Saturday, Sunday, Monday Recap

Where to start? :) Saturday morning we ran the Pineapple Classic. It was a 5 km run with 6 obstacles... Jess has a good recap of the race which I'm sure many of you have already checked out! :) It was a really fun day, I loved every minute of participating in the run. My team consisted of Regan, Danielle, Tosha and myself. Jess ran it with her husband John, Wendy and Wendy's husband Eric. It really reminded me of how thankful I am for having such a wonderful group of friends.

Sunday I began the official taper period before the marathon. Our run was down to 12 miles (ended up being about 12.8). I met Nancy at the carpool in Kirkland and drove down to Mercer Island where we joined Jess and Danielle. It was a very early (for a weekend run), cold and rainy morning. Nancy and I stopped at Starbucks because we were early and contemplated just staying there. I have to confess... part of what got me out the door was that I had downed a bagel with cream cheese and jam in preparation for the run and I wanted to burn off the calories.

So off we went. The Mercer Island route is fairly hilly. After running 18 and 20 miles the last couple of weekends, I was hoping it would be a walk in the park. Not so much. It had to have been one of the worst runs I have had in a long time. It was day 7 in a row of working out and my body was rebelling. Nothing felt right... Danielle read me like a book. She ran with me the last few miles, and typical of Danielle's completely unselfish nature, she talked me through making it to the end. We walked through the taper period, marathon day and recovery. Just a week ago she had done a marathon and was no doubt feeling her own pain, but was there keeping me positive as I entered the last two weeks prior to my marathon.

Needless to say, I was happy to find myself back in the car. I tucked away the crappy feeling I felt on the run to pull out when I'm feeling it on the marathon... a reminder that I can make it and that I have a wonderful group of friends cheering me along my way to my first marathon.

I woke up sore this morning and didn't work out in preparation for a soccer double header tonight. It was tough... my right hamstring, left quad and back were all acting up and I felt really slow. We were up in the first game and ended up losing 5-3 (to a team we should have dominated). We managed to squeak out a 7-3 victory in game two, but the team wasn't very strong. I pocketed a decent goal, and managed to play some good defense in the second game... despite feeling that out of shape, chubby jiggly feeling running up and down the field. I hate that feeling!

On my way home I called Nancy and told her I wouldn't make it to the run tomorrow morning. Tomorrow would be 9 days without rest and I need to start listening to my body if I'm going to taper properly. So I'm going to take tomorrow off, hydrate well and try to get some time in the hot tubs at the gym. Get back at it Wednesday morning.

Hope you're all doing well... looking forward to catching up on all of your blogs! :)