That Was Easy!

September 8, 2013
I know I am going to second guess that title next week but as for now... it's true!

Yesterday I went for my "long" run but it's a down week (meaning next week will really kick my butt with 12 miles) and I was only scheduled for 7 miles. I grabbed a friend training for a half marathon in November and took her on her longest run to date... or well, walk.  The miles were quite a bit slower than my normal with an average pace of 16.5 and only 1 running segment. I felt great throughout the whole thing. The first couple miles were just 2 good friends chatting about life and then we put in music and off we went. Of course I was sweating, but at no point did my mind jump to the comfy zone I live in where I can't wait to get to the end. My legs never wanted to fall off and then trail behind me kicking me.

Afterwards I had no pain and didn't need a nap or days to recover. That's just crazy.

Next week, however, scares me a bit. I like the down week but now jumping up to 12 is crazy plus I am going to need to step things up a bit soon so that I shoot a little past the highest mile being 20 miles prior to marathon day. Adding 6.2 miles more than I've ever done before is a little to risky for me. I'd like to do 23 or 24 miles for my longest pre-race run.

What's hard is that I am now at a mileage that is really too high for a 10 year old to run. I mean, we aren't running, mostly just walking fast. When it comes to walking, there are virtually no studies that say there is anything against his going, but only if he wants to. Erik will have to determine if he wants to continue to join me. He is such a great motivator to keep me going and it is great bonding time that I am going to really miss him. It's been very difficult for me to imagine him not with me during the marathon so I guess this goes along with the whole "nothing new on race day" philosophy.

So, lately I've really only blogged about training but in reality tons of stuff has been going on including I had a great deal of medical tests done. Since the week of my birthday in March, I have been experiencing frequent migraines, nausea, heart palpitations, chest pains and like an elephant has been sitting on my chest. Some of these symptoms are only when running which is why I needed to go and get checked out before running a marathon. It's been a pretty scary time. In addition I was dealing with situations at work that just became more than I could take and I decided to quit. This week I went back to my doctor to go over all the results from the past 6 weeks of medical tests and found out that everything is good. No heart damage. No Angina. No lung problems. He said that whatever is wrong is NOT Heart or Lung related.

That being said since August 23rd,my last day of work, I haven't had any migraines or any of the other problems... INCLUDING when I am out running. My doctor is convinced that since this job started in February and the issues started in March, then everything stopped when I quit, that my job was the culprit responsible. It's insane that a job can literally have that big of an effect. In any case I now have a clean bill of health and I felt great during and after my walk yesterday.

I also got a new job which will allow me to work from home starting next week. It's not a travel job, but its customer service. The pay isn't great but being able to work from home saves a lot of money in work clothes, lunches, gas, etc and I will be home when Erik comes home from school! It's a huge perk of the job.

We have had a huge learning curve since Erik came here. We meaning Paul and I as parents, as well as Erik. We are all learning about each other, how to do things differently now and how to identify things that need to change to be better. Me working at home is going to help with the juggling of so many new things for our family which is still under a year old. Every day is a new day to wake up, make mistakes,  and go to bed. LOL. Most parents get to figure this part out without school and homework but we didn't have that luxury. Our luxury, however, is Erik. And no one else has an Erik!

Stay tuned until next time.