You know, the world likes to throw things at you. It throws you a loop just so you don’t get too comfortable.

First, we had weather. Weather of the kind that schools got cancelled, events got cancelled, and everyone went home early. The entire point of this escapade, I believe, was in order to mess with the timing of my workout. It worked, but I got 3 miles in anyway.

Then I got a cold. That kinda sucked. It wasn’t bad, just some runny nose and some coughing, so even though I knew the smart thing to do was skip the Turkey Trot in about -5 degrees on Thanksgiving morning, I really wanted to it. Especially since I’d be one of very few people to show up. Then I’d feel BA.

Got the email Wednesday night that the Turkey Trot was cancelled due to the cold. Well, I was really glad someone else made that decision for me, because I’m sure I would have made the wrong one and gone anyway.

I continued to fight the cold (both the sick and the weather) Thursday and Friday. I had to leave Friday Thanksgiving at my sister’s earlier than I would have liked due to increasing congestion. But Saturday I woke up clear! Clear sinuses, clear chest, clear head! It was awesome! Of course, that slowly went away through the day, but I still got to the gym and managed to ease back into a run. And I really did ease. I walked .25 miles, ran .5 miles, walked .25, ran .75, walked .25, ran 1, and walked .25.

So today I really had to do a longer run, since the Tucson half-marathon is 2 weeks away. I went out with the intention of pushing myself through 8 – 10 miles of walking, running, and whatever it took to get 8 – 10 miles done.

It wasn’t too cold – about 25 degrees. But it was windy, and snowing. Not nice fluffy snow, but stinging, biting, cold snow. I almost quit about a quarter mile in, turned around, and went back into the house to get the keys and find an open gym. But I convinced myself that was weak. I could do this. I could run out in the snow and be just fine. The first four miles were torture. But then I hit that ‘okay, this is easy’ place, and managed to fight through the wind coming at me, enjoy the wind at my back, and watch my footing sufficiently to not hurt myself through a full 10 miles on precariously plowed roads (made friends with the snowplow guy who passed me four times). I felt better than I have all week.

Chris and I just finished listening to Born to Run on CD. It was really fun, but makes me want to try going barefoot even more. As soon as the Tucson half is done, I’m giving it a shot. And I hope thinking about the book will help my stride in running shoes, too. I think I might actually have a running mantra now – the quote from Barefoot Ted – “My life is a controlled explosion.” I feel that.

Now I’m reading The Long Run (thank goodness my library lets you request books for them to buy!). Hope I get something good out of this book, too.