i am a badass

Yes, yes I am!  Last night I ran five miles in the snow and wind.  Uphill.  All the way (almost).  Srsly, I am kick-ass.  And it wasn't just a little snow.  I had to wipe it off my eyes so I could see where I was going, and brush it off my jacket.  Like, multiple times.

We are expecting another 2-4 inches tomorrow, just in time for my scheduled 12 mile run.  I'm going to be running with a group.  I don't know how that'll go.We'll see.  If nothing else I can put my headphones on and just pretend I'm by myself.  The good thing is that the course is marked (at least, it will be under the snow) and they provide water and candy (!) along the way. 

Everything else with the running seems to be going ok.  I bought this thing called a foam roller, which basically looks like a 4 foot tall blue tampon (mine's 2 feet long and orange, but still an odd thing).  Here's a picture, courtesy of Dick's Sporting Goods' website:

Basically you but your body on it and apply the pressure of your body weight.  Then you roll back and forth on the floor.  I use it on my calves, my butt, my hamstrings, my IT band on my hip.  Usually after my run I do an exploratory roll to see what hurting, then spend some time concentrating on that area.  It's a hurt so good kind of thing.  I can feel myself tightening up if I don't use it.  It really makes a difference.  Highly recommend.

So I've got one more week (after this weekend) in the first phase of my training.  After that, I'll be headed into the land of Runs Longer than Ever Before.  Fourteen miles, twelve, sixteen, fourteen, eighteen, ten (so easy!), twenty.  This will be the hardest part of the training, I think.  Part of what makes it so hard is the increase in miles during the week as well.  Increasing from 6 miles to 8 on Tuesdays, and 6 or 7 miles on Thursday.  It's just a lot to get in after work. 

I have found my eating to be out of control lately.  I just can't stop myself from eating crap--mostly straight up sugar.  Maybe it's my body's way of trying to recoup it's glycogen, or my minds way of saying "Hey, you're doing all this exercise!  We need some reward!"  But whatever it is, my weight seems to be holding steady despite inhaling anything sweet I find that isn't fuzzed over with lint or gone stale.  But while I haven't gained weight, I do feel a little squidgier around the middle bit.  So I'm going to have to work on pulling back the reins.  It would also be nice to weigh a bit less by race time.  According to this article, you gain a 1% improvement for every 1% of weight you lose.  It makes sense, but given my inability to stop my fingers from finding the M&M bowl, it's a lofty goal at this point.

I promised myself I wasn't going to try and lose any weight while I was training for the marathon, but I would love to speed up a bit, and I've been reading all this stuff about fructose, how it converts to fat, and where that fat hangs out (guess where--squidgy middle!).  I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I'm trying to figure it out.  Any tips or thoughts are greatly appreciated.

I almost forgot one other thing.  I had a dream the other night that I was at the starting line, and I was loose, excited, ready to go.  The only thing that was stressing me out was worrying that I would run out of music during the marathon.  I'm planning/hoping to run it in about 5 hours 30 minutes.  That's a long playlist to put together.  So here's my call to all y'all.  What's your favorite up beat go-to workout/running music?  I'll post my playlist of 100 or so songs soon, and we can compare notes!