85 minute miles

There has been some serious progress in the last week. I have run every other day (would have been every day but I figure I might as well just ease back into it) and have improved non-stop running time from 13 minutes to 25 minutes in a week. And all but two days occurred before work, at 5:30 a.m.

And then I went to the club this morning instead of running outside because it felt like Miami outside without the ocean smell and realized how damn slow I've been running this whole time. No wonder I could do 25 minutes when I was running a ridiculously slow pace. And no, I am not being hard on myself -- all I could muster today was 5.8. 6.2 used to be my warmup speed, and even then I could only tolerate it for a few minutes before speeding up. Sigh.

I volunteered at the Red, White and Boom half marathon this weekend as a Head Course Marshal and part of that was getting automatic entry into either Twin Cities or the TC10. There is no way in hell I'd be ready for Twin Cities this year, but I've decided that I will enter the TC10. I am not sure it is humanly possible for me to be ready for that in 12 or so weeks, but we'll see (considering most 10 mile plans are 10 weeks long, and assume you have a base of 15+ miles per week already). It's somewhat frustrating because I have wanted to run that race for so long (and was in such damn good shape last summer that it would have been PERFECT -- and I would have even run it pregnant were I not told I couldn't any more) and now my first chance to run it I feel like I will be less than prepared. Oh well.

We were standing in line at Home Depot today waiting to buy our mulch when a woman walked up to us and said to Bug, "Oh, he has such beautiful hair!" We said, thank you, but he is a she. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she said. "It is so hard to tell when they're little." And I'll give her that -- unless they're in bright pink it's not so obvious. But then she went on to call Bug a boy no less than five additional times. And within that time frame I was lucky enough to learn that she had four kids of her own and her husband had a stroke when one of them was 10, and did you know, he just died, (Me: I'm so sorry. Her: Oh. Well thank you. Me, mentally: OH COME ON WOMAN, I KNOW THAT YOU PLANTED THAT OUT THERE. DON'T PRETEND LIKE YOU WEREN'T WAITING FOR ME TO SAY IT.) but it's so great because she sees him in everything that her kids do now. And all I can think is woman, please stop right now. Not only because this is getting somewhat awkward and I'd like to leave, but Matt is standing right behind her, and the last thing I want to do is start discussing deceased fathers. I try and break away as politely as possible, and she sends us off with a "God Bless" (one of my personal favorites) and then calls Bug a boy, again. The point being, if you accidentally misidentify an infant's gender, and are corrected, let that be the last time in that same conversation that you call said infant the wrong gender.

Bug has been eating like she's planning a 40 year trip in the desert. She also slept an ungodly 10 hours straight last night. I swear every morning she's a half an inch longer. I think my favorite part of right now is that she will smile almost every time I talk to her.