Tomorrow I will run a very long way

Tomorrow I am running the Forest Park 50k. I have never run 50k before. I am excited and anxious. I have trained hard for this race. Even though it feels like I have been tapering since March I have run 2 marathons and many other runs and trips to the gym between now and then. The goal was to get to this point uninjured. I have arrived. Other than an ache in my R arch I don't have any real pain on running these days. I am shocked to have made it this far.

Tomorrow's run is a big deal to me. This will be the hardest thing I have ever done. I have guaranteed myself that it will hurt but I have worked very hard at making peace with that. I am expecting the first 2 hours to be fun, the middle 4 hours to be the sucky hours of intermittent walls and aches and pains followed by the last 2 hours which will just be a blurr. I am as mentally ready as I will ever be. Now I just need to get my shit together. I need to pack my backpack, change the sheets on my bed, try to put some tunes on my ipod in case it gets super hard and I need a distraction, clean the bathroom, wash my running skirt and coordinate with the folks who are running legs with me. It may not sound like much but it feels like a lot.

After writing yesterday's post I felt a little better about the whole thing but still pretty confused. I feel like my life has all of these layers. There are the layers of work, layers of running, layers of traveler, layers of fancy free young woman and layers of the woman I really want to become. I don't know how to manage all of those things. What do you do when your layers seem to contradict one another or at least don't seem fully compatible? How do you reconcile the layers? I don't know yet. I know that I am going to take the example of some of my girlfriends and just take it one day at a time and one goal at a time. Today my goal is to get ready to run the best, hardest run of my life tomorrow. Tomorrow my goal will be to stay positive, and to not die. Maybe tomorrow night my goal will be to drink an entire Burgerville fresh strawberry milkshake....mmmm that sounds wonderful already. Next week my goals will include learning how to stay even keeled now that we have officially put an end to the era of condoms and sponges. It isn't going to happen right away and that is for the best. I would be very happy if it happened in 5-6 months but looking at my cycle and our work schedule it may indeed, be like shooting a cannon through a bathroom window. Days on for us will soon mean we don't even have the 10 mins together a day we have now. I will be 0400-1600 and he is 1730-0530 but has to leave at 1630 to get to work and doesn't get home until around 0630. So, yeah...no sex then. And that is fine. I am happy to just let it go knowing that we are not holding out for a year down the road accumulating expectations and hopes for the next 12 months. It is no Venus Demilo but maybe it is my shell on the foam after all. It is the difference between "Trying" and "no longer trying to avoid it". It feels like there is more space here.

So, tomorrow I have lots to think about out there on the trail. There will be no shortage of mental entertainment. I think this run is an analogy for so many things I am about to do. I am just grateful to have the chance to get out there and experience my mind this way and my body this way. I will let you know what I come out with on the other side and how the milkshake tasted.