The Day Before

I was really hoping to lay low and take it easy this week as I got ready to run 26 miles tomorrow morning, but God did not have that in the plan for me. Instead, things at my job pretty much exploded. This is just boggling my mind, because my job is really not that stressful 95% of the time! I worked late nearly every night for the last two weeks.

But worse than that has been the scheduling issues for Saturday. I’ve already mentioned that both boys have a hockey game scheduled the morning of my marathon. Awesome. Tuesday night, I picked Jamie up from baseball practice, and he informed me that the schedule had been given out. Much to my astonishment, I discovered that the season starts tomorrow, with a doubleheader in the morning. It would be absolutely impossible for him to make either baseball game and still make the hockey game.  To say  nothing of cheering me on at the marathon!

But wait, there’s more! Tuesday night about 9:30, I got an email from Jamie’s hockey coach. Great news, it said.  The coaching staff had managed to get the team into a hockey tournament for free…this weekend. And, even better, the tournament director is willing to work with us, so we’re still going to be able to do the originally-scheduled Saturday morning scrimmage game.  This mean that Jamie’s team has a game Friday night at 8:20pm, a scrimmage Saturday morning at 11am, another game Saturday night at 5:40pm, and then another gaming at 8 AM Sunday morning.

You gotta be f’ing kidding me. :/

I spent the next two days trying to figure out how to get JJ to a hockey game Friday night, and then to a hockey game Saturday morning, along with getting Jamie to a hockey game Friday night, baseball game Saturday morning, and then to a hockey game Saturday night.  (He’s missing one hockey game and one baseball game.)  And somehow, all of this had to be worked around the fact that I was running a marathon Saturday morning!!

I was really frustrated by this time, and I told my husband that he was going to have to figure it all out. Ha. My husband is not much of a scheduler.  After a day, I took it all back and figured it out on my own, making the necessary phone calls to my family and some hockey friends. While this was all going on, I discovered that someone had stolen our credit card numbers, and I had to cancel them and wait for new ones to come.

Is it any wonder that I now have a stress-induced cold sore on my mouth the size of Wyoming? :/

Yes, I just put a picture of myself with big ugly cold sore on my mouth on my blog for all the world to see. Dude, that’s keeping it real. 😛

It’s now Friday, and I at least had today off work to try to relax before tomorrow’s race.  I even went to breakfast with my mom.

She even bought! 😉

Tonight we’ll have two hockey games, and we’ll pass JJ off to the family of one of his teammates, and then, tomorrow morning, while Jason takes Jamie to baseball and our hockey friends get JJ to Dearborn for the marathon, I will be running 26 miles.  My least favorite part of all of this is that I get to drive myself to a marathon. Note: that means I also have to drive myself home from the marathon. :/

Yesterday, I was really super-bummed about the fact that I have to go to this marathon and start it without any support whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a pretty outgoing person (ha, understate much?) and I can make friends pretty easily with perfect strangers. But although I like to think that I’m a pretty calm, cool, and collected person, I’m pretty damn nervous about this marathon.

In quiet moments by myself, I sometimes wonder if the other people running will look at me at starting line and think that I’m a fraud.  I feel like a fraud sometimes. The truth is, I’m not sure why I decided to do this.  It wasn’t that I felt all hellfire-bent to go run 26 miles one day.  It was more like thinking, “Well, hell, everybody else is doing it, why not me?”  It kind of seemed like a good idea at the time, you know?  But the truth is, I don’t really feel like a marathon runner.

I was also pretty damn disappointed that my family didn’t seem to realize that this was a big deal for me.  My husband in particular showed no signs of enthusiasm toward getting up and taking me to the marathon before Jamie’s baseball game. Yeah, I know he works nights, and then he’s not a morning person, but you think just this one time he  might be able to overcome it.  I’d do it for him, and he knows it.  He’s not offering, though, so I’m not going to badger him about it. I’d rather drive myself to and from a marathon than deal with his cranky self at 5am.

I was all set to suck it up, take myself to a marathon, and see how many friends I could make while standing around waiting to run 26.2 miles. After all, if anybody can do it, it’s me. 🙂 I made myself a cool shirt that came in the mail this week, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a good conversation starter. (You’ll just have to wait until my race report to see what it says. ;))

But, because God loves me, He gave me a big surprise today—my friend Katie texted me today that she’ll be there for the 5k and will find me before the marathon start to hang out with me before I go.  I can’t tell you how happy that makes me!  My stress level reduced significantly when I learned that—just knowing I have someone there to talk to me while I’m waiting to start makes such a huge difference!!  I’m so grateful for Katie.

In addition to Katie, my mom and my sister have already told me they’re going to show up later and be at one of the spectator spots to cheer me on.  That makes me really happy, too…it’s nice to have a cheering section. 😉

So, while I’m still nervous about tomorrow (I think I’m a little justified, lol!), I do feel better.  The good news is that the weather looks fantastic.  My friend Jessica texted me earlier in the week to wish me luck and to point out that after all the hard work I did, training in some of the sh*ttiest weather all winter, it looks like I’ll have a perfect race day forecast.  I texted her back and said, “Yeah, I think Mother Nature owes me this one!”  LOL

As I get ready for tomorrow, still feeling unsure as to whether or not I really belong there, I wanted to do something that I’ve been meaning to do for a little while. On one of my many, many long runs in the snow, I started to think about all the things that I’ve learned since I started training for marathon. There are actually a lot, and I’ve listed some of the most important ones below.

*I’ve learned that I can see 4:30 in the morning and it won’t kill me
*I’ve learned the cold is actually a relative term
*I’ve learned that there are nice drivers who move way out of your way, and assholes who nearly hit you and don’t care
*I’ve learned that it’s best not to drink wine the night before I have to get up early for a run
*I’ve learned that I like wine enough to ignore the item just above way more often than I should 😉
*I’ve learned that you can have a total all-out breakdown, sobbing with your head in your hands, on a main road in a snowstorm and people will just drive on by
*I’ve learned that there are some people who will see you running when it’s 6° and will cheer you on
*I’ve learned that my fingers get really cold, really easily
*I’ve learned that there are a lot of beautiful and amazing things to see in my area if I just open eyes and take the time to look
*I’ve learned that I can run in some of the most unpleasant winter conditions possible, and not die
*I’ve learned that the guys at the Metropark do plow the paths, maybe not perfectly all the time, but enough to get me through
*I’ve learned that it’s about 10 miles from my house to the closest ice rink on foot
*I’ve learned that it’s 2 miles from my house to the railroad tracks, 2 miles from my house to the end of my street, and four and a half miles from my house into town
*I’ve learned that I need to keep my toenails trimmed or else I have bloody shoes
*I’ve learned that most people think you’re crazy if you say you want to run a marathon
*I’ve learned that a 25 mile-per-hour headwind is pure misery, but a 25 mile-per-hour tailwind is awesome
*I’ve learned that running on a dirt road after a rain really stinks
*I’ve learned that you can run on ice, but it feels a lot like walking
*I’ve learned that my family loves me enough to put up with a lot of crankiness and tiredness
*I’ve learned that I’m a type A personality (Actually already knew that; I guess I learned that I am an uber type A personality)

But most importantly of all…I’ve learned that I am capable of so much more than I ever imagined.  And tomorrow, I plan to cap off this list by saying that I’ve learned that I can, indeed, run a marathon. 🙂

Thank you so much for reading and for following along on my journey—I will report back as soon as I’ve recovered, but don’t expect anything before Monday.  We have a hockey tournament, you know. 😉