Soundtrack

I've been purchasing random music from the iTunes store lately.  Some upbeat, some slow, some in between but they all hit me in a unique and different way.

Here's some of the most recent to move me:

Watchmen Soundtrack - loved the movie, and the mix of songs...especially The Times They Are A-Changin'

River of Deceit - Layne Staley's voice is incredible and unmistakeable.  Another creative force lost.

Lullaby - Shawn Mullins...another voice that just hits ya between the eyes.

Hallelujah - previously had the Leonard Cohen version and got it a second time with Watchmen, but today purchased probably the best version I've ever heard of it, by Jeff Buckley.  Haunting.

So why post this?  Things like this upcoming weekend get me thinking a little more, how should I put it?  I'm compiling the soundtrack for my life.  One song, one artist at a time.

The Hay's In The Barn

Big day coming up on Sunday.  Running marathon #3.  Of the three that I've trained for, this one is by far the one that I feel the most under-prepared for going in to it.  But, like the title of this post says, not much I can do about that now.  Just gotta learn from this experience and hope I don't do damage to myself along the way.

The problems this time around have been varied:  lack of motivation, poor weather conditions to run in, lingering, nagging injuries (that I think I finally have beaten into submission), an inability to stop shoveling food into my gob, and work stress just to mention a few.

No matter what though Sunday will be a learning experience.  I just hope it doesn't hurt too much while it is imparting that knowledge to me.

Progress

Not quite done yet - still some fine details around her face to finish, but all of her has been colored.

Randomness

Here are some things that were bouncing around my head on my run this morning, in no particular order of appearance or importance:

• The citizens of Grand Rapids are lazy arses. We have choices as to what garbage pick-up service we use, private companies or the city. T and I use the city. What we don't have to pay for is recycling. All you have to do is go by the sanitation department and pick up the recycling bins. Free 'o charge recycling service. I ran by a house today that used a company besides the city for their trash. 80%+ of the stuff at the curb was easily recyclable. I don't care what your political affiliation is, get off your lazy ass and recycle.
• Why is there such a dislike (almost used the word hatred but thought better of it) of Nike in the running community? See this thread on runnersworld.com's forum. Talk about snark-central. Maybe I'm biased the other way (I wear nikes. They feet my feet really well because they're built on a low volume last and my foot is low volume.) but it seems to me that you're not a real runner unless you wear asics, or mizuno, or something else. I think it's a personal preference and we're all free to choose, but stop running down a company for trying to be innovative. And stop bashing a company that helped introduce running to the general population. If you know the history of the company you know that it was through Blue Ribbon Sports that asics got their foot in the door of the running shoe market.
• It was beautiful out today. No wind. Why can't it be like that when I have a baseball game to work.
• I'm feeling under prepared for the marathon.

The most important thing about today's run? I almost didn't run. I was sitting on the couch watching old episodes of "The West Wing" on bravo and came very close to not running. But I got up, got dressed and headed out the door. About .25 of a mile into my run I realized that I wanted to run today. I wanted to run not because I felt obligated due to a goal race quickly approaching or because I'm beholden to a training plan. I wanted to run because I wanted to be outside and I wanted to run. It was that feeling that made today's run great, the fact that the run felt good and the weather was nice was just icing on the cake.

Bogged Down

Work is just sucking the energy right out of me these days. Seven hours on your feet at a baseball doubleheader is draining (and we're playing at the 2-3 days a week at home) plus with only a month left in all the spring sport seasons anxiety/tension is high for all the injured kids and coaches. And it's taking a toll on me unlike it has the last 2 years and the area that is suffering?

My running. I'm having trouble mustering up the energy to run in the morning because it seems like no matter how many hours of sleep I get I wake up tired. I'm having trouble finding the motivation and energy to run when I get home from work (around 6 pm on a good day).

I'm hoping to make some progress this week though. I'm not focusing on when I get my miles in, and to some extent during the week not worrying about how many miles each day since I have my last 20 miler on Sunday, I'm just focusing on running.

I'm going back to a philosophy/mantra that worked for me in the past, and I'm not sure why I abandoned it, that came from a simple phrase a friend said to me: run your plan. So this week my plan is to run 4-5 days and get my 20 miler in on Sunday. I'm not gonna be concerned about paces, number of miles, what days I run during the week, my only focus is 4-5 (probably 4 at this point) days of running, run 20 on Sunday. The statistics will be what they will be because I'm bogged down right now and I need to do what ever it takes to find some traction.