Seriously...This is all I've got right now. :-/

#howimfeeling. (They have these at Starbucks now, right?)

Thank you for all the great sock recommendations!! I'm excited to have lots of new options to try out. Hopefully I'll find one or or two that my finicky little feet will get along with.

This week was one of high highs, low lows (okay, moderately low lows), & at long last, a little bit of moderation. Over the last few weeks, it's become *eminently* clear that I made the right decision in not signing up for CIM & killing myself to try to be ready for a marathon by Dec. 8.

Actually, let's be real; calling it 'the right decision' is kind of the understatement of the century. Between issues I knew about ahead of time (lots of travel, work, & social commitments) & other, less foreseen obstacles (illness & pseudo-injury angst), my highest mileage week lately has amounted to 22 miles, with my longest run topping out at a whopping 8.7. And that's not lazing around or procrastinating; that's just all the time & confidence in my right leg (up until very recently) that I've been able to scrape together.

As I mentioned last week, we flew back from Hawaii on Halloween, & instead of a relaxing weekend of unpacking, some running, & preparing for the upcoming week, I was laid low with food poisoning for the better part of four days. This was bad enough because I literally could do nothing but lay on the couch & drink tea & try not to die. I felt a little better starting Monday, but still had some wicked food aversion happening; this translated into 3 days in a row of netting maybe 600 calories & forcing myself to choke down whatever food I could stand. The fallout was a) going into the work/training week sleep-deprived & generally feeling crappy, & b) having done nothing to prepare for the week in terms of food.

Hopefully this won't get too overly privileged-white-girl-talking-about-her-food-issues-on-the-internet (because OMG ENOUGH), but by way of explanation, let me just quickly state that while in general I'm not usually a type A, I am bit obsessive & neurotic about my food in the sense that I like to have it planned out & prepared ahead of time as much as humanly possible, & when I can't or don't it's a *huge* source of stress & anxiety for me. End food talk.

So yeah. I felt terrible, wasn't sleeping, & was scrambling for meals most of the time. (Did I mention I was also moving into a new office at work, and also in the middle of finishing a big project with a Wednesday deadline? So there's that too.) But if there's one thing I know, it's that if I feel horrible AND then I don't get my running in, I feel even worse. So while a lot of things got sacrificed this week due to time & sleep deprivation, I decided to prioritize the running as much as possible. Even so, I didn't quite reach my goal of topping 22 miles. Sigh.

*However*, the week did still involve a pretty Bay Shore Trail run, a killer football game, & a lovely weekend of wine tasting / buying in Paso Robles / San Luis Obispo, so if nothing else, you'll be treated to more pretty / entertaining pictures than usual as you scroll through. :)

* * *

Grand Total: 21.5 miles

* 17.5 easy
* 4 speed

Monday:

4 miles easy. My stomach was still unhappy enough by the time I got home from work that I didn't think two hours of karate was the greatest idea ever, but feeling better enough that I thought *maybe* I could handle half an hour or so of running, as long as I just ran around the block over and over and over again & didn't get too cocky. Weirdly, after three laps it was feeling a lot better, so I ventured out a bit farther, making loops here & there through my neighborhood, & amazingly got to 4 without feeling like complete & utter crap. #winning

Tuesday:

6.5 track. 1.5 warm up, 4 x (1200m @ 5K pace / 3:00 jog), 1 mile cool down. My first successful track workout since like basically the last ice age, so YAY! The most notable things about this workout were 1) no sharp pains or tweaks, and 2) calves that felt like hamburger meat by the time I got home. Fun times! :P

Wednesday:

Just a bit of easy strength work. Both Don & I were running on *maybe* 3 hours of sleep each, so we decided to ditch karate & get to bed a little earlier than normal, especially since we knew we'd probably be up late at the Stanford-Oregon game on Thursday. I'd kind of been toying with getting in a short run on Wednesday since I knew I wouldn't be running all weekend, but a little experimentation that morning & later that evening confirmed that my calves were still too destroyed to handle more than a few strides at a time.

