Okay, technically tomorrow is the last training run then next will be the last Race Blog of 2009.  Then I'm respecting rest.  Honoring rest.  Making a false idol of rest.  Putting rest on a pedestal. 

Not resting.  Just not running. 

I love this quote and it sums up training for this race.  "The mind remembers, 'This is really hard' and does everything it can to avoid it in the future by turning the word hard into impossible."  It took all my mental faculties to make 20 not seem impossible.  In fact, if I can, I'm turning the pace indicator off of my Garmin off so I see only overall time (for walk/run breaks) and completed distance.  The pace depresses me, just a constant reminder of where I was just 4 months ago and how I'm not there today.  So what to do?  Get rid of it.  Forget it.  Let it go.  And it's okay.  I'll finish in my own time and in this as-is body, brain.

Some people compare running a marathon to giving birth.  If that's true, then my dad will drop me off at the hospital/starting line, tell me "Oh, you probably won't give birth until after we get back from church", I'll watch "Better Off Dead", puke for 14 hours and watch my family eat take out TGI Fridays while telling me they hope I'm done before the Superbowl starts.  Oh, and there would be an offer of body numbing drugs.  This time, I'd probably take them.

Tomorrow is also the first group run starting in my new neighborhood!  Joining me is my swimming buddy who finished Chicago a few weeks ago, a newbie runner from Russia who just graduated and my two mates joining me in San Antonio.  Flat flat flat and more flat.  The morning weather will be cooler than Texas race day by at least 15-20 degrees so I guess the way to adapt to that is to bitch about it a lot.  Yeah.  That's it. 

The new house has plenty of room for stretching.  I'll lead a quickie 6 yoga pose session and stretching.  Afterwards, I'll be hostessing an after 8 miler coffee, juice and expert donut-box-breaking-into. 

I officially tendered my current gym membership resignation on Monday.  I'll be over 25 minutes away from it now.  To give them credit, the place was always clean, the trainers, staff and owner always treated me nicely and they wanted to take pictures of me last year to put on their webpage as a "Success and Determination" story since I lost all that weight last year after joining and trained for my first and second half-marathons there.  I'll miss them all.  If they open a club close by, I said I'll be the first to join - they almost did but the location fell through last winter.

Where I swim, there's a full gym and a .75 mile outdoor circle I could run.  It's just 3 minutes from work.  I've said hello to fellow exercisers there but no bonding, no story swapping.  It's just a place to exercise right now. 

However, my silly little ray of sunshine unnerving ball of positivity talked with one of the lifeguards who used to ride my TARC bus to work a few years ago.  He was an IT guy laid off last year and now he works full-time at the pool.  It's a fun job but . . . you can guess the salary restraints.  Still, he said he's 100 times happier than working for Big Evil HMO and hopefully being poorer makes his kids chances at getting financial aid for college better since scholarships are more competitive.  He's a big reader so we're gonna swap books soon.  He has a really neat sewing machine and in his spare time, he designs patches.  Cool hobby! 

There's always hope, even at the end of a trying week.