To run? Or not to run? That is the Question.

Issued by The National Weather Service
Sacramento, CA
3 pm PST, Thu., Dec. 16, 2010

... STORMY WEATHER HEADED OUR WAY TOMORROW MAY PERSIST INTO NEXT WEEK...

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I hear the words "RAIN STORM" and my first thought is "G D it. What about my long run on Saturday?!" Weather.com says that we've got a doozy of a storm a-comin' and now all I can think about is how I'm going to survive my 16 mile run on Saturday. I'm really starting to dread Saturday mornings now that my long runs are increasing in miles pretty quickly. By mid-January, I'll be at 20 miles....20 MILES!!! Now comes the part where I start to wonder why I decided to do this in the first place.

OH! Real quick: My friend Ryan recently ran a marathong in Hawaii a few days ago and did so awesome!! It was his first marathong and the totally AMAZING part of it all: HE DIDN'T EVEN TRAIN FOR IT. I hate people like that. What the hell is up with people just being BORN with the ability to do amazing things? It's like, all they have to do is EXIST, while us normies have to spend all this time training for stuff. Makes me totally neurotic, but I'm so proud and jealous of him! And Hawaii no less! Anyway, GO RYAN!

Okay, back to it: RAIN STORM!

I've got 16 miles to take care of on Saturday and my concerns are endless. What will I wear? (Not a fashionable, "OMG what will I wear!?", but a concerned thought, "Crap, what will I wear?"). Should I bring a change of socks? It's going to be a wet run and I totally developed this blister on my left ring toe from my Wednesday run. If my socks are wet the whole time, I might get more blisters. Should I even bother trying to bring my music player? Electronics in the rain are a bit sketchy and I don't want to ruin my device. So many questions!

I even thought of driving home home (the Yay Area) to see if I could run in a rainless part of town, but it's going to be raining there too. I totally wish I could teleport somewhere where it was completely dry...ugh. The rain just makes me dread running SO much.

I honestly don't even know where I'm going with this blog entry today. I'm just SO exhausted from this week's running already (I even skipped today's 3 miles). Because it gets so damn dark in the afternoon so quickly, I've resorted to running in the early morning. It's still just as dark in the morning, but at least I'm running with daylight coming instead of going. Anyway, I've been getting up around 4:45am every day just to suit up and get out the door by 5am. These runs wouldn't be so bad, but now that I'm about half way into my training schedule, I'm having to run a good amount during the work week. 

This Wednesday I woke up at 4:30am. It took a little longer to get ready because I had to prep to run 9 miles (pants, shirt, jacket, watch, shoes, water bottle, and headlamp...yes, a headlamp. I want to be seen out there!). Now, I know that 9 miles is only about a third of the marathong, but 9 miles on a work day...in the morning... that's a lot to ask of a person. By 6:30am, I had already been up for 2 hours, logged in 9 miles, and hadn't even gotten ready for work yet. It was like my day was already half over.

The run itself was pretty calm and quiet. I don't bring headphones with me when it's dark, because then I can't see possible attackers. And if I can't see them, I can't reach for the pepper spray in time. By the way, I've never had to use the pepper spray, but I HAVE reached for it. It turned out, the mysterious man driving slowly by me in a white pick up truck at 5am was only the paper boy tossing newspapers out his windows. Anyway, I decided to run to Sac State and back, which wasn't that bad, just quiet. 

So I ran 9 miles on a Wednesday, which I think is a pretty large feat for myself. Unfortunately, I'll be running 10 next Wednesday, and 12 the Wednesday after that. With all this running during the week, I have become SO FREAKIN' TIRED. My schedule has me running 6 days a week now, but I almost think that's excessive. Hell, what do I know? I've never done this before! But seriously, my legs and body are kind of aching and my feet are always on the verge of cramping. I have no clue how I'm going to handle running even longer distances in a couple weeks. Why did I want to do this again?? I think I need to see a shrink. 

It's only7:20pm right now, and I'm already brewing my Sleepytime tea. I seriously don't know how marathongers do this... How do marathongers have normal working jobs AND have time and energy to train? This is just so hard... I'm actually getting cranky about it... BUT I'm already half way there, I may as well just finish it out, right?