Patience; the new endurance sport.

My daugther is up at 5:30 for soccer practice, and then has cross country at 7.  I am floored soccer would be meeting so early.  It kind of gives me trouble in the morning to get her ready and then try to go run.  I'm used to getting up early enough I get the house (and the world) to myself.  But I can actually hear the grunting and chanting of the football team practicing in the mornings now by 7:00. 

The morning is, in my opinion, the first day of summer.  The morning was perectly clear, cool, but balmy.  It reminded me of the day I brought my son home from the hospital 12 years ago.  It was a cloudless, perfect morning--like today.  The view of the valley and of the lake from the bench was breathtaking.  I live for mornings like this.  I miss my trail, but the view today of the valley did me a solid.

Had a nice little afternoon jog up to the cemetary enjoying all the flowers in bloom.  Nothing has bloomed in order this year because of the cold.  Lots of snowball bush and lilac, flowering trees and irises.  Next to roses, Irises are my favorite.  There are several houses on the way to the cemetary who used lines of Irises to demarkate property lines -- so there are hundreds densely planted.  I am still  awaiting my roses.  Usually by the first week of June, they are in their glory.  They are still small tight buds, like me, awaiting the warmer weather to relax and bloom.  I felt ok on this run, but was laughing with Ericka earlier today about how neigher of us had run hardly any miles.  This will be the worst training episode to date.  I never got in a 20 miler and my hamstring kills by mile 12 so, UVM next Saturday should be "fun" :)

9:32/9:27/9:25/10:04/9:21/8:24/8:41/8:59/9:10  (9:13 AP). This was a remarkably good run for me.  Going up the canyon was HARD!  The wind blew so hard at one point, I felt like it hit me in the chest and took my breath away (a microburst that blew branches out of trees and sent leaves and debris flying).  It blew my hat  right off my head and sent it a quarter of a mile back. When the burst hit, I quickly turned my back against it to sheild my face.  As I turned around, I saw 3 other runners behind me instinctually doing the same.  It was BIG wind.  Then, of course, knowing there was a tail wind when I turned around I did what I could to run a couple of good miles.  I kept telling myself one of Smooth's mantras : the pain of running won't kill me.  So by the end, I was happy having run 3 ok miles.  I don't know what that means for next week....  even with just 9 miles, I will need to roll my hamstring.  After the marathon I'll head to Dr. Brady to see what can be done about it.  Utah Valley Marathon is a huge "?"  I've never not run a long run between marathons.  I did the best I could given the anemia situation and trying to stave off the burn out.  So we'll see what happens next week.  

I could not get my run in yesterday because I was up at 3:30 and not home until 8:00 at which point I fell into bed.  Our Charity Golf Tournament held at the Country Club in Salt Lake  was yesterday and sucked me dry.  I had a beautiful run this morning by the river though, and thrilled by how the parkway has greened up, and how lovely the landscaping is.  Today, I think I was the first person to use the newly paved part of the parkway behind Will's.  It will be fun to see that segment of the trail get landscaped as the weeks go by.

We just found out my dear mother in law's tumor (cancer) is too big to be operated on. She's getting an echocardiogram to see if she can withstand chemo. The chemo may help shrink the tumor so they *may* be able to operate /remove the tumor. I spent my run looking up at the beautiful green mountains profoundly struck by how short the good parts of life are. I pondered the many beautiful summers when she and my father in law would travel up from Chile to spend the entire summer with us and the children. My children adore her. She is their tiny 'abuelita', standing tough as nails at 4'11. She is the single most patient, sweetest, truly Christian woman I know. I realize God is the author of our lives, but I am sad anyway. She is so quiet and humble she would not want me to worry about her, which makes it all the worse for me. She has been so sweet to me and so grateful that I married her son. I hate these chapters of life; to quietly witness the suffering of others and the unknown. To have to say goodbye to the past and move ahead without people who love you. Running helped me cope wth the loss of my father; but I needed to run to fix the crazy he made inside of me. Losing her is just sad, no need to drum up any energy to run away from anything.

I just ran up and down the street in the cool morning.  It was a surprize how wet everything was.  It must have rained over night, but you never would have known it by 6:00 a.m. -- it was clear as a bell!   I wanted to run up to the cemetary to look out over valley and the lake, but I held back knowing my legs would be sore if I did that.  So I held back, ran less than I wanted to and dreamed of how fun it's going to be to just run, and run, and run down the canyon on Saturday. My daugther's cross country team will be volunteering at one of the water stations, which will be fun for me to see her there.  She's been at XC practice every day at 7am  for the last 2 weeks and just got moved into the 'elite' group (sub & 7:00 mile group).  I don't know if she can keep it up thorugh the season, but for now she's training with them, and will go varsity (in the 9th grade) if she keeps it up.  Also, she came home from soccer to tell me that her soccer coach knows me.  He looked at her name, looked at her, said she looked like someone he knew in college, and then asked her if she was my daughter.  Turns out he's an Ex...whose last words to me (that I can remember) were not to marry my husband (now of 20 years).  Awkward. 

Well, I started out the day fresh as a daisy running the Utah Valley Marathon with  Cath and Smooth, and  Rach.  We kept a good 9 m/m pace.The running conditions were perfect--it was cool with cloud cover and I was feeling pretty ok.  But the premature oranges at mile 10 and a few other pre race mistakes were making me suffer by the half point and I forced Cath to go on without me.  Plus my hamstrings have been killing me slowly and I'm seriously losing range of motion.  It stopped being any fun by mile 17.  From then on out, It was going to be a long series of POP stops.  At mile 22 at the mouth of the canyon my daughter was supposed to be on the aid station with the rest of the Timp XC team, but she could not be found.  At which point I freaked out, quit running went home (which was .4 miles off  mile 23).  There is more to the story that I wont' blog about.  Anyway, I learned she was at the finish line.    I thought I'd catch up with Cath but miscalculated her arrival and ended up running after some girl down the chute who was not her, then spent the next 20 minutes frantically trying to find her (scared she had broken her leg completely at the stress fracture somewhere after mile 17 when I let she, Smooth, and Rad get way ahead. I went home with 23 miles under my belt--threw my son an all day long huge birthday party and ran another 4 in the evening.  Not the  Utah Valley Marathon I had envisioned.  But according the clock, I "finished" in 4:11  I really need to get my hernia and my hamstrings fixed before I do this again.