late night musings, mostly about the marathon.

Week three has been the best training week so far and by far. The rest of everything else has been slightly overwhelming, but amazingly enough, after a fabulously long night's sleep last night, and a very chill day off, and a lot of time talking to God, things feel not-so-overwhelming anymore. Until I think about how much homework I have. Ugh. Anyway, other than homework, laundry and sleeping, the only productive thing I did today was run 8 miles. It was the first time I've finished a long run and actually thought "hey, I think I can do this marathon thing". I felt good, despite running straight into the wind for the first half of my run. But I kept thinking about all the places I was running past - all the places I used to stop and turn around, and now I just keep going. So crazy to me. Oh, and I ran into Jean at the end and she made me an awesome sandwich for dinner! That was pretty great.

I have discovered something else through this process - I'm learning a lot about how much I stink at commitment, and I'm fairly sure that I'm one of the people that I often get frustrated with - those who take the easy way out. At least, I seem to do that with everything other than my ministry. I've never had a problem committing to that. So here I am, committing to something other than the church. Yay for me! It's really hard! I'm for sure a commitment-phobe. But, I want to be a woman who is strongly committed to whatever she's involved in. I tend to only make it two years at any given job, I try new things all the time, but never get to the point where I'm more than average at any one thing. I tend to get all distracted and move onto something else. So here I am, attaching myself to something that requires that I finish it. And I want to finish it well. Therefore, commitment to training is a must. And it's hard, it requires a sacrifice of time and effort, and amazingly enough, it's been a heck of a lot of fun. I'm actually getting better at something. How's that for encouraging you to keep going? I mean, it's definitely a growing, stretching experience, but despite the pain and frustration, it's fairly awesome. I've always liked a challenge anyway. But I never would have thought that God would teach me so much through something like training for a marathon. I hope that post-November 30, I'm a more well-rounded, committed person than I was when I started on this journey. And in the process, I'm able to help some kids in Africa. My life is a unique and wonderful thing. I'm so thankful for every bit of it.

update

This is my second week of training. It's unfortunately been a bit rougher for me, not because of time, but I haven't been feeling all that great. Food has not been agreeing with me ever since Chinese VBS. I blame the horrible camp food at Camp Berachah for wreaking havoc on my stomach, but I guess it could be a virus or something. Or something I'm eating. Whatever it is, hopefully I'll be over it soon, so I can run and run and run without feeling nauseous.

Speaking of eating...I got super excited last night when Sharon showed me this online tracking system that you can use to see what you've eaten, and how much protein, fat, etc. is in all of it. You can enter in your workouts, so I can use it as a runner's training log, and it's all electronic, which is so fabulous. I feel compelled to give it a shout out - so if you're interested in it, go to www.livestrong.com and sign up for the free version of My Daily Plate. It's amazing.

Speaking of amazing, I don't know how to describe some of what has happened this week, but I've been very aware of God's hand in my life, and His care and provision for me. Which humbles me greatly, and is giving me a lot to think about, and a lot to be praising Him for.

oh yeah, I'm back

I don't know why I have taken an 8 month hiatus from blogging. Generally, I enjoy it. I'm not particularly witty or anything, and have no idea why anyone would want to read my ramblings, but all in all, I find writing about my random life experiences to be fairly enjoyable. And relaxing. and yet, I haven't been writing at all. And yet, I realized that this week marks a new beginning for me, and with this new beginning, I have found a natural time to jump back into blogging. Let's see how it goes.

Oh, what's the new thing I'm starting? Well, this week marks week 1 of my marathon training. It's only 16 weeks away, which is something that excites me, and scares me at the same time. My job is so weird, at least schedule-wise, and it's difficult to try to maintain a set training time. But this marathon isn't really about me anyway. It's about kids in Africa, and raising money to help them have a chance at living. Which, when you think about it, makes any amount of pain I may experience during the training, or frustration at my lack of time to do other things like sleep or hang out with my friends, totally worth it. So here's to at least a blog a week, letting you all know how the training, and other life events are going.

Team World Vision training video for week 1:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TWVtraining