The Youth Ministry intern for the Diocese of Chicago has been working hard leading up to a recent youth retreat and our Diocesan Convention (which I attended this weekend). This week, he is taking his family to Disney World (can you sense my jealousy right now?) for a nice long vacation. Way to go, Chad
They left today and as you can imagine, making the trip, with his wife and two young children in tow, to the airport and then to the hotel has been the better part of the day. His daughter, tired and sleepy. was still in the plane as it approached Orlando when she asked "Are we at Disney World?" "Almost, honey" was his response.
This week, I felt just like Chad's daughter. After four runs totaling 20 miles this week (this was a cut-back week for me), I found myself thinking "Are we there yet?" Can we just get to Disney World Marathon Weekend so I can stop all this training and just 'run the races"?
Training has been the reality of my life for this entire year. I have been training for some race pretty much every week of 2012. And as my next Half Marathon approaches on Saturday (actually there is a 5K on Thanksgiving Day that Ryan and I are running that isn't even on my race schedule yet), I ask myself how/why the heck did I ever sign up for 20 races in the first place!
Why indeed! I am a little tired that's all. It has been lots of training, lots of scheduling challenges, and I have to admit to having lots of fun. But this week, what I saw was 5 more weeks of training (and 2 more Half Marathons) before I begin tapering for the Disney Goofy Challenge. That's 148 miles of running between now and Taper time. So the answer is "Almost, honey."
There is work to do if I want to accomplish the goals I have set for myself. I did better with my eating this week, and I got a little bit more sleep at night. This coming week I will be preparing (and resting) for a 5K Thanksgiving race and a Half Marathon Turkey Trot. And this will be my first back-to-back training weekend (meaning I will run on both Saturday and Sunday to simulate the Goofy race experience).
5 more weeks til Taper. Then 3 more weeks to Marathon Weekend! "Almost, honey!"