29 days and counting...

until the Chicago Half-marathon I have been training for all summer. I haven't been very good about running the miles I should every week, but yesterday I ran 10 miles, which is only 3.1 miles less than the half-marathon distance. It wasn't easy, but I did it, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I like running in my neighborhood because there are several roads that all connect back to the street I live on so I can make lots of loops and change things up a bit to get however many miles I need for the day. Also when the going gets tough and I just don't want to run anymore, I usually pass by a field of workers in the hot sun picking tomatoes and think to myself that as much as I don't want to be running, it beats doing what they're doing. Ha, they probably say the same thing when they see me running.

Yesterday I was running with my friend Amber from work and my sister Rachael who are both running the race as well. We were just running along, chatting as we ran when all of a sudden Rachael yelled out "snake!" Sure enough there was a big black snake curled up on the road just a few feet in front of our path. Good thing someone was paying attention because Amber was headed straight for it with the stroller.

Since I knew we would be running for so long, estimated 1 hour 40 minutes, I decided to go during Tony's nap time so that he could sleep in the stroller. He had other plans, he wanted to look around and take in the scenery, surprisingly he stayed awake the whole time and didn't make a peep, other than the occasional happy squeals here and there. He is such a good running partner, he never complains, and all 99 miles I've logged so far he's been right there with me in the stroller. Since he had stayed awake the whole time, shortly after we got home he was ready for a nap, and so was I, so he went to bed, I took a shower and went to bed too and 2 1/2 hours later I woke up very stiff and sore. I am happy to report that today I am feeling much better. Next time I will remember to stretch a bit after a long run.

So now if I can just keep up my training for the next few weeks, it will all be over soon and I can go back to being a slacker. Seriously I don't know what I was thinking when I agreed to do this.

I worked night shift last night at the small ER I work at as agency once in a while, a full moon of all things and guess how many patients I saw in the whole shift? Just one. Yep, that's it. The rest of the night I caught up on all my blogs and surfed the web trying to stay awake. I swear, I don't know which is harder, staying up all night and working, or staying up all night and working but not really working because there aren't any patients. I tell you it makes for a very long night when you just sit and watch the clock and yawn. This is the second weekend in a row I worked a shift like that, with little or no patients, they are starting to call me a good luck charm there. Unfortunately that good luck doesn't follow me to my regular ER job.