her friend from finishing.  Of course, all that passed through my head in about a minute, so that was another minute of running "down".  

SO.  Next 20.  In 2 weeks.  It HAS to be better than this one.  MUST.  

Anyone want to spare 30 minutes and run a few miles with us?  We need a relay team of fresh legs for the last 10-12 miles.

flip flops

Today I got one of those stomach flips you get when you're nervous or excited.  I was driving down a road that runs perilously close to the course of this weekends run and I realize this:

I am gleefully and sadistically both dreading and anticipating the 20 mile run this weekend.

20 miles.  TWENTY.  Seriously, twenty.  ~gasp~

my life in a nut shell

I'm sitting in class, about to take a chemistry test on something I only marginally understand.  Of course I've studied, but I'm still questioning the possibility of a 89 or better and I look down at my Chemistry Notebook.

It's decorated with two things in the clear front pocket.

1) a picture G drew for me with crayons of an alien arriving from space and being fought off by a karate chop bug.

2) a photograph of my running team just before the Monument 10K.

So there you have it, me in a sentence:  A chemistry student with little understanding of the subject matter, a mother who understands that you have to carry an alien fighting bug picture for your boys self esteem, and a woman who likes to run as long as she's in good company.

Chemistry is my new least favorite...

Remember how much I disliked Morte D' Arthur?  How Karate drove me crazy?  Crazy enough that I wrote a  SONG!?!?  Uh-huh.  Well, Chemistry is so much worse.  I may need to start work on my "ode to my Chemistry Professor" end of the semester poem/song.

At first I thought about writing it to the music of "supercalifragalistic expialidocious", because I figured "dinitrogenpentaoxide hydrochloric acid" fit pretty well in there and it would be easy, and then I thought of my "theme song" of the semester.  And I thought, yea... it's definitely more appropriate than Disney.

Again, just a little diddy I dreamed up on my own, COMpletely original...

At first I was afraid, 

I was petrified.

I kept thinking

I could never learn about poly chloride

But then I spent so many nights

Just thinking how much I was wrong

And I grew strong - 

I learned how to name 

common monoatomic cat-ions!!! (whew, take a breath on that one)

SO now I'm studying 

about multi electron D valances

that have no relevance to me

(nor do chemical equation balances)

I should have taken this in highschool

I wouldn't have dropped this class in highschool

if I'd have known for just one second

it'd be back to make me drool!!!

To class I go,

The teacher's back-

from his unexplained absences

to teach us about multilayer valances

The energetic prof looks like he'll have a coronary that's fatal

as he gets excited about the Periodic Table!

KBr combine to form potassium bromide

but all I need to pass this class... is an 89.5!

Oh yes!  I will survive,

As long as I know how to study, I'm sure to stay alive!

I will survive!

Yeah yaaaaaaah...

Ok, so I know, I know, I need to work on that some more... but that's what I have so far...

18 miles

Today was the first time I have ever run more than 15.85 miles in one shot.  And what's even cooler about that stat, is that I was doing "OK" until mile 17.3 when my legs turned to lead.  Meaning, I was holding a respectable pace, feeling pretty good in general, no negative thoughts, etc.  

Except that at mile 17.7 I suddenly didn't feel well enough to run.  At.  All.  So I had to stop for a second and walk (and heave, but thankfully no vomit on the side of the road today).  And I walked for a 10th, and then ran until my watch beeped 18.  And I was so tired that I actually didn't stop running for a few more steps when I realized - oh yea, I can stop now.  

So, 18 miles, in 3:11:change, and now I'm feeling pretty good about next week's 20 miler and the race in general.  Even though I had to stop.  And even though my finish pace sucked.  I still feel good about todays run.  Isn't that weird?  Can you imagine, ME, running 18 miles?  Yea, me neither, but I did it.