Rule 104.3B

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas. Personally, I ate my way through the entire Detroit region and had a great time doing it. I even ran one day on the hotel treadmill--oh yeah! My family did a vaguely-white elephantish-stocking stuffer exchange, where we all bought three random items less than $5/each and traded them amongst ourselves (kids' stocking stuffers were chosen much more intentionally). Among my items, I took a pair of red and white women's knee-high socks with white faux fur around the top. I was really hoping my Dad would get them, but no such luck. But that was actually my third gift exchange of the season. One was with my boys (and MJ & family by phone) before we left, and one was before that, with The Beastie.

I love her to pieces. I really do. We were young enough when we met that we exchanged Christmas and birthday gifts. We have continued this tradition and we always have fun with it. Our birthdays are only 4 days apart, so it's sort of a semi-annual party tradition. Anyway, this year, since we live far apart, we mailed the gifts then had a Skype gift exchange. Complete with this photo of us in front of her Christmas tree. Silly? Maybe. Fabulous? Absolutely.

What do you do to keep in touch with far-away friends?

So, Blogger Rule 104.3B, as invoked by TnT Coach Ken: if you blog it, you must follow through. Yeah, yeah, guys, I know. I'm ridiculous for obsessing over the difference between 720 and 730 miles. I get it. But do you know how much it would bother me to run 727 miles and know I was *this close* to what I said I was going to do? Have you ever read my self-description on this blog? Compulsive over-achiever. Stick with me until the end of the week--let's see how close I can come. Right now I'm at 713.6. Hellooooooo treadmill!

And....race announcement coming later this week! Stay tuned.

Uh, oops. I'm supposed to be good with numbers.

A Beautiful Bah-Humbug

Don't get me wrong--I love Christmas. Really, I do. I have great memories of sitting around the dining room table as a child, eating dinner on Christmas Eve, looking into the living room at the softly glowing tree, with all its ornaments and the gifts beneath it. All the childish anticipation of Christmas morning. Then the late night Christmas Eve service, which was always beautiful. We lit candles in church and turned off the lights, some years we processed outside onto the sidewalk, singing Silent Night with our candles, sometimes in the snow. It was all lovely.

And then yesterday on the phone with my brother I heard myself saying, "We're all excited, but I don't have time for this *%!$!"

And sadly, it's all beautiful and true. Beautiful--the stocking I finally finished knitting for my niece. My son who keeps talking about Jesus's birthday. The wrapping of gifts so lovingly picked out. True--that I don't have time to do things like clean my house and buy groceries while knitting said stocking, working, running, and continuing to settle into our house. The buying holiday cards, sending them out, buying gifts, shipping gifts, decorating, all of it. It's not that it's no longer fun--it's still beautiful--but for the first time in my life I'm finding all of this stressful.

The Dreadmill

After last Sunday's failed attempt to run, it got icy out. That's where I draw the line. Ice. So after a few busy days at work, I made it over to the rec center and signed up for a month's membership. I got two runs in, a 4-miler yesterday and 7 miles this morning. I'm really thankful for a safe place to run, but why does it have to be SO boring?!? I know we're all suffering the dreadmill right now. It gives me solace to know you're all doing the same thing with me. Time to recharge the mp3 player.

Oops

First, the good news--I hit 700 miles today! I know a lot of you passed that milestone back in August (or earlier), but this is a big hairy deal for me! It's a first!!

The bad news--I went back to my January blog post this morning just to double check my 720 goals and discovered, much to my dismay, that I actually said 730. Crap!! I sort of feel attached to the 720 goal. I can reach it at this point, and it's what I've been planning for. But it's not what I said a year ago! I feel conflicted. Time to write down a new plan for the next 13 days and see what is realistic.

Come on, up high, a little love

I had absolutely no idea that it had been a week and a half since I blogged. Really. I'm not going to give you an excuse. I'm going to tell you the truth: I love my job. I absolutely love it. I love that it exhausts me mentally. And when that happens, I come home and I play with my kiddo, and then he goes to bed, and I get totally sucked into either running or scrapbooking. And then it's a week and a half later and I'm all, "what the crap happened? My blog claims it's been 10 days since I last posted." Here we are.

So lots has happened. Let's go numbered list.

1. I decided to use the RW 2-hour-half taper schedule. It's a 5-day-a-week plan, and unlike any taper plan I've ever used, it has me running 11 miles the weekend before the race. Does anyone do that? It also still has me doing speed work, which I'm pleased with. Luckily there's a 3 lap/mile outdoor track about 150 yards from my office. So yesterday I headed there over the lunch hour to do mile repeats. The track is owned by a university. In the middle of the second interval I saw the university's mascot walking toward me in full costume. As I approached it I said, "Come up, up high, show me some love." I totally high-fived a mascot in the middle of my interval workout. That's one way to make a track workout memorable!

