Several long examples of me thinking out loud: Thursday 13

Dear Diary,

13.  I am  considering back-to-back marathons "Country Music" and "Flying Pig" next year.  Two marathons, two new states, one weekend.

12.  Also considering back-to-back marathons "Kalamazoo" and "Wisconsin" next year.  The Wisconsin marathon calls itself "the cheesiest".  The finisher's medal is a piece of cheese in metal.  How could I not?

11.  Flying pig.  The Cheesiest.  OMG!  I can't decide!  You know...I might have to try and do all of them.  These pairs just happen to be on subsequent weekends in May.

• Pros: Two weekends, four new states.
• Cons: Well, I mean, c'mon.  It's four freakin' marathons in two weekends. I suppose I could think of it as two 50-mile runs, but with long naps in the middle of them.

10.  I went to this all-you-can eat Brazillian grill buffet thing Saturday night.  Meat, meat, and more meat, and salad, too. I saved up WeightWatcher activity points and everything.  But as I have often found, I can't shovel in the food like I used to.  It's hardly worth the effort to go to buffets, because the "all you can eat" is sort of wasted.  Still.  I ate bunches.  It was delish.

9. On Wednesday, our I.T. guy (hereafter known as "RatBastard") walked into my office on the pretext of looking out my window.  It is next to my CPU.  Into my CPU I usually have plugged an external hard drive on which resides a virus protector, music player, and my entire music library, as well as a portable sudoku game, for when I need a break AND YES, I KNOW THAT IS AGAINST COMPANY POLICY but anyway.

So RatBastard, who is apparenly passive-aggressive, mumbled something about the weather and then left.  Two minutes later, I got a call from the HR person downstairs, who is all perky and friendly and said what she had to say all in one breath:

HiMistyThisisMaggie!
Heyjustafriendlyreminderthatit'ssagainstcompanypolicytohaveexternal

harddrivespluggedintoyourcomputer. Okay? Okay.  Bye! >Click<

RatBastard.  I had a 2 GB thumb drive that is approved for use on the computers, so I loaded some albums onto that, for now, along with my precious sudoku.  I'm sure that will frustrate RatBastard, but I'm not breaking any rules at this point, so Bite. Me.

Meanwhile, Sweetface, who is a major gadget geek (currently majoring in computer science at UNM), mentioned casually that he just happened to have something called an iPod "touch" laying around laying around, mind you and did I want it?  I had to look it up (??) because I'm apparently out of the loop so I Googled and read about what it is and OH HELL YES I'LL TAKE THAT OFF YOUR HANDS.

The MORAL of this very long story is this:

Sometimes it pays to have kids. 

8.  Last week, I wrote about starting with week 5 of the training plan.  I was all yeah!  I'm a running goddess!  I don't need no stinkin' recovery.  

Well.

The legs had other ideas.  I ran 12 miles during the week, and then on Saturday, I headed out for 14 miles.  I stopped at 10.  My breathing was fine.  My feet felt fine.
But the legs.  Oh, the legs.  Bitch!  Why do you hate us? They said.

Whatever glycogen seeped back into them after last week's 10K (and the 10 miles I did the day before) got sucked out.

7.  So.  The iTouch thing.  I could get hooked on playing with this thing.  Like, not eating or managing my personal care hooked.  I love Genius.  And I owe a huge apology to all my friends with iPhones that I've mocked over the past couple years.  It has a KINDLE app in it.  I've been jonesing for an ebook app for quite a while, and now I have one.  Now, I need to find an ebook that I might be interested enough in to read on a 3 x 4 inch screen on an airplane, then I'm all set.

6.  I said recently that my "season was over".  I guess that's kind of an old habit from when I exclusively did triathlon.  What I was saying was that my A race was done, so I'll mostly be training and fun stuff.  When I say fun stuff, I mean good old marathon stuff.  And yes, I'm aware that saying a marathon is "fun" sounds strange, but there it is. 

Now, Baboo and I are still planning on doing the 3 marathons in 2 weekends thing.  This is to accomplish two things; going up to the next level in Marathon Maniacs, and renewing our vows at the Las Vegas marathon. 

However, the 2nd marathon, the Las Vegas marathon, has a glitch: they suddenly made the cutoff 5 1/2 hours.  Fuckers.

Now, Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but I'm doing the Death Valley trail marathon the day before.  Also, we're stopping at mile 3 to renew our vows 45 minutes after the marathon starts.  That leaves me less than 4 hours and 45 minutes to finish the other 23.2 miles.  Or less, if the vow renewing thing takes longer than they say.  This requires slightly over 12 minute/mile pace.  For 23+ miles.  My marathon PR right now is about a 12:23 pace.

Now, when I say "cutoff" what I mean by that is that at exactly 5 and a half hours after the race starts, the will pull all the aid stations and timing mats, finish line, course markers, etc.  Leaving me to wander the streets.

Now, I had been mulling this over, and figured I would just drop down to the half marathon.  But if I do that, I won't go up to the next level of marathon maniac.  So, what to do?

Well, I'm gonna go for it.  12 minute miles are faster than anything I've done at this distance, but it's a road marathon.  The worst that can happen is the exact same thing that would happen if I did the half; I don't go up to the next level of Marathon Maniacs.  As my friend Holly used to say, What are they gonna do, take your birthday away?  

5.  Oh, by the way, the half marathon in Las Vegas has a 4 hours cutoff.

4.  One more thing.  The 5-1/2 hour cutoff at Las Vegas is one of the shorter ones out there.  I figure this is a product of all the snobs out there who have bitched about how fast you have to go to say you "ran" a marathon.  Or not.  I don't care.  It doesn't take much for people elitists to ruin it for novices, so that they can feel better about themselves.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

3. I love the singing hamsters on the Kia commercial.  You can get with this, or you can get with that.  

DO - WAH -  DIPPITY!

2.  Sometimes, life is messy.  Distressingly, disappointingly, heart-heartbreakingly messy.  And that's all I'm going to say about that, for now, until a time comes that I'm ready to talk about what inspired that thought.

1. Here's what I had to say to a parent this week at work:
"I/We cannot magically transform your child back into his prepubescent self.  Sorry."

What I didn't add but really wish I could: 
"Your precious baby boy, your hito,  has been transformed by the magic of hormones.  He is now essentially a homeless man living in your house, eating your food, and telling you to get fucked.  That's life.  Actually, that's parenthood.  Meanwhile, there's wine. And xanax.


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