The only reason I was able to run this weekend was because of the Neti Pot. I rediscovered the Neti Pot which I thought didn’t work on my sinus but really it was because the last time I tried it I was pregnant and nothing was fixing my sinuses then except for having the baby. I pulled out the Neti pot yesterday morning and it offered me enough sinus relief that I felt I could run.

I took some time to ponder the nature of long distance, endurance running. It is about so much more than the physical motion of putting one foot in front of another for an extended period of time. It is the prep, what do I wear? It is the nutrition, what do I eat and when do I eat it? It is the mental, how can I convince myself to keep going when it is against everything I want to do? What do I think about for that long?

Three hours and 17 miles later, we completed our training run and are probably three of few people (five if you count Kaidree and Jen) who know the dirt side of Eagle Road.

In retrospect, I think the reason the Waterfall run is so hard is because it is all up and then all down. There is not a lot of rolling hills. It reminds me a lot of the infamous 1/2 marathon in Boise called the Race to Robie Creek which is eight miles of uphill followed by five miles of intense downhill. Unlike Robie, waterfall has equal miles uphill and downhill but like Robie, each is equally hard because having your body get pounded on the downhill after so much climbing really takes its toll on you.

It was a “rest” run this weekend of only one and half hours of running. Next weekend is two hours forty minutes so we were thrilled that it was not next weekend yet. It is funny though because the “rest” runs always seem to feel harder than the long runs. There must be some psychological reason for that but I am not quite sure what it is.

I honestly am so inspired by Anna (my sister) and Erin’s (Andy’s sister) persistence and commitment to train for this 50K that I am starting to feel like we are really going to do this thing. The other good news is that for some strange reason, defying all logic, after our two hours and twenty five minutes of running on some steep hills yesterday morning, my hip feels a lot better today. Go figure, I was supposed to avoid hills.

It has been a heck of a year. 2009 started with wedding festivities for my sister, Anna and her now husband, Derik. On April 28, 2009, Belén Rose entered our lives and changed them forever! I cannot believe so much wonderful change can happen in one year.

Because I desperately needed a stress-relieving, feel-better-about-myself run and because we were kicking off our 50K training schedule, Anna and I decided to brave the snow and head out on a Saturday afternoon run. To show how motivated we were, we initially planned to run at the YMCA at 9:30. I nearly choked my daughter by shooting Vitamin D liquid too quickly down her throat which traumatized both me and her so I texted that I was not going to be able to run until we had both recovered. That led to me wanting to take a nap with Belén because I was too nervous if I let her sleep on her own she might die because the Vitamin D was in her lungs or something. Which led to waking up around 12:30 starving. Which led to being lazy on the couch and then Andy going and getting us BURGERS and TATER GEMS (seriously, like that is going to help the situation…but yes, I ate EVERY LAST BITE!) which led to me delaying the run yet another 45 minutes so I could digest a bit. And we finally met up at Anna’s house around 3:15pm.

So now we recognize that running prowess is all relative. I am happy with my slower paces and shorter distances and amazingly proud of my bad ass running friends. They give me something to aspire to and provide me with friends on one side of the workout, eat well, kick butt at running spectrum. But, I do find that I have to also have friends on the other side of the spectrum to feel like I am not a total slacker.

8 minute abs, buns and arms are a decent workout.