Revisions

I was remiss in my wording a few posts back and would like to retract a previous statement. Andy will not be hired as a pack mule for the upcoming race as that brings to mind sweaty, not so fresh smelling and certainly not fleet footed beasts, if you will. No, Andy has been hired as the pitt crew. That has a much nicer ring to it, don't you think? It also redefines his responsibility to the two well honed, high performance machines that he will be working with on October 18th. :) So Andy, my new friend, you are the pitt crew chief. Glad to have you on the team.

I am finally making some progress toward my fundraising goal. Thank you to all who have donated so far and please keep passing along my info to your family and friends who might be feeling philanthropic. Wanted to share a link with some pics of our honored teammate. He is little Alexander. His nickname is Gubben and he is such a cutie. Thanks to all your support he is doing well and heading back to school. And he is getting to play soccer. Shouldn't all little boys get to play soccer? :) SO thanks you guys, your support means a lot. http://web.me.com/npain/Site_8/Killer_Whales.html#7

Speaking of tats. Thanks to my running shorts and a 20 mile run, I am sporting a bar code-esque tramp stamp on my low back. Take a look. Nice right? Yeah that is one tattoo you will never see on this body.

Ok seriously? How cute is this stuff? I think these two pieces will have to come home with me as souvenirs of my kick butt marathon experience. Love love love them

Steph and I love to take pictures when we are running. Well, I love to take pictures and she always has her iphone so I make her take them. Must document every aspect of this thing. So for our 10 mile run, one of our teammates actually had a crew of shooters out on the course. Steph got some of the pictures and so in honor of our 20 mile run here is our commemorative photo. We had to use all four hands to represent. I hope we looked that happy yesterday. :)

I am 4 weeks away from lacing up my Asics and heading out to run my first ever marathon. There have been days in the past two years that I thought I would never be able to do this. I am so excited that it is almost here. I know it is going to be hard and I know it is going to be painful and I am more than likely going to cry more than once in those 5 hours. But I am so ready. I am so excited. I have decided to be extra nice to this body over the next 4 weeks. I am going to eat healthy, drink tons of water, take out the processed junk from my eating, do 100 abs a day to keep my core strong and roll and stretch these muscles each and every day. I am going to give it the fuel it needs to do this thing. And I think the week before the race I am going to get my toes painted.....purple with green polka dots. I am quite sure that will make me run faster.

We are on the other side of 20 miles kids. I am still not sure I believe we actually did it. But then again I think my blood sugar is still recovering.  I woke up this morning and got my routine going. Wash face, brush teeth, sunscreen, running clothes on, ponytail. Check. Mind you I almost asphyxiated myself and the cats with the cloud of Nuetrogena Spray sunscreen. Yes, there literally was a cloud. Hey I was going to be in the sun for a long time.  Off to downstairs to get my breakfast on. Made my toast with peanut butter, laced up the new Asics and started getting very nervous. It was weird, I felt like it was race day. My tummy was all nervous and I was very excited. So I rolled out my legs and grabbed all my stuff. Steph texted that they were in the neighborhood so I took off to meet them. I couldn't wait in the house. Steph's boyfriend Andy and her Dad, who is in from Chicago were going to man an aid station for the team today so they were dropping us off and then heading...

Big 20 miler tomorrow. This is the farthest we will run before the race. I am excited, nervous, ready, not ready, worried and so pumped it's ridiculous. I really hope it all goes well. But regardless I want to remember to have fun, stay healthy and finish. One foot in front of the other for 20 miles. Let's go team. 

Why is it that the "low" mileage weeks seem to be my nemesis? 18 was really good and then the next week when I think 14 will be a breeze I turn up with a major issue after 10 miles. All the sudden I noticed my foot was swinging out to the side weird and all wonky. Nothing was hurting so it didn't make sense and then soon after that the back inside of my left knee started killing me. It got so bad I ended up having to walk 2 minutes and attempt to run for 2 minutes. It was a brutal 4 miles. I made sure to stretch really good post run but I was really nervous that something was really wrong because it hurt the whole rest of the day. I iced it and took some aleve and started some heavy praying. It's only now I could bring myself to blog without worrying about crying all over the computer. I can't be this close and then get hurt or not be able to see this thing through. The only good thing at first was that it wasn't a constant pain. It only hurt when I did certai...

Again, another first for longest mileage I have never done in my life.  We were scheduled to run 18 mile this week. I was having trouble with my piriformis all week and was worried I wouldn't be able to run at all. But I made sure to stretch, and ice and pray a lot. Thursday night  I got very nervous and started to question this whole thing.  And then Friday I came to my senses. If I have to walk some , so be it. I had to put my goals in perspective once again. I want to have fun, stay healthy and finish. So I decided to just take it easy and get the mileage in however it came. Once the pressure was of I was actually excited to push myself to 18 miles. And I was going to have the best running buddy ever there with me. If you remember STeph wasn't going to be running on Saturday because she was doing the Disney half on Sunday. She sent me and email on Thursday and told me that she would be riding her bike with me so I didn't have to run alone. WHAT? I mean come on? Who d...