Wha??? It's February 17th?!?!

Where, oh where has my little month gone? Oh where, oh where, can it be?  I just finished crying about my team's lost and now March is staring at me!!!  OK, so I'm not gonna win a Grammy (was that this last weekend?) but I get by.  So a quick recap of the last couple of weeks: foot hurt, sidelined my training; I got laid-off and am now working on finding a new gig.  If you want more details...and I hope you do (I might hide another song in there) you will follow on.


So, I'll start with the job, since it is in the past and no longer of any impact to my psyche.  They pulled the plug on my position on the 31st of January.  I knew this was coming as they had started signing contracts that effectively eliminated the need for me.  My biggest stress was the whole potential for the owners walking into my office, handing me a check and telling me to have a nice day.  They let me know on the 17th that they were letting me go, and that they wanted me to be a consultant again.  This was NOT gonna happen.  It MIGHT have happened if they had said something back in July or August when they started things rolling, but not with 14 days notice.  So now I am looking and hoping to find a good head-hunter that will help me get a resume together and what not.  It has been almost 16 years since I had to actually go LOOK for work, so this is an odd thing to me.

Now on to running, because that is what we do here, right, run?  So a couple of weeks ago, I pounded out a nice 14 mile long run, and felt great.  Then I did a couple of 6 milers.  One of those I was running kinda hard at the end, and I had been dealing with a little bit of mud and water and at one point I did something to my right foot.  It hurt.  It wasn't ankle pain, at least not like the Achilles tendinitis I had in July.  This was more like the middle of my foot, just a bit behind the pinkie toe.  I gave it a couple of weeks off with icing and rest I would see how it felt.  A little over a week ago, I went out for a shake-down 4 miler and it felt OK.  A couple of days later I went out again for a 4 and when I was stretching my quads, and holing my right foot, it POPPED.  Kinda like popping a knuckle, but louder, and it *hurt*.  It hurt for about 20 minutes, then it felt lots better.  Weird, even for me.

Then, there was a Loop competition that shades and spirits were not allowed to join, but I liked the idea anyway, run every day and if you don't post a picture of yourself.  I haven't been running everyday, but I have been out a lot more of late, and that is a good thing.  I got in a 7-miler that about kicked my butt this last Sunday.  I have done two back to back 5's and I might get out today for an easy 3 or 4.  My goal is to get as close to 20 miles as I can in the next 7 weeks and not kill myself or my feet/legs and then take a REALLY easy shot at the marathon in Vernonia in April.  My "goal" is to finish under my own power.  If that takes 4 hours, fine, if it takes 4:30, also fine.  I know JGF said she would cheer me on at the end, but that would be ridiculous for her to wait that long for me to finish since she is running the Pikermi and will have been done for over 2 hours at that point.

I am looking forward to the Shamrock 15K in less than one month, that will be an interesting morning with 31000 people running in the different races.  That should be a wild weekend.  I will try to not be too much of a recluse for the next few weeks and get things going towards the 15K and the marathon.  Have a good rest of your weeks.

Cheers