Le sigh

Lately I have just not felt entirely myself. I'm not sure if it's the typical seasonal affective disorder that I tend to suffer from during the late winter/early spring or not. I lean towards "not", because we have had unseasonably warm weather, and we have changed the clocks. Those two things tend to signify both the spring and me coming out of my funk. And for a while, that was true this year.

But for the most part of the last week, I have just felt off. I felt off before the 5K, I felt off during and after. The week has been good, in general, and I have had fun with most of it, but when I am left to my own devices, I haven't really done all that well. I'm finding it hard to focus on my training, which is not good, as I am already behind.

All of this has been capped of with my stomach feeling pretty rocky over the last day or so, and for no apparent reason. My diet hasn't changed, I'm not sick, nothing like that. But for some reason, my stomach is just... not quite right. Hopefully it clears up relatively quickly, because I need to kick ass over these next three weeks.

This shouldn't be this hard at this point.

I'm not ready.

I'm not.

Had a 5k this morning, at the local golf course. My second favorite distance behind the 200 meters. Yes, the 200 meters. I will always be a sprinter at heart. The course was the sort of course that should favor me, lots of small to medium hills. I live at the highest elevation in Salem, I can't do any runs without hills. This race should have been in my wheelhouse.

And I sucked. I made literally every mistake I could've made, both mentally and physically. Terrible. The course was a mess from all the rain, but I can't even blame it on that. I wasn't warmed up enough, didn't stretch well enough, didn't eat or drink what I should've beforehand. I took terrible lines around and through the soggy areas, ran the downhills poorly. My feet and ankles hate me. I really could not have run a worse race.

Fuck.

Who wants a mixtape?

We've got a month to go. Maybe a little incentive will get you guys donating!

Anyone who donates... let's say $20 or more and responds to this post in some fashion after doing so -- email me, comment here or on Facebook or wherever. Donate, get a hold of me, and tell me what styles of music you like, or perhaps a theme you want the songs to have. You do that, and you will get a custom built mp3 mix from yours truly. If you're lucky, I might even burn it on fancy CD-R for you. At the very least, you'll get a neatly packaged mix in your email, which can be added to iTunes, burned, etc.

So use that little link to the right side of the page and donate!

I should write more often.

Arg.

Training is going alright. I'm still behind quite a bit, and will remain as such until Marathon Monday. It can't be helped at this point. But my legs are strong, and my lung capacity is good. As long as I put in good work for the next six weeks, I think I'll be fine, though of course not as good as I'd like to be.

I think, and I suppose hope, that the emotions of the day will make the first hour easy, and that the support of my friends and family will help make the last hour easier. I feel like, in a way, I only need to mentally prepare myself for the middle 15 of the race. If I can will my way through that, I will be okay.

Fundraising, on the other hand, is going pretty well. We have raised over twelve hundred dollars so far, with a lot more coming this month. I think we should hit $3500-4000 by April 1st. Hopefully after that we can approach the goal of $7500.

If not, there's always next year! (?)