One month

So have I mentioned that I'm currently training for a marathon? I used to blog about running on my other blog, but well, I never update that blog anymore, and I just haven't really talked about it over here. It kind of started as a misunderstanding. One day back in the winter, my friend Cindy and I were running, training for the Frederick Half Marathon, and she asked if I was interested in running a fall marathon. In my mind I heard "Fall half marathon" and so I said, sure, I was totally on board. So I went to go and actually sign up for the Frederick Half, and you get a discount if you sign up for the Frederick, and Baltimore races at the same time, so I texted her to make sure she wanted to do the Baltimore Half in the fall. She calls me back almost immediately, and said that she had meant a full marathon. At which point I just kind of went, "uh" and that was as far as my thought process went. So I thought about it for about 15 minutes, talked to Jesse and called Cindy back and said, sure, let's do it. I then immediately signed up for both races, and after clicking on the little "marathon" button my heart was racing for about an hour afterwards. So that is how I came to be involved in training for a marathon.

The race happens to be in one month. One month from yesterday. Am I nervous? Not really. Whatever happens will happen. If I were interested in winning, then yes, I would be nervous. As this case may be, I am only interested in finishing and still being alive the next day. And that I can do. So far Cindy and I have done one 20 mile run, and one 19 mile run (as well as many many other mid length runs) and we have one more 20 miler ahead of us. More than anything, I'm ready for the training to be over. I'm just tired of it all right now. So. Much. Running.

This is of course the reason why we had a pretty lame summer. All summer long I was running. Every Saturday morning I would get up before the crack of dawn so that Cindy and I could start running the moment that it got light in an effort to beat the heat a little bit.

I'll tell you, weather makes such a difference! In July Cindy and I were supposed to do a 12 mile run, and Cindy mapped out a route for us to run, but either we made a wrong turn, or something, and it ended up being 15 miles. Plus, even though we started at 530 it was during one of the terrible heat waves, so it was about 85* when we started, and about 95* when we ended. We put water bottles at a point that we thought was earlier than it ended up being, and so we had run out of fluids early. It was, without a doubt, the worst run I've ever experienced, and I've run a half marathon while pregnant!

Well, this past Saturday Cindy wanted to tackle it again. This time, we brought money so that we could stop at the little store out in the middle of nowhere about 7 miles into the run. That made a big difference. After making a few wrong turns, some more serious than others, this time the course ended up being on the plus side of 17 miles. BUT.... it was cooler. And we had fluids. We were able to actually run most of it, and we could still run miles at a time towards the end. There was one point from about mile 10.5 to mile 13 that was mostly down hill, and we were clocking in at sub 10 min miles, which is super fast for us.

Anyway, moral of the story, don't run when it's hot, and if you do, have tons and tons of fluids!

So enough of this running post. Sorry to you who are not runners at all. I'm just looking forward to the point when I no longer have to devote every single Saturday to running. Jesse is running a Ragnar Relay next weekend, so it's been both of us getting these runs in each week, and it's all we've been doing for the past 5 months. Oh well, onto the home stretch now!

And after the race, comes Halloween. Here is a preview of Olivia's costume. She's going to be Olivia the pig.