Life gets pretty busy this time of year, as we all know. Let me tell you - although I had become quite practiced in making time to run, fundraise, and blog when I was busy with work, adding in the holidays has made it an extra special challenge.
My mom came to visit for a whole week not too long ago and although I did get out for a run while she was here, I didn't get out again that week. It was too hard to leave her alone for me to run, and well, the bike tires were flat, so she couldn't really keep up.
My challenge now is trying to get all of my holiday gifts made while finishing my training. Not to mention, it's getting cold outside! Throw all that into a pot with extended mall hours for the holiday season, and my time becomes very limited.
The reality is though, the marathon is less than two weeks away. Unbelievable - I can't believe it's come so fast.
I never got in my last major distance run of 35.5 km - I couldn't justifiably take 6 hours out of my few hours off to do it. By the time I could get out to run, even a portion of it, I was in to tapering.
Tapering - reducing your mileage pre-marathon to rest your body.
Mom got me my new shoes as an early birthday present and I've been doing my best to break them in before we leave for Hawaii.
In the meantime, Jeff's knee is still incredibly painful for him to run on - but I have finally succeeded in getting him to go see a physiotherapist. Hopefully it's not all bad news because the usually chipper Jeff has been pretty cranky over the injury. I completely understand though since he's starting to question
whether he will be able to run on race day.
Fundraising wise we've almost broken $9,000 which is phenomenal! Hopefully we can find the time over the holidays to sell some poinsettias or something and even reach $10,000.
In the meantime, we're starting to get information directly from the marathon, like our race numbers (6016 for me and 6031 for Jeff), information on a race DVD (which my folks have insisted on
purchasing so they can watch me sweat, heave, pant, maybe even vomit, at interesting points along the course), and even a little note about the services available during the race.
Apparently, there is live tracking on race day.
I will have to investigate this further.
The only thing I haven't done that I want to in lead up to race day is to put together my playlist. This is being put off because I am asking for a big gift from all of our followers - words of motivation.
Jeff and I have asked for these in the past without great success but this is the culmination of all of our work in about 12 days. So, if you have a built-in microphone in your computer, google how to record a sound clip on your computer. Record me a greeting and email it to me. Without listening to the clips ahead of time, I will place them all between songs along my playlist so that I get a few each mile along the course. The plan is, if I'm ready to give up at the 39th kilometre, the song will end and next thing I will hear is my brother, or my co-worker, or YOU saying "Annie, what are you doing, you are unbelievable, keep it going!"
So here is my rules for these clips:
1) Make sure to tell me who it is. Although I may love each of you profusely, I'm not the greatest with recognizing voices.
2) Aim for 30 seconds to 1 minute if you can
3) You can just read a quote, you can tell me you are proud, you can tell me something to make me laugh or smile, you can tell me you think I am crazy, you can tell me to not stop running - just tell me anything you think I would like to hear at Mile 1 or Mile 26 in 30 degree weather. :)
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