sorry, sorry, sorry!

i have been such a slacker! i was just tired this past week. i THOUGHT about blogging, but i felt like i didn't have anything exciting enough to report. but then my mom yelled at me tonight for not writing, so here you be.

my eating was up and down all week. i did ok monday-friday for the most part, until friday night. i met friends at a bar/restaurant and had 2 big great lakes christmas ales (if you don't have this in your region, i am sorry for your loss). i also had a salad with chicken and blue cheese on it, delish. and a cup of french onion soup--cheese and everything. saturday, same deal--i ate what i wanted, and what i wanted was crap.

me and kristy finished another one together

today i met a friend for breakfast at bob evans where i had 2 slices of wheat toast with peanut butter, and yogurt with blueberries and bananas. because....i had a 5k at 1:00pm. i was more nervous about this one than the last. my training didn't go well this week, and my eating was SO crappy yesterday. plus i just have never fully recovered from that cold i had...it just gets a little better or a little worse. and yesterday and today my throat was hurting, i was sniffling. but somehow i pulled out some stamina from somewhere, and i finished the race in 39:18--my personal record. i've always wanted to do one in less than 40 minutes. my first mile was 11:25, a total record for me. my time today is a full 3minute improvement over my time in this race a year ago. and 5 minutes better than last year's turkey trot time. if i can make myself keep up with my running, i should be able to improve a lot more in a lot less time. it's just SO boring to run when there's not a race coming up, so i need to find out who is having one, and when.

the thing about 5k's is that it's hard to find out the info i really need to know. basically--is this the kind of 5k that is friendly to slow runners, or is it a runner's race? after doing several 5k's last year that had 200-500 participants, including lots of walkers, joggers, etc...i showed up for one in the middle of summer that had about 35 people. there were 32 elite runners. 2 normal runners. and me, who had slacked hard on training. i panicked. in the first mile i was the very last person, WAY behind the second to last person, with the ambulance slowly following beside me making sure i didn't die. let's just say that that race ended (early) in tears. it was the most humiliating moment of my life.

so anyway...i don't want to show up for some random race in some random town and find out that it's 35 awesomes, and ME. i also don't want to show up for said random race in said random town and find out it's a race filled with hills. i wish the race websites would list as standard info the previous year's number of participants, and the level of intensity of the course. how hard could it be to come up with a standard rating system for this?

i guess the thing is that "real" runners don't care. they'll do hills, they'll run a thousand miles per hour. but i think races with super challenging courses leave out a segment of people who could really enjoy the sport if they weren't so intimidated. we're all beginners at some point.

so tomorrow it's back to the grind with my food. i feel like i'm in limbo--not going entirely crazy, but not being diligent either. this is a slippery slope that i know all too well. i'd really like to drop another 5-9 pounds this month. we shall see.