By my sister's calculations (she has one of those cool watch/foot thingy combos that both track your mileage and speed) this is about 10 miles. Which gave me a lot of time to think. Foremost on my mind on this particular fine Saturday morning was my Opa and how he would be 90 years old tomorrow if he were still alive, buying an old barn and converting it into a house and wood working studio, how Sunny could've come running with me if her hips weren't worthless and every now and then, "Hmmm, does anything hurt?" -full body scan for pain, then- "Nope! I'm good! This is the best I've felt on a run . . . well, ever!"It took me an hour and forty-five minutes, which is a little disappointing, but I'm hoping my Team In Training coach will be able to work with me on pace. I want to go fast! And I don't want to kill myself doing it!
In other news: I met with my team leader this week for some face to face/fundraising strategizing time. She's great. She gave me all kinds of tips. So prepare yourselves - I am about to blow up your inbox with annoying e-mails begging for money! I might even throw a benefit kegger at some point (I thought for sure LLS would frown on this, but turns out, folks fighting cancer like beer too!). I'm digesting all the suggestions right now, I'm going to see how well my family plea goes over and then I'll assess the need again after the holidays.
In other news yet: I talked with a colleague of mine about running on Friday (Colleague? That makes me sound too important. We'll go with it!) and he has offered to show me the ropes of the Forest Park Trails! This is an area of Portland I've long wanted to explore on foot, but I've always shied away from, thinking that experienced trail runners/bad-asses would scoff at my measly 6 mph on-a-good-day-and-flat-surface pace and blow by me, all the while thinking to themselves, "You don't belong here! Go put on a pink hoodie and run on a treadmill with the rest of the not-made-for-trails wimps!" (Again with the pink - there is a deep rooted issue here!)
But, I recently gave up my gym membership. This seems like an unwise thing to do, considering I'm training for a marathon, but I was having a conversation with a friend that somehow turned to gyms and he was shocked/disappointed that I belonged to one. "Kristina, no! What would John Muir do? He certainly wouldn't run on a treadmill!" And I'll tell you something, I took that to heart. Because John Muir is my dead guy crush and I would never want to disappoint him and also because my Runner's World says that running on a treadmill isn't a close enough simulation to real, on the ground running to be effective for training. So I'm going to take my colleague up on his offer and hit the trails of Forest Park some fine weekend. I might even throw in some trail runners' lingo if I'm not hoovering wind too badly. "Man, I got some serious chub rub going on!" (Yes, Bekah, there is a word for it!) Or perhaps if I'm feeling sprightly near the finish line, I'll sprint passed and yell, "Dude! You just got chicked!" Which, by the way, didn't go over so well with one female reader, who wrote in a letter to the editor this month, "Including the phrase "getting chicked" as need-to-know vocabulary legitimizes the idea that women are inferior to men that that getting passed by a woman is something to be embarrassed about. [It is] offensive." I thought it was funny. Oops.
So on this beautiful Sunday morning, while lying in bed with the lingering scent of my new golden cypress candle still in the air, I thought to myself, "What would John Muir do?" I didn't come up with anything brilliant, but I did decide to take an amble through the woods. My hike today brought my weekend mileage total to 23. I think John would be proud.
In a Nutshell:
I have sore hip-flexors, but otherwise, I'm good. It's 9:30 now and I'm going to bed! I'm burning that cypress scented candle and with any luck I'll dream about John Muir tonight!
Oh, also, only five days left of pumpkin smoothies at Burgerville. Get them while they're hot (?).
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