Getting a Grip

I am in the process of getting a grip. I was on vacation a mere 4 days ago and you would never know. Im sure most of my poor attitude and general malaise is due to work – blah. But, Eldar and I were chatting about all of the stuff we have going on in the coming weeks and I had a bit of a meltdown.

I need structure in my life. Of course, I have some…wake up. commute, work, commute, do stuff, bed. But, I am training for a half marathon in August and a marathon in November. And all the travelling and running around we have planned just does not go. I don’t do the fly by the seat of my pants thing while training for a race.

When I did my 2007 marathon, my Friday/Saturday schedule was leave work, go to Trader Joe’s and do grocery shopping for the week, home by 6:15/6:30, cook and eat dinner (usually some variation of pasta with veggies and soy sausage), watch As Time Goes By on PBS while having a cup of hot tea with cinnamon graham crakers, bed at 10pm, wake up 5:30am, breakfast, exercise, run at 7am, shower, eat a ginormous salad.

Seriously. Down to the food I ate! That’s just my Friday/Saturday schedule.

But I find the structure soothing when Im tackling something as overwhelming as a marathon can be. You need to be disciplined and for me to do it and not be overwhelmed, I need the structure.

So, we had a nice chat about how we can train for these races by buckling down, but not raining on his parade (which tends to be much more relaxed, beautiful, and free than mine! Bless him for loving me and my neuroses).

So, Im feeling much better about the running stuff. Time to buckle down and do this thing. Yippee!! What the heck to do about work and that part of my life can be dealt with another day.

Loved this blog post from Kristen Armstrong:
http://milemarkers.runnersworld.com/2009/05/getting-a-grip.html