Taper = Restless Leg Syndrome?

"But...but...but...I'm busy watching Dancing with the Stars! I don't have time to run."

During my taper time last week before my marathon my eating was off along with my sleep schedule. Early in the week my legs were restless when I was trying to sleep. I went out for a slightly longer run the next day and low and behold--I slept like a baby.

I've spent all these weeks putting in an obscene amount of mileage, and now instead of dreading those long runs, my body craved them.

It's a sad day when I would pick taking a run over going for a DQ Blizzard, but that is where I was at. And for me, ice cream solves everything.

To make it worse, now I am in recovery after the marathon. Once again my legs are begging me to go out for just a little, itty-bitty run. Last night a splurged with twenty minutes on the elliptical followed by an upper body weight workout.

At this point the only thing keeping me sane is that my race photos were posted. YES! And they are epically hilarious. I want to buy the whole set. I promise to share the hilariousness because everyone needs a good chuckle.

How do you overcome these low mileage blues?

2 Marathon PR's in 1 Week

This past Sunday I participated in my first full marathon. More details on that to follow, but first I want to commandeer the photos my mom took from her camera. Trust me, there are some great action shots that are going to show just how dorky I was during this whole adventure.

Yesterday morning I woke up to find this in my inbox:

My first thought was, gee, the course did feel a little long.

I was timing myself with my Nike+ chip that syncs to the watch. I know that a marathon course is calculated by the runner taking all of the shortest trips around corners, and if you are on the outside of a turn you are going to add on distance.

So at that point I just figured that I took all of the outside turns a little wide. I did not even think about the course being mislabeled.

And thus I learned that my original PR (since I had never run a full marathon before) of 04:54:58 was now slashed and changed to 04:53:18.

I PR'ed for a marathon twice in three days!

And now I will do a little victory dance, because that must mean I am pretty much a superhuman. Along with about 8000 other participants, but who's counting?

Weather Control Center

Every day for the least two weeks I have religiously been checking the weather channel to see what the forecast would be for my marathon this weekend. With the extremely rainy and cold spring so far, my expectations were low.

At this point, I am fairly certain the forecasters are playing tricks on me though since every morning the little weather ticker moves from partly cloudy, to showers, to hold your hats your going to blow over winds, back to sunny.

I don't ask for much, but today I am asking for at least a reprieve on the rain for about five hours on Sunday morning. Maybe six, who knows how long it is going to take to finish this thing. Then the skies can go back to their normal dreary self.

Kay? Thanks!

In other news, after taking a massive blog hiatus, I have finally picked my February giveaway. Sorry! And in this case, it pays to be first, because Random.org came up with:

Which means the winner of the handcrafted Peridot Glass Earrings is:

Congrats Tonyne, you are a winner! Shoot me an email at amadia.clark (at) gmail (dot) com with your shipping address and these will be off to you shortly.

And the correct answer is: a little bit of (A) and (B). A couple gathered around my office for a moment, and then one asked me for help on a client report. She was probably too nervous to call me out on my sporadic behavior. The other just asked if I planned on joining her at lunch later.

I think that speaks volumes about how used to my antics my office mates have become.