Miles, Travels & Love

Whew. It's been a little while!
Last week we were in Cannon Beach on an amazing family vacation. We had a blast, and managed to fit in a couple of runs on the beach too!
My favorite memory of the trip was when Pat and I got a chance to walk the kids down to the spot where we were married. It was a really cool moment for me. There's this little staircase down to the beach that's covered with trees and bushes. I remember walking down that staircase in my wedding dress, about to see Pat for the first time... and then watching him walk down that staircase 6 years later carrying our youngest in the ergo carrier, and the older two following behind him. It hit me just how blessed I am. To watch the 4 most important people in my world walk down that path, and see right in front of me God's grace.



Our "I do" spot

 So that was awesome!
I was thinking about doing my 12 miler the last day we were in Cannon Beach, but had realized that there isn't a lot of room to do a lot of miles around there unless you're willing to tackle some serious hills... which I'm not :)
So, I saved it for the day after we got home, Sunday.
I'm not sure if all of you know this or not yet, but my amazing, handsome, wonderful & FUN husband seen here:

is training for the marathon too!! So, not only are we tackling the psychoness of training for a marathon and the 250ish miles that entails, but we're juggling it between the two of us, with two very crazy jobs, and 3 very young kids, and two annoying dogs :)
So, Pat ran on Sunday morning, and then I was going to do it that evening...
seemed like a good plan. Until I realized I was talking about 2+ hours, which meant starting the run at 6:30 so I could avoid running in the dark. (I have issues with this because of previous runs with creepy guys cat-calling from dark porches...eww...)
So, at 6:25 our stupid dog got out.
At 7:15 Pat came back with him... seen here:

So, now I was kinda stressing because not only was I presumably going to be running in the dark, but my road dog was now on the bench. Crap.

Off I go with most of the neighborhood kids cheering me on and my kids screaming, "Go Mommy, GO!"

My plan was to run my little 3 mile loop 4 times, so that every time I came back to my house I could grab a fresh water bottle, and wouldn't have to strap on my very hot water belt.

1st loop was horrific. So painfully hot, I was bright red and sweating like a... well sweating bad. Hosed myself off, grabbed a fresh bottle, gave kiddos a goodnight kiss from the curb and headed back out.

2nd loop was about the same... I was hot. Just really hot. When I came back that time I grabbed a half a Cliff Bar, and a gel and gulped those down while I walked for a couple minutes.

3rd loop the sun started setting-fast. So, it was cooler, but I was calculating the whole time trying to figure out if I'd have enough sunlight to do my last loop. There was a very distinct moment where I realized it was a fear I had to face. I knew I could just loop our 1 mile loop around our house 3 times for the last 3 miles and be fairly safe.

Went back to the house for my last water bottle, and was honestly thinking, "maybe I'll just do 9 and call it good. I'm tired, and scared, and want this to be done!" ... right in front of my car bumper (where I was keeping my water bottles my incredible husband was filling up) on our driveway Pat had written this in sidewalk chalk:



"Finish Strong"



I cried a little as I started back out. Crying while running doesn't work. It definitely doesn't sound good... kind of like I was choking :) But, that support and unswerving certainty that I CAN DO THIS is one of the things I love most about him.

Started my 1 mile loop (X3) and on the backside of it there are NO STREETLIGHTS! Oy. So, thanks to the guy who left his sprinklers on all day and had a ginormous puddle next to his curb... because I stepped in it. Cool. And another shout out to the jerk who had his massive black dog walking around off a leash and almost gave me a freaking heart attack. As I'm smacking his dog with my empty water bottle the guy stands up on his steps and says, "HEY!!" Cool dude. Cool

As I finally was on that last quarter mile I realized that this isn't it. At all. I have to do this again next week. Plus another mile. And then the week after that, and so on... and I kinda felt like, "this sucks."

And then, in the pitch black of the 9:30 night I saw my other half waiting in the driveway for me. I'm sure he was exhausted from his own 5am 12 mile run, but he was out there- for me. And, I started to cry...again. As I ran up to the driveway he came out and gave me a huge hug, and through my gulps and sobs and tears I told him, "I don't want to do this anymore!!" :) He laughed, and told me I rocked, and went to start my ice bath for me :) He came in and talked with me while I shivered in the torture chamber that is an ice bath. I told him, "This isn't F U N any more!" And he said, "You thought this was going to be ??!!" And I said, "Yeah, I thought anything could be fun if you put your mind to it!" So he told me (in no uncertain terms) that this was not going to be fun. What was going to be

 F U N  was the moment we crossed that finish line and knew we just ran 26.2 miles.

I hate it when he's right.

But, he is. So, I'm going to suck it up. And like Christie said, "some runs are super fun, and some suck. you just have to live for the ones that are like flying and survive the rest!" (I'm probably paraphrasing, but that's the jist!)