Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

This morning I overslept and my favorite pants weren't clean so I was late and I had to wear the black ones that gather lint. I hate being late.

At work I was scheduled to move to a new desk, close to the window, with one short wall and a glorious view of the outside world. They got my PC and phone moved and I had started unloading my boxes when someone showed up with a bunch of tools and informed me no one was allowed to have short walls anymore. I had to stand by and watch the glorious sunlight be slowly and surely obstructed from my seat. I hate dark cubicles.

Then I had to scrunch all my belongings to one corner while they disassembled my entire desk to put up the new walls, even though no one has been sitting there for weeks and they could have made the change long before all my things had been moved in. I had a lot of work to do and none of it got done because I spent most of the day without a desk or computer or phone. I hate wasting time.

When it was finally time for lunch, I was excited to eat a turkey sandwich with honey mustard. I love honey mustard. When I asked for it, the server told me there was no honey mustard today, only plain old mustard. I'm sure they never run out of plain, stinky mustard. I hate plain mustard.

Then I was late for a meeting, my pen ran out of ink, someone ate the last chocolate, and when they moved the shelf in my cubicle all my books fell on the floor.

I finally got my desk back, sat down, and saw that my phone extension had been changed. They changed it back but acted like I didn't know what I was talking about. I hate when people act like you don't know what you're talking about.

When I got home, the house was cold, I remembered I hadn't cooked chicken to make soup, and I had to eat lima beans for dinner. I hate lima beans.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. But I guess some days are like that. Even in Australia.

I did it!

On Saturday I ran the St. George Marathon. It was my first marathon, and I entered the race lottery mostly because I didn't think I'd get in this year. I wasn't really convinced a marathon was something I wanted to do. I love half marathons, but pushing your body 26.2 miles is a whole different level of crazy. I did get in (obviously) and I spent the first two months of training looking for an excuse not to run it. But after running the TOU half in August, I got my race motivation back. I spent the next month worrying that I wouldn't be able to run. (And naturally, because I'm a hypochondriac I found 900 things wrong with myself. I was sure I had a stress fracture when my calf hurt during one run and that I was getting swine flu when my allergies flared up one day.)

I expected a marathon to be hard, but it was even tougher than I expected. I'm kind of proud of that, because I know part of what made it so much more difficult than my past races or training runs was that I pushed myself. So much so that when it was over I didn't have anything left - I just planted myself on a random patch of lawn until I could walk again. But I made my goal of running the whole time - no walking - and I shattered my "reasonable" goal of a 4:15 time. I even broke my "ultimate" goal of 4 hours and finished in 3:53! It was physically painful some of the time and I had to play mental games to keep myself motivated, but I did it. There's such a sense of satisfaction that come from conquering truly tough stuff.

I've had a couple people ask me if I was disappointed in having missed qualifying for Boston by mere minutes (well, 13...that's kind of a lot to shave off, but anyway...). I'm totally not. First of all, 3:53 is way better than I ever expected to do and you bet I'm proud of myself. But second, if you qualified for the Boston Marathon, wouldn't you feel like you should run it? I'm glad I ran this one, but I'm definitely not planning to make a habit of it. Now if you're looking for a half-marathon buddy on the other hand...give me a few weeks and let me know :)