Slightly Obsessed

I am sitting on a pile of sheer wonderment. In mere moments, I could be rich. My world may be about to change altogether. What prompts this bout of optimism? Albertson's Monopoly.

My local grocery chain is currently having a game promotion. They have done this in year's past and I have generally ignored it. I suppose that something about the economy and something about having no idea what I am doing with my life is prompting me to search for the "light at the end of the tunnel" and Albertson's Monopoly appears to provide an appropriate diversion.

The game started about a month ago. You get Monopoly game pieces for certain products you buy and then certain combinations of game pieces mean you win prizes. What I would now describe as an obsession started out as slight interest. When I did my normal grocery shopping, I would get a game piece or two and check to see if they matched my board. Somewhere along the way, I started altering my shopping so that I would buy brands that had game pieces instead of brands that didn't. Of late, I just buy things that have game pieces and refuse to buy anything that doesn't have a game piece. (P.S. We don't eat a lot of vegetables these days since those aren't included.) I have gone so far as to search the web for fellow addicts who might be willing to trade game pieces. Most of those sites are "mom blogs" and I do see that as a childless, well-employed, non-minivan driving person, I don't fit in with the normal "Grocery Gamer."

Today, I bought the following:

24 Powerades

9 Coca-cola 2 Liters

6 Hershey's Candy Bars

2 CPK Frozen Pizzas

3 Boxes of Cheezits

All in all, I walked away with 50 game pieces today. I will spend the next hour opening each piece and hoping I am a winner. The game ends at the end of March and I know that I am running out of time. At least if I don't win tonight, I can keep the faith alive due to the 40 individual Cruise Sweepstakes entries I sent in during the course of the game.

Tonight I told my husband that maybe we should go back and get more powerade tonight. Mind you, we have about 50 total in the house right now and before I started playing the game, I hadn't had a powerade in years. He looked at me with slight fear in his eyes and I said, "If I don't win something, I am going to totally freak out." He said, "More than you are freaking out right now?" He seems to think that my actions aren't "normal".

My greatest fear, besides not winning at all, is that I will win the $2 prize. I have bought about $75 in powerade since the game started and $2 seems like a "Bernie Madoff type return" on my investment. Daniel just asked me what I wanted for dinner. How does powerade, a candy bar and some cheezits sound? That's all that's in the house.

Oh, that's right...I don't like running!

I've discovered something about running over the last week, it sucks. I know that sounds a little negative and certainly it's not the best conclusion since I am still training to run a marathon in September. I am sure things will start looking up again, but the last week of running has been B-R-U-T-A-L, brutal! Last Sunday I ran a 10-K. While I was glad to finish my first 10-K, I ran pretty slowly since the course was crazy hilly. We have been training on mostly flat land and I wasn't prepared for all uphill/downhill, all the time.

Since I didn't do that well on Sunday, I thought that this week's training runs would be good. Well, I "ran" 4 miles on Wednesday and had to walk most of it since my calves/shins were screaming after mile 1. This weekend I was supposed to run 7.5 miles, but it was pretty clear that this wasn't going to happen without medical intervention and/or being carried on someone's back the last few miles. So, I ran 5 miles instead and am amazed that I continue to get slower with each run, even though I am not running longer distances. We're headed to Phoenix on Wednesday, so I will be doing two of my runs in sunny (hot) Arizona and that should be interesting.

In an effort to focus on the positive, I ran/walked 5 miles today instead of sitting on the couch. I am at 9 miles for this past week and 23.2 miles in the last two weeks. I have run 79.2 miles since we started straining in January, despite having sat out for four weeks due to illness and a knee injury. That's more miles than I have run in my life prior to our 1/1/09 state date. I may not be progressing as fast as I would like, but I am still pretty amazed when I look at the mileage. Within the next two weeks, I will reach the 100 mile mark of training. That's pretty awesome for me...

P.S. As I type this, it dawns on me that my dad (clearly not 100% sane) ran 100 miles in just over 24 hours during an endurance run several years ago (see www.ws100.com).

Daylight Saving Time...Friend or Foe?

I grew up in Arizona. For 22 of my 30 years, or 73% for you math majors, I avoided the madness of switching my clocks twice a year. That leaves me nearly unable to adjust my life to daylight saving time or remember when I lose an hour vs. gain one. I am told by my mother that I lost time this week. Since I am up and blogging after midnight, despite having to wake up at six tomorrow morning, that seems about right. Apparently my body is still tuned to the sun and expects to stay awake for a certain number of hours after it sets. As such, I would say I didn't lose one hour, but at least three over the last few nights. By the way, heart attacks spike shortly after the switch to DST.

That said, I got home from work tonight at 7:15 and was able to still get in about 15 minutes of my run before it was dark. In that way, I guess DST is a friend as we train for the marathon (it's so daunting today that I feel like it should be The Marathon, the capitalization expressing how large it looms.) I have been really sick and/or working about 60 hours a week for the last couple weeks. That combo meant that my last run was 5.5 miles over two weeks ago. That would seem like a problem, except we have a 10K (6.2 miles) this weekend and half marathon (13.1 miles) in a little over a month.

Tonight I ran an easy 2.5 miles to ease back in. It wasn't great and wasn't terrible. I think I will be able to make it through this weekend's 10K, but we'll see if my body is a little shocked after a few weeks of inactivity. All in all though, training is going good. D. is kicking my butt, but it's easier for boys...