Today

I went 14 miles today, and although I enjoyed it, I am bushed. Usually my legs cooperate totally and just tool along never saying ANYTHING! They are great legs for distance, but today they spoke up at about the 12 mile mark just letting me know that they exist, not complaining or anything.

Mr. Sinta has started a side business and offered me a special energy drink with extra b vitamins (when I got home), and I learned some new information from the team trainer about how and when to eat even on regular training days. Evidently there is a 30 minute window after you run in which your body is especially open on a cellular level to refuel itself, and I am supposed to have an energy bar, or even a pbj sandwich during this time, and she said that it should help with the fatigue that I have been experiencing. I was up at 3 or 4 in the morning again today which was not good since I had to be up at 6 to get to a 7 a.m. run, but oh well! She said that it would be very difficult to discern if the sleep disturbances were from menopause or from exercising outside the zone (65-80% of maximum heart rate).

There was only one bad moment today, and that was when I was biking home over a footbridge that was a little full with bikers and pedestrians, and suddenly one of my legs decided to consider having a charlie horse. The muscles just kind of suddenly painlessly seized up for a second or two, while I was trying to quickly go up the slope of the bridge so I slowed down and changed gears, and my legs were happy campers once again. You gotta be nice to your legs. Your legs are really nice to you!

Also, I asked our trainer what they meant on the schedule by strength training because I have never really done a push up in my life, and I was am a little reluctant to begin at 48. She said that it meant strength training for our core (that is a trainer word for your abdomen) and for your legs doing lunges and squats etc. That was a huge relief. I started doing sit ups this week, and I will not tell you how many because when I proudly revealed to Abby my number of sit ups, she laughed! Then we did some together for fun, and she was not able to double my number, but did more than 1.5 times as many as I did. I comfort myself that she is a 17 year old former gymnast and we are not supposed to compare ourselves to one another, the Bible says.

There was an additional reward to doing sit ups in that it forced me to look under the bed where I keep my exercise mat. (Weenies don't do sit ups without a mat.) I found a graduation present for a friend's daughter that I jettisoned there on the day that Aimee and Brent got married because we were in a hurry to get out of the house and I used the gift bag to hold my make up and miscellaneous stuff. So now, I have an extra gift in the gift box!

Also, on the mind front, I was so happy this week to discover two items which I thought I had permanently lost. I found 3 cloth grocery bags in the closet which I had been missing for months. I am sure I put them there at wedding time to clean out the car when I loaned it to the honeymooning couple, and Abby 'fessed up that she had taken my new bike water bottle to work and left it there. These sound like small things, but they were significant things to me, and I feel better knowing that my mind is functioning well enough to handle shopping and drinking water.

Speaking of water, I used up everything in my water back pack by the end of 14 miles, so I will need to re-fill it on Marathon day around mile 13. I am needing a shower in a serious way, so I am off. Sorry for errors and typos.

Also, I asked the trainer how to train so that I could eventually do a push-up. She very kindly, and without any condescension whatsoever (This is amazing because she is in perfect shape.) explained to me how to get your arms in shape in stages so that I could eventually do a push-up. I intend to do it, since I am doing my (mystery number) sit-ups each day.

Book notes: I am truly enjoying Lucy Beckett's book. It is a huge tome, but I intend to finish it. I also finished an interesting book yesterday entitled, The 33 Laws of Stewardship which was not exactly a late night page turner for most people, but I enjoyed it a great deal. It is not written by prosperity preachers but by associates of John Maxwell, the Christian leadership guru. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject or is involved in leadership of a local church or other Christian non-profit.