Maxed Out
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Marathon
I did my short "run" tonight after missing my Tuesday night session thanks to a lightning storm, and attempted to move up to 60% running (3 min. run, 2 min. walk). Apparently, somewhere between 40% and 60% is the level where running could be considered enjoyable for me. Tonight, no matter how slow I went, the run portions were not fun. I felt like I barely recovered in between them, and after minute 27 I started to feel a sharp pain in my right shin. This wasn't the I've-gotta'-make-it-from-Cedar-Point's-back-gate-to-the-front-gate-in-ten-minutes-or-I'm-gonna'-be-late-for-work usual shin burn to which I've grown accustomed over the past seventeen years, this was more localized and insistent. I ended up walking the last 18 minutes, and the pain has gone away now. It might have been the very high humidity level that made it feel like I couldn't get a full breath tonight. Plus, wearing the heart rate monitor and double-bagging the girls already makes me feel constricted.

It has been an exhausting week, so I'm proud of myself for even getting off the couch. We've been pre-approved for a mortgage and Hans got his job and we've been going non-stop since Sunday trying to take care of details and see every house that meets our needs before we meet with the builder of the larger townhouse in Whitsett on Saturday and actually fork over money to start a contract. Ever since we got the call Monday night saying we'd been approved for the mortgage, neither one of us has slept. We're excited, but we're also nervous. It's not the cost that's getting us, because we'll be owning for what we've been paying in rent, it's the permanence of owning something that is not portable that's hitting us hard. We both have wanderlust and this will be our sixth move in ten years. And now we're doing the grown-up thing and buying a house and getting a second car, and we're both happy about that but still wondering how we got here, because on one level we thought we'd never be able to support this kind of lifestyle and still have a work-life balance that made us happy, and so on another level this is exactly what we've been trying really hard to avoid. Yet it feels really right right now, even if it is keeping us awake and the next two months are going to be insanely crazy and we're going to be broke and going in a million directions at once. Hans was so happy on Tuesday he even said the "B" word even though a baby is one more thing we've recently agreed we're not ready for.

I need to run 11 miles on Sunday, and I think I'm going to spend the first twenty minutes running only two minute intervals before I try to move up to three minute intervals. Hopefully by Sunday I will feel more rested and more interested in actually running!