Valentines

Well it's one of my least favorite days of the year, Valentines Day. I now have a solution to my aversion to this Hallmark invented holiday, RACING!

Today was the Five Points of Life Marathon and Half Marathon here in Gainesville. It's our biggest and longest distance event here in town. Today was my third time doing the Half Marathon. I finished in 1:41:25 and placed 2nd in my age group! I was running with two guys from the Florida Track Club and we had a goal of 1:40:00. We didn't make it, we all came in around the same time, but two of us PR'd despite the missed goal, so all was well!

We started out with 7:45 min/miles for the first 6, hills are pretty intense during those miles and then our strategy was to take off after that. Oh it was 28 degrees at the start! I had my fuel belt so didn't stop at the water stations, so after mile 7 or so I was ahead of Albert and West, but they caught up to me in the last mile. My legs were pretty heavy after the first 6 miles so I wasn't able to go as fast as I'd hoped, but I was very happy with beating my PR by 3 minutes! One strange thing is my feet fell very fast asleep, I literally couldn't feel them, around mile 5 and it lasted for like 3-4 miles. It was kind of a scary feeling to not feel your feet AT ALL while you are running! But, I'm guessing it was something to do with the way I was running the hills, my leaning or foot strike or something, because once it flattened out for a bit it subsided. Thank goodness!

It's really crazy to think back that 2 months ago I struggled so badly at the OUC 1/2 in Orlando with Tyler, coming in almost 20 minutes later than my time today! CRAZY!! I feel like a different person, in more ways than one.

There is this drive in me that has been quieted with the housewife life, and now I feel like it's bubbling over. I feel youthful and goal oriented, feelings I haven't felt since grad school. It's an interesting journey...

Today I'm reminded of why I began hating Valentines, goes back 13 years. I went to a party with my longtime boyfriend and fought the whole night and then he broke up with me in the morning. We ended up getting back together and dating off and on for a few more years, but I guess I maintained some PTSD from that, combined with my natural aversion to anything contrived which Valentines Day seems to be to me.

So here I am 13 years later, in a stable, loving relationship with my husband of 5 years. I still don't like the day, but it's more like a non-event. We don't really celebrate, I guess we really don't celebrate too many holidays with gifts, some people find it strange... maybe it is. But today, he came out to my race and met me at the end and was impressed and proud, which was good for my heart, I'll take that over a box of Wal-Mart chocolates any day.

Happy Day everyone. I hope you are loved and love, real, non-commercialized, non-packaged kind of love.