First,
We bought a house!
I know, crazy.
Right before we left for California, my sister-in-law saw this house for sale, brought us a flyer, and said "BUY THIS HOUSE." We didn't really think too seriously about it at first. Well once we spent an entire week with Max, my other sister-in-law's golden retriever that we dog-sat for in California, we had some major puppy fever. No, we didn't buy the house just so we could get a dog, but we knew we would need to move out of the apartment we were currently living in if we ever wanted to get one.
A week after we got back from California, we met with a realtor and and a lender. You know, "just to see" if this is something we wanted to do. A week after that we put an offer on the house, a couple days later it was accepted, and we closed on August 24th. BAM BAM BAM- just like that. If you know me personally, it shouldn't surprise you at all that we only looked at one house and the process only took a couple weeks.
Fast forward another month to September 27th. We had agreed we wanted to wait a couple months to get a dog- Christmastime sounded like a good plan to us. We knew we wanted a male golden retriever, and Ben wanted him to look like Max, so he had to be medium-colored. I had a breeder all picked out (mostly because they charged about $600 less than any other breeder I could find) and I was watching their website like a hawk for when the next litter would be born. They posted that a medium-colored litter was born on the 27th and would be ready in late November/early December. Ben and I talked about it, decided we were ready, so I called that morning. Except wait a minute- all the males were gone already!!
I went to work really disappointed, so my friend Brenda vowed to help me find a golden retriever puppy. We came across an ad in the classifieds for male goldens on a farm about an hour south of here, and for about half the price the breeder was charging. The only catch was that they were 9 weeks old and ready go NOW, rather than two months from now. So what do you think we did?
We went and picked up this little guy, of course!
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| Meet Magglio, aka Maggs :) |
He'll eventually be my running partner, but we'll have to wait until he's at least a year old so we don't put too much stress on his joints.
So when I said a lot has happened, I wasn't really exaggerating ;)
As far as running goes, however, not much has happened...
Not much at all.
I started my marathon training after three weeks off of running due to my most recent bout with ITBS. To make a long story short, my IT band never fully healed, and I just kept getting more and more discouraged until I just stopped running altogether. I didn't run my goal half in August, and I definitely didn't run the Chicago Marathon. Which brings my grand total of DNS marathons in the last thirteen months to two.
When I finally decided not to run Chicago, I initially felt like a failure. This was the second marathon I'd registered for in a year and for the second time I wouldn't be toeing the line. But then I started thinking about why I wanted to run a marathon so bad in the first place. And I couldn't think of a good reason.
Runners are a different breed. We constantly strive to be better, and once we meet our goals, that still doesn't seem like enough. So we set new ones. I have a very competitive personality in general, and although I'm not fast by any means, running brings out my competitiveness even more. Even if I run a great time, I get disappointed that I didn't run a minute faster. So naturally, after running three half-marathons, the logical next step seems to be a marathon. And a lot of the runners I know are running marathons. So to be a better runner, I need to run a marathon. Right?
But my body isn't built for marathon training- at least in the condition it is now. I've found that if I stick to running three days a week, and definitely no more than four, I can stave off injury. And it's hard to run enough miles to train for a marathon on three days a week. It seems that no matter how much strength training or yoga I do, this ITBS will keep coming back if I push myself past a particular weekly mileage threshold.
Right now, there are no races on my calendar (except for a fun run Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving). For now I'm just going to run because I love to run. Run because it's good for my health. Run because having a 3 month old puppy can be a little stressful at times... :) Racing season in Minnesota pretty much over, but come spring I'm sure my calendar will start filling up with 5ks, 10ks, and 13.1s.
No marathons... but that is more than okay with me.
Have you ever made a big life decision on a whim?
Does running ever bring out your competitive spirit?
If your a baseball fan, who do you want to win the World Series?
The hubby and I are HUGE Detroit fans... GO TIGERS!!
