And Sometimes It IS Unicorns and Cotton Candy

In my last post, I said that "it's not always unicorns and cotton candy." Well, this week proved to be so much better. I can't take full credit for it, though. My next door neighbor at school and I are pretty close friends. We had a chat on Tuesday about some school drama that was going on. We both agreed that we were totally over the negativity that the faculty picked up recently. I had felt so crappy about my recent running, and had secretly thought about bailing on the marathon next month. *Side note- I know that is TOTALLY ridiculous now, but I was feeling majorly overwhelmed and exhausted.

Instead, I did some soul searching and decided that the best bet was for me to ban negative thoughts in ALL areas of my life, or at least attempt to. I also committed to getting myself out the door to run as much as possible and to suck up any fatigue I was feeling. The results were pretty incredible. I won't say it's my strongest week ever, but I definitely felt very good for this late in a training cycle. Here's a summary of my week:

*97.5 miles
*I did my LR on Monday, meaning Speed Tuesday became Speed Wednesday. Wed. night I had a PTO meeting that didn't end until late. When I went to the track, the sensor light didn't come on and I couldn't see! I had to bail on that. So, Thursday I went to the usual rubber track, but they had a football game. So... I hit up the municipal park loop that is 800m. I was able to hit 8 of them in a range of 2:56-2:48. BAM!
*Saturday I ran one of our club's Grand Prix races, a 5K. The race is on the water. Read: windy, hot, and humid. We didn't start until 8:15 when it was already 85*. Not to mention the wind and humidity. I decided early on to make this a tempo run. I ended up winning without even trying with a lame time of 19:45. Whatever.
*The good thing is that since I didn't "race" it, I was able to run a pretty strong 22 miler today. It was my fastest LR of the training cycle, beside the Brit workout from 2 weeks ago.

I'm finally back to looking forward to the marathon. I know there are no guarantees in a marathon, but I feel strong and ready to tackle whatever I am faced with. For the next few weeks, I am committed to attempting to get more sleep and eat healthy, filling foods.

I will leave you with a few funnies from my special needs students.
(During lunch when orange slices were served) "I don't know why the lunch ladies put these seeds in these oranges."

"For some reason, I don't look like my step mom at all."

"Ms. M, you're the prettiest and sweetest lady I've ever met."

Run Happy, friends!