Oh, what a week it has been...

Oh, Friday, I have anticipated your arrival for four long days. Scratch that, three long days, and you could not have shown up any sooner.

To my lovely frequent readers, I have to apologize. I know that I've already fallen behind on my whole New Year's Goals thing with blogging, but I really don't have it in me to write a bunch of post-dated blogs, so I'm just going to roll with it and start fresh today!

Since it's been over a week since I last posted (other than my Dr. King post-- thank you for the sweet comments!), I'm going to go with the bullet format and bring everyone up to speed.


THE STOMACH BUG
This past weekend, I did a dance with the stomach bug that's been making the rounds (and I mean seriously making the rounds. People from Arkansas to Georgia to Texas are fighting this thing). Without going into detail, it was the worst 24 hours of my life. Friday I was great all day and then started feeling not so hot after work. I hadn't eaten much so i figured a good meal would help-- we ate supper and I figured I was fine. Saturday morning we woke up and headed to Brian's aunt and uncle's condo in upstate New Hampshire for the night, along with his two cousins, one of their girlfriends, a best friend, and the girlfriend's five college roommates. Yes, a grand total of 11 people in a two bedroom condo with ONE BATHROOM. There were beverages and snacks and such, although I'd started to feel bad again and only had two or three drinks, had completely stopped by 11pm, and headed to bed by 12.

Around 12:30 I woke up to the sound of yelling-- this is never a good sign. It turns out that someone had used too much toilet paper in the one toilet in the place. There was no plunger. About this time, I started to feel 10 times worse and panicked. After Googling "how to unclog a toilet without a plunger" (for your own future reference, NOTHING works), everyone went to bed. I thought that I would be fine and just take deep breaths and leave first thing in the morning, my virus had other plans. After FIVE trips outside in the knee-deep snow, I woke up Brian and told him we had to leave right that moment. I must have sounded beyond serious, because he stumbled out of bed in a haze, we loaded into the snow-covered Jeep, and I drove the hour and a half back to the condo. Worst. Night. Of. My. Life.

In good news, I'm feeling much better and think it was only this 24 hour bug going around, but regardless-- I thought I was dying.

THE RUNNING
I started training for my half marathon this week. It is terrifying and daunting and overwhelming and... yes, that's pretty much it. This was not my week of "OMG it feels A-MA-ZING to be running and training for such a big goal!" Nah, it was much more like "You've gotta be kidding me, you blankity-blank Dreadmill-- I have NOT only run 1.42 miles, my body is telling me I have for sure been running for three hours."

Yes, that has been my inner battle this week. Notice that I said inner-- it's a complete mental thing. My body feels like it could run for hours, but as soon as I start to think too much about my distance or a pain in my leg, etc., I want to quit because it's hard, y'all. When I hit that point, I've just made myself repeatedly think "If running were easy, more people would be doing it" and it works. Usually.

My challenge has really been that I finally looked up the course for my Zooma Half Marathon in April and it is ALL HILLS. I don't know how I missed this major detail, considering it's running through the HILL COUNTRY outside of Austin, TX, but I did. Tragic, my friends. I emailed my old trainer, who is a hardcore, avid runner, and told her that I'm pretty stressed, hoping that she would fill me with words of encouragement. Nope. Girlfriend basically told me that hills suck and that I'd better start working in inclines on my treadmill runs now (*cue nervous laughter from the girl who never runs for long distances at any incline. At all. Not even 1.0*). Add one more challenge to my already challenging runs. Ah well, as I said-- if running were easy, more people would do it, right?

If you're a runner, do you have any tips on how to work incline training into your routine? Any help is welcome!!

THE WEIGHT LOSS
I gained 4.8lbs last week, which was a majority of water weight and has been eliminated this week (TMI? My apologies.) I learned the hard way that eating Chinese food the night before your weigh-in does not a good weigh-in number make. And that's all I have to say about that.

MISC. TID BITS

• I made Brian Kraft Mac & Cheese to eat with his leftover Trader Joe's Orange Chicken last night (we're classy like that). I had two bites and it was wonderful. Okay, four bites. And two tiny squares of dark chocolate. After this and a mug of TJ's Creamy Tomato Soup (my heaven in a cup), my day was complete.
• It is snowing. Again. The loveliness is starting to wear off a bit.
• I have two windows open in my browser right now: The Best of Boston's Comfort Food and an article from Women's Health about the Healthiest Foods in the World. Ah, the struggle of my life.

That's about all that I can think to ramble on about for the time being. I hope y'all have a fabulous Friday and and a wonderful weekend!

'Til later, my lovelies.

***I'm also working on a couple of older posts, even though I said I wasn't going to,
so scroll back a couple of days if you're interested!***