38- is it saturday night yet?

Seriously, this has been the hardest week ever.  I don't want to turn this blog into a festival of  how busy and stressed I am (cuz c'mon, aren't we all?) but this week has been very tough.  Long hours at school, too many bakery shifts, plus fitting in runs. 

So yesterday....
Yeah, crazy.  I worked 4:45am-9am at the bakery, drove to work, had a TERRIBLE day teaching my students from 10-4:30 where everything just went *wrong* despite my best intensions to plan 'fun' hands-on stuff, drove home to my parents, was running alittle after 5pm, and was back at school by 7pm for "Back to School Night."  Spent 2 hours being intimidated by parents who are twice my age, while trying to pretend like all of their children hadn't driven my nuts today.  Then, got back to my parents' house by 10pm.  I think I was asleep by 10:30pm.  No joke.

The best part is that I planned to do my "mini" long run this morning, early before work around my parents' house.  I don't want to wait until Sunday because I'll be up north and I want to just do up north things and not worry about devoting 3 hours to running on Sunday morning (my one full day there).  So this morning was my only option.  I settled on a 20 mile day- 15 this morning, and 5 tonite back at run club with my friends.  So after my day from hell yesterday, I dragged my butt out of bed at 5:30am and went....

Let me tell you- it was a GOOD run.  I think maybe it was the fact that I just had to *run* for 2 hours and not think about anything, but I really was feeling "on" from start to finish.  I decided that I never felt *fast* per-say, but SMOOTH.  It is that smooth feeling that I have been lacking lately, and this morning I finally felt it.  I have a love-hate relationship with the area I grew up in - it is true suburbia, flat roads, concrete, and all the roads are in neat little square miles.  So it is always a matter of doing "4 squares" (4 miles) or "6 squares" or whatever.  Today, it was a 14 square with some tacked on at the end.  I felt so light starting out, but lately that has been the case and then I die 3 miles in.  Today, I told myself that I wanted to feel equally good at the end of the run as I did at the start.  And honestly, I did.  The only regret was that I didn't have more time to make it a 20 because my splits were consistant and I felt so good.  But, it was ok to sort of leave it at a good run.  My Garmin died at 14.91 miles, which was ironic, but OK.  Ended up being a 8:13 pace, but the best part is that all the miles were + or - 10 seconds, rather than starting off at 7:40s and ending at 8:40s as I have been doing.  Good run.  Very satisfied.

Oh!  Funny story- so I ran near the shadier Southeast corner of the city and found this coffee bar called "The Hot Spot".  Literally, it is tiny booth in the middle of a parking lot.  They were advertising "Bikini Thursdays" so I looked in the booth as I ran by (and cuz there was like 100 cars lined up in the drive thru line) and all the baristas were wearing tiny bathing suits!  Random much?  I guess that's one way to wake up in the morning!

The rest of my day was spent trying to do damage control at work from all the activities-gone-bad yesterday and trying not to kill my students...i kid...sort of.....

Then, I fought horrid traffic to get back to Thursday night group to run with a couple of friends.  We chatted through 5 miles, it was nice to be back.

Overall, good running day.  Finally.  Now, I just have two more crazy days until my 'weekend'.  I'm so ready.

One last thing.  Today, I was feeling super stressed and thinking about all that is going on while I was running, and I sort of just paused for a second and gave myself permission to be really happy and proud of myself.  Yeah, that sounds totally cheesy and it is!  But it made me feel so good.  How many people would have a day like my yesterday, and still fit a run in?  Then, get up extra early to run long before a full day of work?  And pick up extra shifts at the bakery to help out?  I really appreciated myself and my work ethic- something I never do, even inside my head because I think of it as being stuck-up or something.  Even though no one but me knows.  I say this not because I think I'm so great or anything, but because I know alot of you are like me, with big committments, crazy time schedules, and lots on your plates.  Take a minute to be really impressed with all you are tackling!  Is it silly?  Maybe.  But that's OK because only you have to know! ;)

Ok, alarm is set for 3:43am.  I gotta get home and to sleep!