Thank you for the early mornings

The late afternoons

For getting me outside in the rain

And the cold.

For all the extra fresh air

And sunshine

For the breaks when I needed them most

The added energy

The music

Or the silence

The chance to be social

Or solitary

Thank you for being my muse,

and for teaching me patience

For proving I can keep going

When I want to stop

Go faster

When I want to slow down.

Thank you, running

For making me strong

In a quiet way

That gets me step by step

Through life.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone

Will and Andrew have a nasty cold, with high fevers, crankiness, and some frighteningly severe coughing with hard breathing that’s sent us to the doctor’s office three times.  Needless to say, there’s been less running and blogging going on in our household.

I have a version of their illness tempered by adulthood, and lacking the fever, I thought perhaps I could still get a run in.  1.5 miles on the treadmill later, I was practically on the floor from coughing and lightheadedness.  Hey – it was worth a shot.  If it’d worked, I would have had my runners endorphins to keep me going.

So, no running, cranky kids – I need a laugh.  Andrew is napping, Will is using kid’s scissors to thoroughly snip construction paper, and I’m on a tablet next to him manufacturing bad running jokes.  Perhaps the day isn’t so bad.  (You read that right.  Will.  Scissors.  Give a three year old scissors and paper and you have a friend for life.  Just don’t walk away.)

Here they are – 13.1 bad jokes to tell yourself, or random strangers, while you run a half marathon.  You can tell them to a running partner, too, but you might want to just pick a couple unless you’d prefer to run all your future races alone.

13.1 Bad Jokes

Mile 1: That’s right athletic looking people, you’d better run.

Mile 2: Wait, who’s chasing us?

Mile 3: This is a 5k, right?

Mile 4: I was told there would be snacks at the water stations… no?

Mile 5: Wait, what’s half of 13.1?  #$(*.

Mile 6: This is a 10k, right?

Mile 7: Did you have coffee?  You look like you had coffee.

Mile 8: I should have had more coffee.

Mile 9: I’ve never run this far for a bagel with peanut butter before.

Mile 10: I was thinking of running a 5k this morning.  Anyone in?

Mile 11: You know they sell bagels with peanut butter downtown.

Mile 12: We can stop here, right?  Or is this a baker’s dozen kind of race?

Mile 13: Do you know where I can get one of those cool necklaces?! (This also works at mile 12 if someone’s cooling down on the course wearing their finisher medal.)

Mile 13.1: Are we supposed to do another loop?

Mile 13.2: Wait, what?! ()*#$@ corners!!!!

I’d been hoping to cross off my final New Year’s running goal for 2013 and run a 5k pushing Will & Andrew in the double jogging stroller in under 30 minutes.

However…

It’s cold and flu season, and so my best intentions to run a lot this week with the double stroller have been foiled.  If the weather were nicer, I wouldn’t hesitate to give sick kids some down time and fresh air with a run, but I can’t imagine taking them out in 30 degree weather or rainy weather, especially since I’m getting sick, too!

It looks like I’ll be running whatever I can on Thursday – and that’ll have to be enough!  Hopefully the weather will be nice enough for me to run with the stroller, if not, I’ll go it alone just to support the mother’s forum running club as they try to get the biggest team award again this year!

I’m pretty doubtful about making that sub 30 5k with a double stroller goal this year… but maybe I’ll have to roll it over to next year.  I’d enjoy trying for it much more if I actually trained for it instead of winging it a few weeks after a half marathon!

Sometimes we have to let goals go.  I made that goal a long time ago, before I realized that I would spend so much time and effort training to run two half marathons this fall.  I can still try to achieve it as a byproduct of that different type of training, but if it doesn’t happen, I’m not that upset.  It will be so much more rewarding to achieve it after having worked towards it.  I’d like to practice running up hills with the stroller, getting stronger, taking fewer walking breaks because they’re heavy and I haven’t quite adjusted my pace right.  How excited you are about any running achievement is directly linked to how hard you worked for it, both with training, and then with how hard you run the race.  I could run a hard race and possibly (but unlikely) meet my goal, but that’s only half the effort to make my achievement feel significant.  I’d still be missing that training element, that fun of working towards something and seeing progress.

So I guess, at the end of the day, failing at this particular goal might be a good thing, because it’ll give me the chance to actually work towards it.

It’s not too early to think about your running goals – how are you going to stick with running over the cold winter months, and what will your goals be for next year?

Run more regularly? Add more distance?  Run a little less and have more time for other things?  Find a running group or buddy?  How can you best fit running into your life, and use it to be healthy and happy and have fun?

What are your favorite things about running, and how can you get the most out of those things, whether it’s running outside or staying fit?

I’ll be asking myself the same questions as I work on my running goals for 2014!

I wrote a popular blog post for New Year’s Day last year where I shared some of my thoughts about being a new runner and how to get started on the Couch to 5k journey, and then I outlined my running goals for 2013.

Guess what?  2013 is almost over.  Let’s see how I’ve done!

Now that I’m on the other side of my second half marathon, my running schedule is more easy to coordinate with the mother’s running group that meets near my house on Saturday mornings!  It’s a great group to run with because most of them are much faster than I am, so I have to push myself to keep up.

This week there were five of us, one of whom was closer to my pace, and three that it was tough for me to keep up with.  Since we do an out and back run, I ran out with the mother who ran a comfortable pace, and back with the runners that ran a challenging pace.  Best of everything!  I had company the whole time, instead of half the time or less which sometimes happens when I try to keep up with the faster group for the entire time.

My first 1.8 miles was slower than my last forum run, but my last part was faster… and they’re all faster than I would tend to run alone 🙂