Long time no blog!

I haven't written anything since March, just haven't been in much of the writing mood plus that thing called life keeps getting in the way. I will try to play a short game of catch-up for anyone who may be reading this. For the tangents I may go on, I apologize.

I think I left off while training for the Minnie Marathon that began at Animal Kingdom and ended in Epcot. It was a 15k race (9.3 miles) and I used Hal Higdon's training program. The runs were going well enough, with my long distance runs on the weekend. The program also called for 2 runs during the week, usually 3 or 4 miles. Sometimes I did those, sometimes not, it depended on my level of tiredness and motivation. Unfortunately, I saw how important it was not to skip those runs when race time came. So, as I was saying, the long runs were going well enough, I had much trouble on my first 5 mile run, I had to walk TONS. This made me very discouraged. Thanks to a pal on runnersworld, Terry, I gave a walking strategy a try for my next long run. I ran 10 minutes and walked 1 minute. This made my following long runs of 6, 7, and 8 miles much easier and actually, dare I say, fun?

May 3 comes, 3 days before the race, and I feel absolutely horrible, very achy, high fever, etc. After about 24 hours it seems to have passed (oh, how fooled I was!). My mom and I go to the race expo to pick up my packet and this being my first expo, I was pretty excited. I bought a cute little "running girl" bumper sticker for my car and have yet to put it on...

May 6th: the big race is here. At 4am, I set off for Animal Kingdom and my husband is still sleeping soundly in bed. Lucky bastard. I meet up with Krista and we get in the giant line for the porta potties. I did not want to have to stop along the race route. We head over to the starting line and Minnie and Mickey Mouse were up on stage and got us started with fireworks. It was pretty sweet. I keep a steady pace, not wanted to start off too fast. I used my 10/1 walking strategy for the first 5 miles. Took a squirt of gu at mile 5 as well. Running through the parks was very nice and got me excited for the Disney Marathon in January. Mile 7 meant the worst side stitches I had ever felt and I had to walk almost the entire way to mile 8. I am hurting that last 1.5 miles and I knew had I done my mid-week runs, it wouldn't have been so bad. Lesson learned. I finish by giving Mickey a hi-five at the finish line and I did not make my goal of under 1 hour and 45 minutes (see race section on the right for times). Oh well. It was fun times and I got a sweet medal, along with everyone else.

The whole rest of the week I felt like poop. May 12th came and I was registered for a 5k (3.1 miles). I trek out there and run along with pretty much zero energy. I beat my first 5k time but I knew that I should have beat it by much more.

The following day I am hit with a fever of 103.4 and I miss work on Monday. Tuesday I go to the doctor's, having also skipped work that day as well. Turns out I have had the flu and bronchitis since May 3 and had since competed in two races. Smart Jessica. Real smart. Apparently by running I hadn't allowed my body to realize that it was sick and that only made it worse. I was sick and out of running for 26 days. That is right, over 3 weeks. It sucked.

The question I had to answer was "did I still want to get out there and train for Disney when I had been set so far back?". Running for a mile hurt. How the hell was I suppose to be able to run 26. 2 miles? My energy had been zapped and being sick had set me back physically and mentally. But this past Friday, I went to the Track Shack and registered for Marathonfest, their marathon training program. I will do this.

New Journey:
1st day of marathon training-
Yesterday was the first run of marathon training, 1 day done out of 7 months of training. Good times. I had to be at the park for 5:30am, I got up at 4:30am and had to shut the demons in my head up because they kept telling me to just lay back down. No. No way in hell. Then I hear the pouring rain, courtesy of Tropical Storm Barry. Whatever, I am a trooper, no excuses.

When I get there I was really quite amazed at how many people turned out in the storm. I go to the pace group that is running 11:00-11:40 minute miles for long distances. Normally I am faster than that but I figured since I was out sick for 3-plus weeks, I better not start off too fast. It was a good thing too, I thought I was going to die and yesterday was only 3 miles! Hopefully I will bounce back to form soon enough.

Oh, and I am officially a runner. After the Minnie Marathon, my toenail turned purple and then black. It is now dead and should be falling off soon. I will be without a toenail. I am a runner.