On this day in history...

So lately during my runs, just to occupy my mind I play "on this day in history" ...only I can only really do it with the history of my own life, having very little knowledge of historical events according to date.

This time of year it's pretty easy, because around this week in any given year from age 5 to age 21, I was preparing for a new school year. So for example, I've been trying to pinpoint what I did during the summer before ninth grade (geez, that was TEN years ago) to give me an idea of what I did on August 27th, 2000, and then that leads me to remember what major events occured during ninth grade; who took me to what dance, what sort of crazy antics my friends and I got into... and it's so hard to remember! It's easier to remember my junior and senior years of high school. But all four years of college sort of all blend together in one mass. It's like, if my college memories were dinner, they'd be a big clump of spaghetti noodles that you forgot to stir while the water was boiling, so now they're just a tangled lump of moist, soft goo that you can't really seperate. I don't know how it happened... I guess I just wasn't stirring the pot enough during college.

I wonder what I'll remember of this time in my life in a decade?

Anyway, on this day in history in, say, 2001, I was about to start my sophomore year of high school. I was probably sad that I wasn't at one of my 4 camps anymore-- 2 sessions at Chanco, one week at field hockey camp, and one week at cheerleading camp. I hadn't yet entered the summer workforce (a treat that would be saved for the following summer) and I was probably at a pre-season field hockey practice. I don't think we took a family vacation-- those sort of stopped after my siblings were both out of the house and I elected to spend my whole summer being shuttled from one camp to another, but I do think I had gone to the beach for a week with my friend Tiffany. Her mom taught us to crochet on the drive down to Nags Head, so we spent the whole week either lying in the sun or crocheting-- we would never crochet ON the beach because we were sure that no guys would approach two girls crocheting on the beach (we were probably right... but I don't think any boys approached us on the beach that summer anyways). The memories don't come back in a linear fashion-- I'll remember one thing which will trigger another memory, and another and another... but that's what I was probably thinking about on this day nine years ago. It's actually easier to think about when I'm not running. Weird.

We're heading to Williamsburg for the weekend after work today! Can't wait!

at long last, another update!

Hello, blogosphere!

Yesterday Mike and I went on a 20 mile run, and it really wasn't so bad. I know that Mike had a rougher start than I did because he got less sleep, but by the end of it we decided that it wasn't our energy level that made the last five or so miles brutal, it was our physical exhaustion. My knee was killing me, his calves were hurting, blah blah, obligatory laundry list of complaints caused by running for four hours. Also, we could have done with cooler weather.

Last night I went to visit my friend Melissa in Arlington. We went to this movie theater where these comedians make fun of the movie the whole time you're watching it. The selection last night was "Dirty Dancing" and it was hysterical. I just wish I could have seen their version of "Twilight." That's probably about as good as it could ever get. Before the movie, we made tacos and had a few other friends over to Melissa's place. It was such a good time!

Today Mike came over. We did laundry and made banana bread and then he took the loaf so I wouldn't eat the whole thing. Other than that, absolutely nothing new with me here! Oh, except that we booked the resort in ARUBA for our honeymoon! I'm super excited but I've been so busy that I've barely had time to really check out the website. What I have seen looks pretty amazing though. I sort of wish I could be there right now...

Almost a step-down week!

I calculated this morning while I was on my four mile run, and I have run 42 miles this week. Whew! I'm feeling a little sore and my IT band problem is flaring up again, but I feel pretty good otherwise, and next week is a step-down week. I run six miles over the weekend, two five mile runs during the week, and then a 4 mile run on Friday. It's supposed to give my body some time to recover for the following week, which kicks off with a 20 mile run. Oy. But I'm pretty sure I'll be ready for it, just as long as we can have some decent weather. Yesterday morning was a six miler, and it was so humid and miserable until the last mile, when it started raining. I didn't realize last year when I was training just what a huge difference the weather makes, because last summer was a pretty mild summer. But the heat and humidity are just so draining.

Anyways, other than being sore and sleepy, this has been a good week. I went to the Bowie Baysox game on Tuesday night-- it was Navy night at the stadium, and all of the plebes were bused over for the game. Haha Mike met me at the gate so he could bring me over to where he was sitting (I never would have found him in a million years; the place was just a sea of white uniforms!) and the plebes started hollering and making jokes as soon as they saw us. Mike had to yell at them, which was funny because he's not terribly intimidating about it, and they were reasonably well behaved the rest of the night. I got some ice cream, we saw some fireworks, Mike had to yell at all the kids who were eating or drinking while walking (it's a big no-no when you're in uniform) and again, was not terribly intimidating about it. So altogether, an amusing evening, despite the heat.

Last night was NAG dinner-- all the plebe girlfriends and parents have descended on Annapolis for PPW, and a few of us went out to the Ram's Head for dinner. It was a great bunch of girls and we had a nice time.

And other than that I am so glad that it's Friday!!! No big plans for the weekend, but I'm hoping that Mike gets enough liberty that we can at least make some dinner together tomorrow night. All meal suggestions are welcome, because I don't know how to cook anything. Except mac and cheese. I rock at that.

Upon closer examination...

