Running Crazy

Hey peeps! What’s up? How’s life?

Life for me is good. It’s been a while since I’ve written…I just haven’t felt like I’ve had anything to contribute lately so I’ve been silent. This week at work I’m actually going to be busy…it’ll be the first month where I’m running my estimates and publishing my results. I also have a conference this week (Sidenote: it is sooo wonderful to work for an organization that truly values me as an employee/economist and is willing to pay for me to attend conferences where I can learn…compared to my previous employer which did not pay for conference registrations for research analysts.) (Sidenote #2: It’s also fantastic that I’m not planning this conference!!! Which felt like all I did at my old job.)

Anyways, I’m very excited to actually be running my estimates. I’m fully aware that to some people I’m a dork for being excited about estimating GDP. But I don’t care…I embrace my inner dork.

Enough about work, training is going well. This weekend I did an 11 miler and it felt great. Sure I was tired at the end and my legs were a little sore for the next couple of hours but I woke up on Sunday feeling great with no next day soreness. And I felt great when I was running. I’m going to be completely self-indulgent and pat myself on the back here…It was drizzling Saturday morning when I started my run. I had looked at the radar and it showed things clearing up in the next hour so I decided to head on out figuring that the first half would be a little drizzly and the second half would be clear.

I was 50% right…the first half was drizzly but the second half was pouring rain! I thought for half a second about jumping on the subway but instead I embraced my inner bad ass (wow, I have a lot of inner “me”s I’m embracing today) and kept running. My baseball cap was soaked with rain and sweat and water was dripping off the bill, my shirt was soaked and sticking to my arms, my socks and shoes were soaked and making that squishy sound on every step but I kept going! It also helped that I was wearing the most awesome North Face vest Stephen got me for my birthday…it was great in the winter because it kept me warm but it’s also great in the rain because it is completely waterproof so my core stayed dry. I also found a new nature park a few miles from where we live…I love finding locations when I’m running that I would never find otherwise!

My first race of 2009 (George Washington Parkway 10 Miler) is less than 2 weeks away and I’m excited!! Then I’ll have one weekend off, my first half marathon of 2009, two weekends off, and my second half. I don’t have any races planned after that (until the October marathon) but I’m looking for some others…I’ve been bit by the racing bug now!!

I think I may be running-crazy…Kate (a girl at work who I really like…we’re doing a book exchange and she’s a runner) brought me information today on this race. We both really really want to do it…I’m thinking if I still want to do it, I’ll sign up in mid-May. It’s a limited field of 5000 and it sounds so awesome!! (Okay, I know I’m running-crazy because I just said that running a half marathon on a Saturday and running a full marathon the very next day would be awesome.)