Get it Over With

**Hi! I'm back! Instead of doing a massive recap of...well, the last year, I'll weave details into each of my posts that will catch you up on all that has happened. In some ways it seems so much has changed and in others it seems that nothing has changed at all. So let's jump right in...**The time between when my alarm goes off at 5:45 and the moment my feet take the first steps out the door, is when I can't wait to be done with this whole marathon training thing. I think that there has to be a better way, that maybe I don't have to get up so early. But I've concluded, by trial and error (like waiting 'till noon on a hot and humid Sunday to do a long run only to end up at Urgent Care) that the only way to get in a long run is to wake up early and get it over with.But then I get going, I hit a good rhythm, relax into the solitude of the a quiet morning and let my thoughts go. I start to feel good: fast. I imagine my dreams of becoming and elite athlete (I used to hold gold medal ceremonies in my room, with a shoe box for a podium singing the national anthem in my crackly off tune kid voice) realized, when suddenly I burst onto the world running scene in my mid thirties, unknown until now. And suddenly I'm giving Deena Kastor and Kara Goucher a run for their money. Illusions of grandeur, that quickly fade when I realize I'm only three miles in to a sixteen miler and I've got WAY farther to go and probably won't be feeling 'this' good at the end.But on Monday, I did feel 'this' good at the end. So maybe all that training is paying off. All the running and racing I've been doing since my epic fail at the White Mountain Milers Half marathon last fall; dragging my husband and now 20 month old daughter behind me. They (especially my husband) have been incredibly patient and supportive of my nearly every weekend crack...err I mean running habit. Seriously, sometimes I think my running borders on addiction. But if I didn't run and train and race and compete then maybe I'd have other addictions--unhealthy ones. Whatever it may be, addiction or hobby, it has kept me churning out high miles since last October when I watched my sister-in-law finish her first marathon. And so now, countless races and two Marathons later, I'm ready for the season finale: another 26.2 in Main on October 2nd.And as much as I love a quiet morning and the open road (once I rub the sleep from my eyes and get out the door...sometimes I sit at the kitchen table for ten minutes trying to decide if I'm actually going to do it, or go back to bed) I'm not going to miss it. Taking a break after the Maine Marathon in October will be a long over due mental and physical break from always trying to be faster, stronger, better.