I think that my bloody toenail was the result of a bloody TOE, and not a bloody toenail. After I took a closer look at my toe, it looks like it's the toe NEXT to my toe that was bleeding! I think my middle toenail rubbed up against the skin on the side of the next toe (the one next to my big toe... why don't toes have names like fingers do? Then you'd know it was my index toe.) and sliced a little cut there. The blood must have flowed right under and on top of the offending toenail. Gross, yes, but what a relief that it wasn't my actual toenail! All ten may be safe after all. Still, my toe hurts. As does the rest of my body.

Hooray for nice weather!

So after that weeklong break I took due to stomach troubles coupled with not eating more than 1000 calories in 6 days, I have been really struggling this week. Which sort of sucked, because this was a heavy week finished with an 18 mile run. Right.

I slogged through the shorter runs this week-- it's been really hot and humid again, so it just sort of sucks the energy right out of you as soon as you step outside. I've been doing a lot of stopping and walking this week, which just makes me feel like a loser, and I have had a hard time determining if I'm still sort of trying to catch up from being so weak and lame last week, or if the weather is really draining me that much. I guess it's probably a little bit of both, because the weather finally cleared this weekend and it's beautiful here-- in the eighties with a really low humidity level.

So I got up at 4 this morning and I drove to Annapolis and I started my run, and I swear the first ten miles were a breeze. And then 11 and 12 got harder. And then 13-14 got REALLY hard. And then 14 through 18 were so slow and pathetic that new mommies with strollers could have passed me, if only they'd been out walking this morning. But I finished, and now I'm really sore and tired but thrilled to be sort of back on track. But I did pull off my shoe and discover that the middle toe on my left foot had a bloody toenail. I did notice some pain on that toe while I was running, but that's not all that unusual. I'm hoping it was just a cut or something... few things freak me out more than the threat of losing a toenail in the pursuit of a marathon metal.

I was completely planning to go and get the vehicle emissions test that Maryland sent me a notice about last week... but then I realized that the operations center closes at 1:00, and it's already noon. It doesn't really seem worth it anymore, because my understanding of these things is that you have to get there pretty much right when they open in order to get seen that day at all... so maybe next week. Fortunately it doesn't absolutely NEED to be done for another six weeks, so I'm glad I got on the ball early. Next weekend is only a six mile run (Yay, finally a step down week!) so I'll probably just push that run to Sunday and go get this dealt with on Saturday... no sleeping in for me next weekend! And then I need to figure out how to renew my vehicle registration. I hate being a grown-up! When you're a kid, you just don't have to worry about stuff like this... you spend your summers collecting bugs and going to the pool and riding your bike and it seems like it's endless. I miss that.

Also, I got a new TV this week. It's baller, but I wish Mike were here to fix the resolution on it. I also got a DVD player. Mike actually bought it for me... I was going to hold off until my bank account was replenished after the big TV purchase, but I think he feels bad that I've seen him for a few hours every couple of weeks this summer, while everyone else has had a decent chunk of leave to spend with their loved ones. The week he DID get off he spent at home with his family, so I've only gotten a weekend or two and then a few evenings here and there with him. It hasn't bothered me that much; what has been more frustrating lately is that when I call him, I almost invariably get a text (always the same text! It must be one of those pre-sets) that says "Call you back later" and I don't hear from him for six more hours and then I get maybe 10 minutes of phone time. But I'm consoling myself this weekend with my new DVD player, and maybe a nap, and then spending the evening making myself a fancy fruit salad. (I happen to love fresh pineapple, but unfortunately it takes me like, 20 minutes to just cut into one because I'm so inept in the kitchen.)

Anyhow, I'm noticing that all the plebe girlfriends are getting very excited about Parent's Weekend next weekend, and ohhh the memories that it brings back. Haha I'm excited for PPW too, because then Mike might be able to actually take a phone call for a change. With the thirty minute phone calls the plebes have gotten this summer (we only got FIVE minutes!!) the plebe girlfriends may have talked to their dudes even more than I talked to Mike! Haha for the last phone call, he said he'd call me while the plebes were using their 30 minutes, but then he ended up allowing someone else to use his phone because that plebe didn't have a cell phone. :( That's kind of sad to think about, so I hope his family comes to town next weekend and buys that kid a phone!

I think I might walk over to the Giant and pick up a DVD from the Redbox-- even though it would be way faster to drive, I feel like I may need to stretch out my legs a bit and loosen up all of these tight muscles! Next project: joining the world of NetFlix so the DVDs come directly to my door.

This is the illness that never ends...

Mike and I have both spent the last week with some sort of icky stomach bug. I'm not really up on how he's been dealing with it-- he's a plebe summer detailer, so I know he's trying to take it easy, but I also know that that's pretty much impossible because his job for the next couple weeks is literally to run around and scream at the plebes.

I have been unwilling to venture more than a few seconds trip away from a toilet for most of the past week, so running, needless to say, has not been an option. Also, since my sum total of food I've eaten in the past week= about four pieces of toast, three cups of jello, and 3 spoonfuls of applesauce I haven't had a whole lot of energy to expend on running. Most of my calorie intake is coming from gatorade and gingerale.

