Marathons suck.

...again, written yesterday and not posted until today...so actually two weeks from now I'll be home from school, limping around, sporting my Boston shirt...anyway, I plan to blog lots between now and April 16th...let the two week countdown begin! Oh, and btw - I let Mike title the blog...this next will be his 6th Boston and 13th marathon and he's feeling a bit cranky toward the distance:)

Boston is two weeks from today. Actually, two weeks from this very moment I should be (assuming all goes according to plan) headed home, all cramped up in the car becoming increasingly stiffer and sorer by the minute. Ah yes, nothing screams "reward" for those months of hard work and dedication quite like the inability to sit on a toilet seat, inability to pull on your own pant leg, six hour drive home, throbbing headache, loss of appetite, and intestinal distress that so often accompany the finish of a marathon. Congratulations, here's a medal and a little silver blanket, your family should be somewhere about a mile that way sweetie, now you go on and find 'em.

It's funny why we do what we do. During our last Boston long run yesterday morning, Chuck and Emily and I were composing a pre-marathon motivational speech. All we could come up with was "what the hell is wrong with you all", "welcome all of you who have also obviously lost it", "warning, this is going to suck a lot", as well as a few tips on controlling your bodily functions. Three runners with nearly 30 marathons combined completed and this is all the motivation we have to offer. And yet, there we were, pounding out one last 24 miler before our next marathon adventure.

It's that punch drunk long run conversation, and so many others like it, that make up a huge part of the reward - the why in doing it. Boston won't actually happen for another two weeks, but I've already reaped the vast majority of the rewards. The long runs, the post run coffee, the french toast and waffles, the bonding, the joking, the lost socks, the angry Sunday morning drivers encountered and then giggled about. No matter how many times it's done, the feeling of accomplishment after running 20 miles or more on a weekend morning never becomes any less satisfying, and there's no better sound than the clomp clomping of numerous sets of feet all setting out on a long run together.

And so, in some small way, the big to-do has already passed. The long runs are banked, the last post run breakfast was shared, and all that's left is tapering, overpriced adidas garb, large crowds, and THE 26.2. Don't get me wrong - what's left of the experience is enjoyable. There will still be bonding, still be group meals, still be more to giggle about, and no other long run offers the screaming tunnel of love at mile 12 like the girls of Wellesley College in Boston does. It's exciting, but I've come to realize that it's not the prize, and definitely not the point. The prize is being able to come home to start the whole process over again, and knowing great and crazy people to share the process with.

Like a two wheeled Subaru

Mike's laying on the couch across the room from me lamenting loudly that his pictures from the weekend have yet to be blogged. I've been engrossed in a project for a crochet class my mom and I are taking (a baby cardigan - it's so cute and I'm elated that I've read the pattern and created it *almost* all by myself), but after having to tear out a bazillion rows because I missed a "chain 2" an hour ago, I'm frustrated enough with crafting for the night that Mike wins.

Unlike my cute pink 18 mo cardigan, my Specialized tricross comp bike has yet to be aggravating since we brought it home one week and two days ago. If it is possible for a bike to serve as chiropractor, marriage counselor, and mood enhancing drug, this is the one.

With the natural gas boom in our podunk county, the main roads, which were already far from ideal for bike riding, have become entrenched in large truck traffic. Stone truck after stone truck after water truck after water truck after large equipment trailer. There are days that traveling the roads by car is unsettling, much less trying to run or bike.

Lucky we are though to be surrounded by rural dirt roads. SURROUNDED. Mike has spent the unseasonably warm and snowless winter touring the back roads on his tricross bike. He pulls out of the driveway and comes back hours later covered and mud and grinning ear to ear. When I run after dark, he escorts me with his bright helmet light. He rides up the dirt roads to family dinners at my mom's house. He rides all the places around here ideal for riding - all the places the gas traffic and the tri and road bikes can't go.

