My Better Half

This weekend, our oldest sister stayed with me for the weekend with her kiddos. It was so much fun, and my kids had a ball using their only (and revered) boy cousin as a jungle gym. Even though he's entered the teen years, he's not above romping on the floor with H and Charlie, and it always makes me proud of him to see how tender-hearted he is with them.

But above all that, a big bonus was that I had someone home to watch the kids while I did my weekend long run, as Big J was in Georgia serving Uncle Sam at a training. When I said how long I was going to run, my niece asked if I was joking. It caught me a little off-guard because seven miles no longer feels like that big of a deal. It's the longest training run for me in awhile, but because I have the big picture looming out there and am admittedly a little obsessed with it, it just seems like a normal stepping stone. It gave me a little extra pride in my workout for the day.

The skies were dark, so I had on my super awesome day-glo Athleta Wickit Workit shirt for visibility. Only a couple rain drops actually made it from the sky to my head as I covered the distance, but the cool weather was perfect. I'm still not jazzed at the idea of flaunting my full muffin top by strapping on the old fuel belt, but I knew I'd need to have fluids since what would take faster runners about an hour to cover takes me an hour and a half, so I carried one of the 10 ounce bottles from my belt.

Well, I'll not let my pride get in the way again, because about three miles into it, I was ready to chuck the bottle on the side of the road. The only thing that kept me from doing so was images of my parched booty laying face down on the side of the road at about mile six.

I love my compression tights, and my new acquisition of compression socks, as it feels like my legs are getting a nice hug when they need it most (I know, ack, but it's the best way I can describe it). Along with some fluids and the other half of my pouch of honey stingers, I ended the run happy and with a little bit of a spring in my step.

I realized that I only needed to add five miles to the day's run in order to get to a half-marathon, and that unless I injure myself in the middle of the run, there's no way I won't meet my goal of coming in under three hours. However, when I stopped to think that the distance I just ran was just over a quarter of the marathon...I'm still in the suspended disbelief stage on that one. I know that if I do the work, I'll be just fine, it's just that thinking of that huge number seems crazy to me right now.

With just two weeks of the 15k training plan (used to build a good base) left, I'll soon be starting the actual marathon training plan and I couldn't be more excited.