2. I don't know her, but I read B.o.B.'s blog and enjoy it. She posted this video today. I definitely teared up when I watched it and decided it was worth re-posting. This is how I feel about marathons. The camaraderie shown, the excitement of it, the personal goals of runners.

3. Remember back in January when I joined the 1000 mile challenge group with some of the Team? Well, I said up front that 1000 miles was probably too much for me, so I was going to call it my 720 mile challenge. Well, I'm really happy to say that it looks like I'm on track to reach that goal!

592 + 4.7 + 9.2 + 3.2 + 3.2 + 4.5 = 616.8

Wait. Is it Thursday? Did I just post 3 things? Even if it was inadvertent, I guess it's still a Three Things Thursday. Go me!

Aaaaaaand we're back

Apparently my last blog post was sort of out there. You'll have to excuse me for that. It was written from deep within the fog of my dissertation, which I'm happy to report is now out with my committee. One good thing came from my post though--I discovered runjessrun, and that she follows my blog! Good stuff. I now follow hers, too.

I promised I would explain my "not even pretending to try to run." But, the more I try to come up with a metaphor for what those two weeks were like, the more I realize that I don't know how to verbalize it. I had anxiety so badly at times that I couldn't sleep despite complete exhaustion. In the middle of it I got a bug that's going around and that, for most people, sucks but isn't a huge deal. It put me in the ER so dehydrated it hurt to move my eyes. I know that sounds dramatic, and drama's not really my thing. I tell you all of this as a way of saying, "work got so out of hand there for a while that I internalized it and it messed with me completely." I am SO glad I got through my deadline and now have time to do things like run and update my blog. Oh, and go to a crop with my bestie next weekend (!!), which I am so excited about.

I finally got back to running today. On the 'mill, of course, with this crazy storm that's coming through. You know I love the list, so here it is.

1. I totally underestimated how much fitness you can lose in 16 days

2. I have dissertation weight that must be lost. Seriously. It has got to go.

3. I am officially behind on my short-term mileage goals for the year. The 1000 mile challenge (or, the 730 mile challenge, as I like to call it) is still motivating me though, so I guess it's doing its job.

4. My mileage this time last year was 18.5! So lame! So at least I'm still ahead of that.

5. longish run planned for Sunday afternoon. Yea!!

Mileage (a few runs from pre-crazy didn't get put here, so here's everything):

20.8 + 4.6 + 4 + 3.5 = 32.9 miles

In other post-crazy news, I've finally had time to tackle one of the two big projects I set out for 2010: scrapbook my honeymoon...that happened in 2005. I've had so much fun starting that. Scrapbooking is such a good creative outlet for me. I don't post all my layouts online (this is a running blog, after all), but every now and then it's fun to show you what I've been up to. So here you go--one of the pages from our cruise to Alaska. You can click on it to see the description of it on twopeasinabucket (a fabulous scrapbooking website).

A new challenge

What is it about runners that we can't back down from a challenge? Maybe it's part of why we took up running in the first place--wondering what we could achieve. I don't know. What I do know is that due to peer pressure a handful of Team alums, including myself, have signed up for a challenge on the website runningahead.com. In competition with a team in Arizona, we are each challenged to run 1000 miles this year. That's 20 miles per week with 2 weeks vacation.

I joined the challenge team after being clear with Coach Mike that I almost certainly won't cover the whole 1000 miles. I am, however, going to try to hold myself accountable for at least 730, which is (for me) a more realistic 14 miles per week. Crazy? Not really. One of my former Team coaches averages 2,500 miles a year, and hit 2,800 miles in 2009. It isn't entirely clear when a person crosses the line from being a "jogger" to being a "runner," but if I'm going to have a blog called "Joanna Runs," I should be able to handle 14 miles per week.

So far, I'm off to a good start. At the end of January last year I had a paltry 12 miles. I will surpass that this weekend. I have to say, seeing my teammates' training logs on our challenge website does motivate me. It motivated me to drive to the gym through intense snow yesterday.

What the heck, I'm gonna pull my remaining thoughts together via list format--holla Type A!! This list is titled, "things currently motivating me to run."

1. my challenge teammates' training logs
2. the challenge itself
3. a Runner's World article that said that shedding 5 pounds can take 2 minutes off your half-marathon time, combined with my desire to finally run a sub-2 hour half-marathon
4. the discovery that I don't hate all treadmills, just the brand & model I happened to be running on for about 3 years. The renovated gym at work has a new model which I'm actually enjoying
5. the realization that icy roads = treadmill running = a great way to train consistently

Mileage update:

2.2 + 4.0 + 4.0 = 10.2