Well, a week ago I had a totally different post in mind.  I was really hitting my stride as far as training and eating well are concerned.  With the 4th of July, I have totally lost my motivation and my healthy eating habits.  We had family in town.  I ate like crap all week.  Sort of.  Monday was fine, I went on my regular 3 mile run at lunch.  Tuesday we went to see the family that was visiting.  I wanted to run, but my mom was watching the kids and my 15 year old is kind of hard to handle, so I felt bad leaving him with her. So I didn’t go.  I had planned on going later that evening, but we went out to dinner instead.  All is not lost, I thought.  I was supposed to run 5 miles on Tuesday and 3 miles on Wednesday.  So, I figured that I would run 8 miles total on Wednesday morning, by 8:00am, to be able to meet my mileage goal for the week.

Problem #1:  I ate way too much food on Tuesday night, which kept me up almost half the night pooping and feeling like I was going to puke.

Problem #2:  I was tired from being up all night

Problem #3:  I was still feeling gross on Wednesday when I finally got up, and I couldn’t poop even though I thought I needed to, so I had to alter my route to one with bathrooms along it just in case, which is a much, much harder run

Problem #4:  I didn’t get up on time

With all that was going wrong, the odds felt stacked against me.  I started out, feeling pretty good, but by mile 5 I was running out of time and energy.  I called my husband and told him to pick me up on the way to our church’s 4th of July pancake breakfast.  I ended up running 6.5 miles instead of 8.  It was a horrible run.  I felt tired almost the whole time, my legs felt heavy, and many times I questioned myself as to why, exactly, do I want to run a marathon?  But I sort of got it done.

I usually do my long run on Friday.  With the holiday during the week, I had to go to work on Friday morning, and some family crap came up in the afternoon, so I didn’t have time to run 10 miles on Friday.  So I got up at 5:30 on Saturday morning and left the house by 6.  I was really hating it, especially because I didn’t have time to eat before I left.  And I was cursing myself and seriously thinking about quitting when at mile 4.5 I discovered that my Clif energy which I had assumed was in my camelbak, wasn’t.  So, yea, I ran the 10 miles without any food or energy gels.  Lovely, right?  Well, I did get it all done, slow and steady, in 2 hours and 30ish minutes.  I know, I am so slow.  But I am proud that I was able to finish, and I felt good all day yesterday.  Mileage for the week was 19.74.  YEAH!  Week 5 is in the books.