One of those time wasters you can feel good about....

we waste time as a family with this. It's good stuff. Highly, highly addictive though. We have donated like a gajillion grains of rice and we now know what antediluvian means. Now that is a relief I'll tell ya.



In other news, the training is going well. Not. I am having OCD issues. (Now there's an unexpected development!) It's not good.

Here are the issues of the day:

1. I cannot miss a day on the training schedule because omigosh! there will be a blank day on the training schedule and I will never make it up! And I will obsess over it until the day that I die or my family and all the friends who haven't already, move away and enter a OCD-protection program so that I can never find them. I can just imagine them, living in Arizona somewhere, they'll change Gracie's name to Bobbi-Jo or Suzi-Lee, I just know they will, and Aaron will have to start a new career as a used car salesman. But it will be worth it to them.

2.I have an injury and the Internet says it must must MUST be rested or I will become one of those people who speak wistfully with misty eyes of running in the past tense, after I have hobbled in pain for several years, experienced painful leg surgery, had a lobotomy and finally admitted defeat. So I missed a day. I wasn't loving the idea of getting out there to run 8 miles whilst still sore, I'll be honest, but still, a day has been missed and I just don't even know what to do with that. I suppose I will have to start over and erase all former entries in my training data base.

3. I have been reading about the concept of walking breaks improving ones marathon time, all but eliminating the chance of injury and making running a marathon a generally non-horrific experience.

It sounds like a good thing, but the OCD is fah-reaking about this. How can I run a marathon if I am taking walking breaks (right from the beginning !!!!! it only works if you start when you are still feeling brave and strong and have in your mind that running a marathon is an awesome idea and your body does not yet hate you with every fiber of its being).

I am used to walking, well not at all. I will not allow it because that would mess up the fact that I am running. And I would have to start over. (I am still tortured over the time I slowed to a shuffle during a drink break at mile 13 or so of a 15 miler). In my copious reading on this subject during my missed run today, I have been most heartened to read of other OCD runners (even those who run marathons in like 25 mins who had the same anguish over this issue, did it anyway to prove the theory wrong and improved their time by 15 mins, thus running a 5 minute marathon). I may be exaggerating a tiny bit, but this is a comfort to me as I ponder the possibility.

4. ALSO it wants me to run at LEAST 2 minute slower on my long runs then what I want my marathon pace to be. I don't think I can cope with that either. First, my marathon pace will be one minute slower then my regular pace, two minutes slower then my hard pace (which is respectable but hardly elite), tack 2 mins onto that and I mean, sheesh, why not just walk then?! (Oh that's right-I WILL BE WALKING.....AAAAAAAGH). So basically we are looking at a shuffle/walk hybrid marathon. I checked with the OCD and it says this does not count. I really am trying to persuade it otherwise with limited success.

So this is where I am: I can see the wisdom in all this and a part of me, is thinking, "whoohooo, I may not die doing this after all!" but the OCD within is crying and dying at the concept. Given the number of injuries and my general health issues over the last year, it seems that it would be prudent to take a moderate approach to this endeavour and do whatever the Internet says is least likely to make me crippled or dead.

However, where is the fun in that?

If it is all nice and pain free where is the high when I get done? Huh? Where?? I mean, the training process may be less painful but let's face it, any way you cut it, after 15 miles or so, it 'aint fun, I don't care who you are. It may be fun when you are actually doing the marathon, with people cheering, and music blaring, and rest stops looming. However when you are a lone, lone soul, listening to your iPod on mile 1,825 out of 1,926 of your training, and this training has taken you along more or less the same very,very bland paths for several months of alternatively humid and freezing weather, I'm thinking you are:
1) Sick of every song that was ever sung by any artist ever
2) Bored to the point of puking with every tree, stick, stone and piece of pavement in a 25 mile vicinity of your home
3) In some kind of pain in every part of your body anyway.

All this to say that you may as well be in searing, desperate pain from running the whole time, and enjoy the sensation of stopping at the end more then anything else you have ever experienced or likely ever will. Rather then in boring, moderate pain and finding the end to be a bit on the anti-climatic, ho-hum side. No?

Don't worry, in 28 weeks or so this will all be over and if I am still alive, and anyone is still reading this blog we can move onto something different. Like obsessing if I should run another marathon.

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