Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Happy New Year!!

Back to December of 2010 when I decided I would run the Plitvice Marathon in Croatia.  The marathon was scheduled for the first weekend in June 2011.  I told my husband my plan and he was overall supportive but I know he had his doubts.  He knows me and knows that I would work as hard as I could and do my best but I know he was afraid that maybe I just wouldn't be able to finish the 26.2 miles and I know he just didn't want me to be disappointed.  But being the internet man he is, he hopped right on the computer and found me a beginner's marathon training program and printed it out for me.  I began telling family and friends what I was doing.  I know most of them probably thought I was crazy and might not finish but whatever.  I knew once I started telling people that it meant I was definitely doing this.  I'm not the kind of person who just says stuff.  Once I said it out loud, it was going to happen.  So once January came, I started my program.  I am a perfectionist when it comes to some things so I made sure I completed every run ,every week.  I sometimes due to work, Niko and other reasons might shuffle runs to different days however I never skipped.  I signed up for a half marathon for the middle of my training program.  I figured I should run a half marathon before a full ;-)  I decided on the Bucks County half marathon.  It was close to my parents house so they could watch Niko and it fell on a weekend I was supposed to run 13 miles anyway.  It was a low key race but it was fun.  It took place in Tyler State Park so it was very pretty.  It was also fairly hilly!  There was a couple points where I thought, oh man I don't know if I can do this but I slowed my pace a bit and then I would get back into my groove.  I finished with a time of 2:03.  I was really happy with that!  My first half marathon ever and it was not a super easy course.  I was really starting to feel like I could do this thing!!!....

So it's a new year now, 2013 and it's a new week of 50 K training (week 3).  I was feeling really sore from my weekend 16 miler in the snow followed by 5 miles the next day.  The 5 miler was a little harder than I expected since the trail by my house was still snow covered.  Some parts still had a few inches of snow and other parts were icy.  By Monday New Years Eve, my legs were really sore.  Due to Christmas I ran all 5 of my runs 5 days in a row (40 miles) plus as I said 21 of those miles were really tough due to the weather.  I gladly welcomed my day off on Monday.  We went out to dinner with my parents for New Years Eve.  And Niko declared he wanted to sleep over my parents house.  This was quite welcome since Niko loves to wake up at the crack of dawn while Una our 8 month old will sleep til 830! So I gladly enjoyed a couple of cocktails with dinner.  We had picked up some craft beers while out and headed to our neighbors house.  We had a really great time however apparently I enjoyed it a little too much.  Once I laid down in bed everything began spinning and I knew what was coming and ran for the bathroom :-(  I don't know if this is weird or what but as I hovered over the toilet all I could think was "man, how am I going to do my 7 miler tomorrow?!?!"  Around 6 AM I woke up because I had a pretty bad headache.  I downed some tylenol with a glass of water and fell back asleep.  A little after 8, I heard Una over the monitor and got her.  My headache was gone but I felt weak and exhausted.  I really wanted to get my 7 miler in.  So I ate a nice big greasy breakfast and coffee, laid around with Una, hydrated myself.  Around 1145 I decided Una and I would take a nap.  We slept two hours.  When I got up, I felt better so I got ready to run.  Obviously it wasn't the best run of my life but surprisingly I didn't feel awful like I was afraid I would.  I also was very worried that my stomach would give me problems as sometimes it does after a few adult beverages.  It was chilly out and the bathrooms are closed this time of year so I brought some tissues with me in case.  I think my count is up to 3 times now that I've had to go #2 while out running and had to choose leaves carefully ;-)  Luckily my stomach was fine and I had a nice run.  Only 33 miles left this week! :-)

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