The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

"The measure of anyone's freedom is what he can do without.”

- L.M. Montgomery

THE UGLY

Let's start with the tragedy of the week. Ugly would describe my mood Saturday night when I realized that any hope of finding my Garmin was gone. I lost it after my Friday long run sometime between changing in the park restroom and putting my stuff into the car. I took it off because the battery was dead.  Somehow, everything else made it home, except for my most expensive piece of training gear. I didn't notice that it was missing until bedtime when I went to charge it. After a quick look around the house and car, I went to bed upset but hopeful it would turn up the next day with a more thorough search.  

Security blanket?

I spent the next day checking at the park and turning the house and car upside down, all to no avail. By the time evening rolled around, I was depressed and angry with myself for not keeping better track of it. It wasn't until I went to church Sunday morning that I got my thoughts and attitude adjusted and came to terms with the loss. Worshiping God does that for me and helps to put these kinds of disappointments in perspective.

I'm now back to using my intuition to train, rather than looking at a constant stream of data.  On the Myers-Briggs spectrum, I'm a sensing person, not an intuitive one, and having real-time feedback was something I loved.  But as noted previously, I seem to embrace the suck while running but adapting to life's curveballs is something I'm still working on in my non-running life. 

THE BAD

I'm still contending with this damn crud I've had for two weeks now. I'm sure running Salida didn't help since we know the immune system is suppressed after a marathon. I took a few days off and ran some 5 - 13 mile runs later in the week, keeping the pace easy to moderate since I wasn't feeling 100% yet.  Maybe that 3 hour run at Cheyenne Mtn State Park and 3 miles up the Barr Trail set me back more than I realized.

NORAD's in there somewhere

I'm going to try and take the next several days off to kick this thing for good. I'm need to get my legs ready for the 40 miler I have coming up next month.  

THE GOOD

My baby girl turned three today and we celebrated her with a party this weekend. I love her to pieces. She fills our lives with so much joy:

She's my little mountain lover -- shouts "mountains!" when she sees them and tells me that she is gonna run in them with me. That's my girl!

And shout out to my pal Meghan, who won the 3 Days of Syllamo stage race this weekend -- 95 miles over three days and 80 of them wearing her MdS pack. Way to go, Boss Lady!

We'll end with more good stuff. Thanks to John Standridge for showing me this amazing performance from the 2004 Hall of Fame inductions. Petty's vocals are perfectly suited for the cover and Prince's guitar solo is sublime. Reminded me of how much I loved his 2007 Superbowl halftime show. Time to turn on the Traveling Wilburys methinks...

Happy Trails,

Shelby