I'm sitting on my bed, bundled up in my warm comforter and pajamas, enjoying a quiet Monday night. I noticed last week that from the left side of my bed, I can actually see the Washington Monument and the top of the Capital building during the winter because the leaves of the trees are down and don't block the view. Since then, I purposefully keep my one shade partially open because I think it's neat to gaze out at them in the distance as I try to fall asleep at night. So, as I am writing this, that's the view I get to see.
This past week and weekend was exhausting and a complete whirlwind.
I ran hills last week, trying to get myself used to those 16 miles in Nashville. I swear, my ass is going to be the size of Beyonce's by the end of this training. I actually thought of this on my Monday night run, as I approached the top of one of the many hills. When I lose weight, I lose it like most girls, first in the chest, well, clearly, I can't afford that. But, have no fear, where my chest loses out, my ass picks up the slack. I could have used this butt back in the days of my year round basketball endeavours to box out some of those big girls under the hoop. The only thing I know it does for me now is force me to buy bigger jeans.
Wednesday night I met up with my teammates at Rocket Bar in Chinatown for a big group get together. We are trying to make sure we balence out our exercise regiments with fun. I spent the night getting to know everyone, drank some beers--or as we like to call it Carbo loading---and played some SkyBall.
On Friday night, my teammates came over and I made everyone baked ziti, we played Scattegories and watched Napolean Dynomite. It was a fun time, nice to get together with everyone for a low key Friday before the run. I was in bed not much after 11.
On Saturday, my alarm woke me up all too soon and I had to pull myself out of the warm bed at 6:45 to put on my running gear and head over to Washington Lee High School in Arlington to do a 6 mile run with the Team. Everyone always says they can't believe that I go outside and run in this weather. The truth is, the worst part of running in the cold is waiting for the run to start. Once you get moving, your fingers start to regain blood flow and you actually get warm. Until the start, however, I was standing there in my running pants, underarmor turtle neck, running jacket, gloves, ear warmers and shaking like crazy from the bitter cold. Some people there were in shorts and I wanted to cry for them. After some time, we finally headed out onto the trail. This trail was the Curtis Lee trail, which runs alongside Route 66 in VA. It's a nice trail, but filled with lots of little steep hills. The nice thing about these hills are that they are the short steep ones, so you just have to get through the burn to the top, and then there's the nice downhill. I forced myself to focus not on the burn as a pain, but as a sign that I was getting stronger. Unfortunately, reciting Kanye West songs only gets you through a few of the hills, then my body is like, whatever Sarah, stronger or not, this sucks. The group I ran with for most of the time kept me entertained by playing this game where you named a movie and then you had to name the most actors in the movie. So, basicallly, I would call out Anchorman, and then someone would say, I can name 3 actors, and then someone might say I can name 4, and when nobody can name more than that, the person who named the movie says, Challenge, and the person who said they can name the most people have to go ahead and name them. It made the time pass by quickly, it also made me realize that I haven't seen many movies and I really don't know the name of actors.
After the run, we all went into Washington and Lee High School cafeteria to have our Honored Teammate picnic. All the groups were there--so, all marathoners, the tri-athletes, the half-ironman-ers--and we spent the morning getting to know one another, eating some breakfast and then hearing from all our Honored Teammates. It's inspiring to hear their stories and battles with their respective blood cancers. I always am in awe at how they are able to get up infront of a room of complete strangers and be so candid of their struggles, it's admirable. Our one honored teammate Denise spoke and she told of being diagnosed with her Lymphoma in her senior year of college just 5 years ago. At the end, she told us how she ran her first marathon with TNT 4 years after her remission at the San Fransisco Marathon. She was incredibly inspiring!
After the TNT, I was then off to work for the rest of the weekend. I had to work the American Cancer Society booth at the NBC 4 Health and Fitness Expo. Sounds easy, but talking to literally hundreds of people is exhausting. Not to mention, many of the stories I heard alone just sucked the life out of me. At 5:30 on Saturday night, I was practically falling asleep on the metro home. Sunday was my day of rest, after working from 7am until 2pm.
I ran 4 miles of hills last night in the cold. My shins are starting to bother me, sign of needing new shoes. I'm also still having the same problems I've had over the summer with feeling out of breath and my heart beating out of control, as if I am out of shape. I had gone to the Doctor's this summer when I was forced to drop out of the Marine Corps Marathon for this reason, and got several blood tests done, but they didn't find anything. Considering this keeps going on, I think I'm still going in to get more tests.
This morning, I woke up and went to my 6:30am spin this morning and got my ass kicked by the instructor Amy. Getting out of bed in the morning and walking to the gym in the cold sucks, but I always feel so great after. Don't worry though, today I slept in, because tomorrow I am meeting some of my fellow team captains at a track a few blocks from my house at 6:15 am to do interval trianing and speed workouts. I am excited because the people that I am running with are amazing runners and I feel like I can learn a lot from them. I am nervous because it's crazy early, cold, and I am way slower than they are. I might die on the track. It's going to be great. After my run, then work, I'm off to meet my team again at a fundraiser downtown at a bar--once again, we have to balence out our hard work with fun!
I've been in a bit of a funk lately, with work, running and life. One of the things that kind of did to me was some sad news last Tuesday from my mom about someone from home. It brought me back to the hardest point in my life thus far, the point that I had lost all hope. The news hit me a bit more than I expected, I suppose because it was the first time in a long while that I really thought about everything that happened in my life. Needless to say, Saturday's Honorable picnic came in time because the things I heard were things that I needed to hear for both my running, but for my life. At the end of our Honorable Teammate Denise's talk, she left us with one last thought. After telling us about running the San Fransisco Marathon, she said she felt selfish for doing something like TNT that benefitted herself. She began to cry saying that she can't thank those of us who have no sort of connection to blood cancer and yet choose to get up early into the cold and run so that we may help others. She thanked us all and reminded us that with every breath we may struggle to take on our run, that we are making it easier for those who struggle to take a breath to live, so keep pushing.
In just 7 days, there is the Inauguration of President Obama. All over this city, you see the word Hope plastered everywhere. I know that I am a hopeless romantic and perhaps a raging, nieve Liberal, but as I was on my run ;ast night in the frigid cold, I saw one of these many signs and just smiled. What a wonderful thing for people to see everyday. Cheesey as it may be, I think we all can use a little bit of hope. I began to run a little bit faster, and I vowed to keep my head up and have hope, and like Denise said, to push through and keep breathing.
Always with a smile.
I'm off to bed, my alarm is going off at 5:15 tomorrow morning....
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