more running and Easter

Last weekend I ran my longest distance ever, and the longest I'll do before the big marathon day. I drove west of town and went back and forth along some rural roads, including one portion that was all hills. It was a beautiful day and I was excited to get to wear shorts. I saw lots of animals along the way, too, including horses, donkeys, goats, chickens, and turkeys. I was feeling pretty good up until about 14 miles. Then I just had a painful and slow 8 miles more to go! But I did it. And I realized I'm going to need to get my mind shifted and back into the "I just want to finish" game and out of the "4:30 would be nice..." game. I'm getting worried the whole running-up-mountains thing might be harder and more painful than I thought. Which is dumb because I've known all along it's called "America's Toughest Road Marathon"!

After the run I took a very brief nap and then drove to Richmond, where I picked up Sunni and we went to see a live performance of Les Miserables. It was really good, and so fun to be there with Sunni. These days she is mostly caught up in boys and her phone, but she was giddy with excitement to see the show for the first time. She couldn't bring herself to agree that the show is much better than the recent movie (in which you get to see all those cute boys up close!), but she did agree the singing was better this time.

I spent the night in Richmond and the next morning was Easter. Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Richard, Sunni, and I all went to church together. Then we were back at the house getting ready for a big lunch. My aunt had made a cake in the lamb mold but said it was up to us to decorate the thing. So Uncle Richard and I got to work using icing to hold the thing together and dyed coconut to prop it up. Amazingly the head and ears stayed intact, but it was very precarious and Uncle Richard kept patting the poor guy with coconut and I would yell at him to stop patting it because he was going to break and he would just go on laughing and patting more. But the cake survived, and was delicious, and we ate it all.

After our big nice lunch and visiting with family I finally got to take a much-needed long nap. Then I hung out with Grandpa, Uncle Richard, and my aunt a little more before finally heading back to C'ville.

Yesterday I had another good but sobering run. I went to a different but even more beautiful spot west of town (where I again saw horses, cows, sheep, and turkeys) for my 14 miles. I was supposed to do a long warm up, then seven miles that got progressively faster, then a long cool down. And I did it all, and I was actually able to do the faster bits. But once I hit the cool down my legs felt pretty worn out and I still had three miles to jog back to the car! So I despaired a little more about the looming monster marathon coming up, but the truth is I am right on track and my coach knows what he's doing and he only wanted me to run the 14 miles and I really did manage to make it a true tempo run and I should be happy that I completed the workout and not despair that I couldn't run a marathon yesterday. Again, mindset really needs to shift into just feeling good about completing the marathon!