Chenango Cycles in Binghamton had the exact same bike Mike bought two years ago, only in my size and on phenomenal sale. Being a 2010 model they no doubt really wanted to get rid of it. I've been eyeing it for a couple of months. Last Saturday after the St. Pat's 4 miler, we pulled the trigger and brought it home.

I've never enjoyed riding a bicycle so much, and never felt so comfortable on a bike. We're on grit and gravel and stone and mud and climbing and descending and climbing and climbing, but riding this bike is like driving a Subaru with two wheels - no matter what the condition of the road under your wheels, you're safe and it won't let you down.

Four hours on the bike Saturday morning loosened up the nagging pain in my right leg from a pestery bulging disc that acts up when my mileage goes up, and my run later that day felt the best any had all week. Those four hours were also the first Mike and I were ever able to be on bikes together and not argue - we have a strained road biking history to the extent that we refer to tandem road bikes as divorces with wheels. Not only did we not argue, we got along famously, even after I had a minor meltdown regarding large rocks the gas company has spread over a few miles of Warren Center back roads and an incident with a German shepherd. If you don't know, I'm terrified of dogs. There were tears. But the stones and dog were nothing fig newtons at the LeRaysville Dandy couldn't fix, and I pulled back into our driveway happier than I've ever been after a bike ride.

We went out for another ride Sunday afternoon after our long run, and tonight I got my first chance to escort Mike on his run in the dark and drizzle. Mike did all of the picture taking this weekend, so I apologize in advance that this is a bit of a photo collage of myself - but if you look past the cyclist in the pictures, you'll see some of the beautiful places we're able to ride...in tshirts in March no less!

Swimmer? Okay, maybe not. But closer.

I wrote this Wednesday night and never posted. Update: in last night's swim I was able swim further without breaks in my new swim "style". That said, old habits die hard, and I feel like all I do while swimming is think...I think about my arms and my hips go back to their sway, I think about my hips and stroke is sloppy again. I wish it were more natural for me, but I'm working at it slow and steady, and I suppose that given my swimming status I should just feel grateful that I haven't required lifeguard assistance yet! Next post will be up soon - we've adopted another two wheeled family member, and spent four hours touring the back roads of our gas infested stomping ground together today. It was almost a complete win.

When I say I "learned to swim" this past July, I really mean that I attempted and succeeded putting my face in the water, breathing to the side, swinging my arms and kicking my legs. I have since called it swimming.

It gets me from one end of a pool to the other over and over and over, and it got me through (heavily wetsuit aided) the Syracuse 70.3. It just gets me these places very slowly. Swim workout after swim workout, I go to what I know...face in the water, breathe to the side, swing my arms, and kick my legs. And move painfully slowly.

Now I know I'm biased here, but Mike's middle name may as well be Phelps. He's a swimmer extraordinaire. Or at least was "back in the day" and is still very good. He's been patiently giving me little swimming tips whenever we swim together. I felt as though as I was a lost cause though when last Saturday's only "tip" was "I think you just have very little upper body strength". And I had become resigned to calling anything under the two hour and twenty minute cut off time in the ironman a win for the day.

Tonight in the Elk Lake pool, Mike's faith in me must have been renewed, and he started offering all kinds of advice. Advice on stroke. I'd work on it for 100. Advice on kicking. Work on it. And then he did something magical - he mocked me. He swam for me the way he sees me swim. I look ridiculous. I asked if I REALLY moved my hips that much, and he said yes, and so I asked why he never told me to stop, and he assured me that he's told me plenty of times, but that he assumed I just couldn't stop because I hadn't.

So I stopped. No more thrashing my hips about. I swam the next 25 yards in literally 1/3 of the time I have ever swam the length of a pool before. Keeping everything straight and long, I swam another and another and another. And Mike said "I can't believe it...you look like a swimmer." I could've cried.

Now mind you - I still suck. A lot. Swimming that way was hard work. I had to rest between every 50. And I have a lot of work I need to commit to doing just to successfully get through the swim at Lake Placid regardless of time. But for today, my Mike Phelps called me a "swimmer".