I’m currently on a plane from Dallas back to Nashville, returning from a wonderful bachelorette weekend spent with several of my closest friends. It was refreshing and restorative – both because we were celebrating the pending nuptials of one of my favorite people to an equally awesome guy and also because spending time with this group of girls reinvigorates me in so many ways. I’m incredibly lucky to have a close-knit group of friends from college who, within minutes, can make me laugh so hard my abs ache amd I seriously fear peeing in my pants, and then turn to a serious discussion about the implications of and ongoing debate about Anne Marie Slaughter’s article published last summer and the (semi-related) recent firestorm caused by Susan Patton’s assertion to Princeton women that they find a husband on campus before graduation (tried to link, apparently the article is expired on the Prince website). They’re smart, strong, beautiful, and incredibly fun. For some reason they like me as much as I love them, and I relish these weekends, as they’re unfortunately fewer and further between than I’d like.
Not everyone. Also not actually this weekend, but a good portion of the girls!
Anyway, I’m on my way home now, which makes me nostalgic already, but as usual after being with these ladies, I’m reinvigorated and inspired. And after a week of being sick and barely running, I’m ready to get back on track with training so I can do them proud. Secret’s out with them that I’m running a marathon, so now I feel the pressure so impress (and I will actually be the sole marathoner in this crew if I finish, so really impressing just means finishing, but that has been the goal all along anyway, so the external motivation is just a bonus.)
Um, ok, back in track from the nostalgic tangent. On the first leg of my flight, I was reading emails and had my Runner’s World on my, waiting till I had to turn my phone off, and the guy next to me asked if I was a runner. I kind of hesitantly replied, still weirded out that, yes, the answer to that question is yes, and turns out not only was he a runner, but is running the Country Music Marathon! We spent the entire flight for Austin to Dallas talking CMM details (I warned him about the hills, but raved about the cheering crowds), marathon training tips (he ran his first full last year), and generally chatting about mostly running stuff. What’s remarkable is that I am NOT a plane talker. Tough generally a pretty friendly person, I relish plane time to read, think, and just generally enjoy my alone time. But I enjoyed every second of talking running stuff. WHY is the endless conversation about this sport so interesting?
Ok – final piece here. This last week I was sick and no running happened. I had a nice, slow, shorter than it should have been run yesterday, but there’s still work to be done before April 27th. I’m going to start doing some training reporting/logging here to hopefully keep me a bit more on track. I’m currently “mid-sprint” if you read this post, so I’ve only got the next week planned out, but for the rest of this month, and then once I start marathon training in June, will do two-week updates that align with my flexible training strategy.
So, the plan for this week:
Monday – 4-5 miles easy
Tuesday – 8×400, with speed sessions group (about 5 miles total with warmup and cool down)
Wednesday – yoga
Thursday – 4 miles AM, tennis PM (USTA season started, first match I’m playing with the team is next weekend. Could be interesting, but hopefully a little warm up will help. If it’s close at least I know I can out last most people fitness-wise. Just gotta hit the balls in the court. Details.)
Friday – rest
Saturday – 11 miles
Sunday – tennis
20 days till Country Music!
Literal B 