I did a little last-minute switching around of a couple of runs this week, based on when I had clients scheduled.  I noticed I had a whole lot more free time this morning than I will tomorrow, and I put my longer run today.

I have to say, when I see that I have an “easy” run coming up, I look forward to it more than I do to my speed-driven runs.  It seems I have myself convinced that if I can just lolligag at whatever speed I like, then it won’t be hard.

I planned an interesting little route for myself today and I set out on my easy run.  About 2 or 2 1/2 miles into it, I was starting to realize how many “eight” is.  I was not even at one 5k yet, and I’d have at least another whole 5k to do after that, but I was not running ‘fast’ like you do for 5k’s, so, like how long is this gonna take me?

Turns out, it should take about an hour and a half.  Oh boy, that’s ridiculous!  Who wants to run for an hour and a half?!

I made one of the turns on my route and realized I was about 1/3 of the way completed with my run, which sounded good, until that thought was followed by the thought that the whole run minus 1/3 still equals TWO THIRDS.

I just sorta kept on trudging along at a pace that really wasn’t very fast, but I did notice that I was staying on track with my Marathon playlist, so I realized I can really run the whole marathon at a fairly liesurely pace and still finish in my 4:59 goal time.

I was starting to think that I should be almost done, but I was only at about 4 1/2 miles.  Man, this is gonna be a long morning!

Five miles eventually came, and so did 5 1/2, but now the miles were starting to come along very slowly.  Luckily, I did plan my Marathon playlist carefully and some faster songs came on after that and got me more motivated to get to about 6 1/2 miles, but at 6 1/2 miles, I still had almost two to go.  When will this be over?!?!

I had a couple of moments of sadness about my dad, but those pangs are getting much shorter in duration and somewhat lower in intensity.  As Marathon Day approaches, so does the 1-year anniversary of my father’s death.  I find my grieving brain thinking the craziest things, like somehow running this marathon would mean that he won’t be dead anymore, or my running the marathon, I somehow get to take him with me, or this is what I’ve done with this year, to grieve, and on Marathon Day, my grieving is somehow magically over…

If I was not a counselor and if I didn’t know how normal these ‘crazy’ grieving thoughts are, I would seriously worry that I was losing my flippin’ mind.  I really feel for the people who grieve and have no idea of how grieving is ‘supposed to’ go.  They must think they’re going crazy.  In any event, I think this whole experience will make me a better counselor, although I still would have preferred to be a less good counselor who has a dad.