2013 was an interesting year.  B and I settled into domestic bliss/warfare and the emotional eating that accompanies that!  Hello, 20 extra pounds!  Any woman over 40 knows the havoc that our hormones wreak upon our metabolism, so it is much harder to lose unwanted pounds!  I had fallen off my IsaWagon and into B’s pizza, burger, and Chinese food diet.  Running was sporadic, but we still had that taste of euphoria lingering after MCM 10K and 5k the year prior.  So, here we are fat and happy and decide to commit to some more races.  I had heard that if you run the MCM 17.75K, you can earn access to the Marathon upon completion of that race!  So I told B to register us.

Well, my husband has many skills but listening is not one of them.  LOL.  He ended up signing us up for the MCM Historic Half in Fredericksburg!  OMG.  After that little skirmish, I got over it and I go about half-assing a “training” plan.  This time, I was going to get disciplined and stop eating out at New Big Wong (best Hong Kong style noodle soup ever). I think I ended up running 5 or 6 times.

I figured I had run 13.1 miles once before, I could do it again.  Hospital Hill was brutal.  Our finishing time was even more brutal.  LOL.  So here we are with our medals, paralyzed in a sitting position on the curb drinking cheap beer and stuffing our faces with pretzels and with false bravado, we discuss the upcoming 26.2.  Although, at mile 11, I thought to myself, “There is no way in f@cking hell that I could run a marathon!  That’s like twice this sh*t!”  Hahahaha.   #runnermathskills

There was a bunch of drama getting into the MCM 26.2 this year…details I won’t bore you with…long story short, B was in and I got a slot with the Semper Fi Fund.  Our training plan was more aptly called, “What Training Plan?”  Ahh, the ignorance, the unintentional disrespect of distance runners.  Makes me cringe a little now.

Enter, the Epic Cruise with B’s family, celebrating my soon-to-be mother-in-law’s 70th birthday.  A 10 day jaunt through Barcelona, Rome, Firenze, Amalfi Coast, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Mallorca.  Riiiiight.  I think we ran twice on treadmills while on the cruise.  This was 3 weeks out from THE BIG SHOW!   We get back from Europe looking like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Dude, still delusional as we go pick up our packets while B is practically coughing up a lung.  He had come down with bronchitis after all the travel.  Needless to say….DNS #2.  Depression and self-loathing settled in pretty well that day.

Self-loathing can be a good thing.  This repetitive crap of not showing up made me see some bigger problems in my life.  Simply put, I vowed to SHOW UP IF I SAID I WAS GOING TO SHOW UP. #breakthrough