Thursday:

5 easy. This day was go, go, go -- All-day meeting at work, run desperately out the door at 4:00 for as many easy miles on beautiful Bay Shore Trail as I had time for, dash back to the office, grab a 3-minute shower, gun it for the Caltrain station, then run-walk from the Palo Alto Station to our tailgating area just in time to scarf down a burger & some bean dip & make it to the game for kick-off.

I am so lucky to work *right* by this trail, *and* have access to a shower at my office. I try to remind myself of that any time I start feeling even remotely down about something.

I could tell during the run that although my track workout hadn't felt utterly horrific at the time, it was still way harder on my body than the easy runs I've been doing. My calves were feeling better but definitely still sore, & my adductors & hamstrings (some of the main muscles I've been working on strengthening in PT) were working harder than usual to maintain good form at my "easy" pace. But I got it done & made it to the game.

And ***holy bejeesus***, what a game it was! I think I nearly had a stroke. Vegas odds were 10-10.5 points in favor of #3 Oregon, which makes sense given that they'd won 18 of their last 19 games. And although that one loss was indeed to Stanford last year on Oregon's home turf, I was not feeling all that confident that our chances against them this year were as good.

Did I start to get just a *little* excited when, after 3.5 quarters, Stanford was shutting the Ducks out 26-0? Okay; maybe just a bit. But to beat Oregon you have to be near perfect, & there was still plenty of time for us to make a mistake & for them to exploit it. Sure enough, in the last 10 minutes of the game, the Ducks managed two touchdowns & two field goals, but Stanford took the ball back & ran out the last few minutes to seal it 26-20.

WHAAAAAAAAH???

Rushing the field.

Don & I freak out a little bit.

I freak out some more.

#nerdnation represents at the post-game presser.

So yeah. Up to #4 we go. That was a pretty epic night, & did a lot for my energy levels going into the weekend.

Friday:

6 easy. I'd hoped to get home from work early enough to get in 9-10 miles with a few at HM pace before we were leaving for Paso Robles around 7pm. Alas I didn't get home until 4:30, & once I was packed it had become one of those "I need to be back in x minutes, so I can run away from the house for x minutes divided by two, then head back" sort of deals. I had more energy than on Thurday's run, but my legs were clearly still recovering from Tuesday & my pace reflected it.

Saturday / Sunday:

Twice a year we usually head down to Paso Robles (about halfway between the Bay Area & LA) to pick up a bunch of a wine, & also taste more wine, & also usually buy a bunch more wine. (Sensing a theme, here?) We've already been down several times this year, though, & since Don's co-worker had connections at a winery in San Luis Obispo, we decided to drive the extra half hour south on our first day & check out some spots down there where neither of us had ever been.

This is San Luis Obispo wine country, across from Baileyana. It....kind of looks like wine country. Which is to say, farmland.

Baileyana is absolutely worth a stop! Try their non-Chard whites, & also the Rhone blends.

You'll know it because it looks like a one-room school house (since it was.)

Kynsi was our other top pick. Tasty pinots & red blends.

Our time in SLO was limited, so we didn't get to that many places. I would love to go back sometime & hit a bunch more!

On Sunday we did most of our picking up back in Paso, which included spending some time down in the guts at Denner.

Denner barrel room.

You know you're drinking ten-year-old port when the residue in the glass is brick-red. :)

Paso was (as usual) spectacularly gorgeous.

Of course, now that we're back home, we get to deal with this:

The carboys are not from Paso. Nor is the stack with the green box, nor the one with the visible bottles. But pretty much everything else. Do this a few times a year & suddenly you can see why you end up needing three wine fridges.

I fully understand that there are worse problems one can have in life.

You guys, I am totally running thirty miles this week or giving up on running forever. BRING IT.