Well, okay, there was that half of a chicken ceaser wrap when I THOUGHT I was feeling better... but it only served to reinforce that I was in error when I THOUGHT I was feeling better. Thanks, stomach, for showing me who's boss.

I'm in Chicago now for the Schreiber Family Slugfest... it's the annual family softball game that my mom's side of the family puts together every year. I'm pretty sure I'm too weak to swing a bat, so I will not be an asset to my team. I got stuck in BWI for about six hours yesterday-- a big flight delay due to a 10 minute thunderstorm. No joke. It was not cool, and then I was stuck on an airplane for 3 hours. It could not have been a more miserable way to spend a day when your stomach is upset. It completely wiped me out, and now I'm in my favorite city and I'm stuck on my sister's couch because I'm too tired to do anything. But I have managed to get 2 pieces of toast in today without too much trouble... so maybe we're on the up and up? Guess we'll find out in a few hours.

40 degrees of seperation

My ideal running temperature is somewhere in the upper fifties, maybe to the mid sixties. But today was 40 degrees warmer than that. At 5:00 AM. No joke. The ONLY good thing about today's run was that at least it wasn't 23 miles. Everything else about today's run straight up sucked. I knew it was going to be hot, and since a 14 mile run typically takes me about 2 and a half hours, I knew I had to start EARLY so that I could finish before it got wretchedly hot.

This plan is good, in theory, except that it was already wretchedly hot when my alarm rang at 3:45 this morning. I didn't actually hear it until 4:15, and it took me a few minutes to get mobilized-- first I ate a bagel (yummy carbs!) and then got dressed. And I don't want to get too indelicate here, but before any length run, I like to spend some time in the bathroom. I consider it a preventative measure... I don't like the idea of pooping my pants while I'm running. But sometimes even my preventative measure doesn't really help. (This is an amazingly common phenomenon among long distance runners. You get any number of us together-- whether it's 2 or 20-- and sooner than is probably appropriate, the conversation turns to how you deal with a big poo in the middle of a big run. You sort of get over the awkwardness of that after the first few times.) So I like to run with steady access to a bathroom, and the easiest way to do this is to run in a loop where I know of a good bathroom, a good water fountain, and if I'm lucky, a place to store a couple energy bars and bottles of Powerade. The UMBC campus is about a mile away from my apartment, so on most days I run there, around their 2 mile loop. I know where there's a clean bathroom and the building is usually open, and the water in that water fountain is SUPER cold. So on my short runs during the week, this is pretty ideal. But on the weekend the bathroom is usually locked. Plus, one full mile of this two mile loop is uphill. This also means that one mile of it is downhill, but somehow the downhill never seems as steep as the uphill.

So I like to run around the Yard at the Naval Academy. They have two good distance loops-- an "outer" is about 4 miles, and an "inner" is about 3. Plus there are a couple of measured one mile loops, so it's really not hard to run around any particular distance you need, and that's what I did today. I parked about a mile away, ran to the Yard, and ran three outers, and then ran back to my car. Sounds so simple, right?

Right. Except that when I arrived at 5:30, it was already like 84 degrees, and with the humidity, it felt like 90. One of the most brutal things about humidity is that it completely invalidates the function of sweat. We sweat to eliminate water when we're overheated, and when this sweat evaporates, it's supposed to have a cooling effect. I'm certain this must work in places other than the east coast... but I've rarely been able to experience it, because most of my summers have been spent in the swamplands of Virginia and Maryland. It blows my mind that when settlers first came to America, places like Williamsburg and Annapolis were among the first to be settled. There was no central air conditioning back then! I want to know what idiot disembarked from his ship, put the flag in for Britain, and said, "This is it, boys! We have arrived at our destination. Take a good look around, because we are making history. And while we're at it, lets set up permanent colonies here so that people can suffer for GENERATIONS." They must have arrived during winter. Although I will say that it does help explain how they mistook what we now know to be America as the West Indies. If it was hot and muggy outside, they were probably like, "Oh! Bullseye!"

Anyhow, I was pretty sure I was going to die on my run today. I stopped at every water fountain I could, and I actually stepped into air conditioned buildings every so often just to use them as my own personal cooling stations-- usually I would stay in just long enough for my face to go from tomato red to a normal shade of post-exertion pinkish.

The first few miles I ran were before the sun was really up-- it was lightening up outside by the time I started running, but definitely not dawn yet. But by the time I finished, the sun was beating down in full force. It was pretty terrible and I just wanted to melt into the pavement. Around mile 4 or 5, I got to run through the sprinklers, though. That was nice. I had to stop and walk a little more often than I would have liked, and with all the stopping in AC buildings, the run took way longer than I would have liked-- it took just over three hours. But I did it, and I didn't pass out, and I can nap all afternoon if I like.

It was kind of interesting to see plebe summer in action. I think this is the first time I've actually been on the yard DURING plebe summer, except last 4th of July when they weren't doing plebey things anyways. I got to see the Detailers leading PEP, and it was kind of fun to listen to them run in cadence-- I can definitely see how that sort of keeps you going... I wish someone had been doing a cadence next to me the whole time! Maybe I would have been able to keep better pace.