Christmas Recap, Getting Sick and the beginnings of a race recap

What a week!  Exhausting and I will be very glad to have things settle back to normal.

It started off with Christmas weekend.  You know, I'm just getting too old to do a crazy 4 day quick turnaround driving trip to LA by myself.  Especially on a holiday weekend when what is a normal 5.5 to 6 hour drive turns into a 7.5 plus hour drive. Both ways.  Hwy 5 from NoCal to SoCal just sucks and there's nothing redeeming about it at all. My poor girl got sick on the way down so we had 3 emergency pull overs for her to throw up and that is stressful for a few reasons too.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were nice -- the highlights:

1.  I got in a 6 mile run on Christmas Eve (in Manhattan Beach !! prompting me to come back and tell my daughter that next job offer I got in LA, I was taking and we were moving.  I took back that comment two days later when we were trying to get out of LA.  See, that's the problem with SoCal -- you can't go anywhere.  You are totally stuck where you are.)
2.  I got a slow leak in one of my tires on Saturday that was going to have to be fixed on  Monday before I headed back up the state.
3.  My hair caught fire at the candlelight church service.  (this is actually funny because I'm obviously fine -- but the service was over and for some reason, we didn't blow out our candles so when I turned to say something to my boy and his dad in the pew behind me, the next thing I hear is sizzle of my hair so I just closed my eyes and knew someone else was going to have to help and thank god, my ex husband saw it too and started swatting at me with the church bulletin (and yes, there are major jokes to be made from that!! and honestly it was funny.)  Major trauma was adverted and  he caught it so quick you can't even tell I was on fire!).

So Monday, after two days of Christmas time indulging and fun, I ran my little race, got my tire fixed and headed back up this blasted state.  We rolled in at 8pm after 7.5 hours of driving.  Luckily the girl managed not to throw up. The next day came too quickly and unfortunately I had to work.  That day was torture because I was so exhausted and then the week didn't get better no matter how much I slept. Then on  Thurs, Fri and Saturday mornings I woke up in pain -- achy pain all over my entire body.  So yesterday afternoon it FINALLY dawns on me that I'm getting sick (maybe it was that sore throat that finally showed up?  I do miss the subtle clues).

I started sucking down Vit C and echinacea which may be totally useless but it makes me feel better.  I wasn't horribly sick but wasn't 100% either.  But, it was New Year's Eve and I was just meeting a friend for an early dinner and a movie -- a nice low key evening so I decide to go ahead. Dinner was fine and the movie was fantastic (The Descendants) but so emotional that after we were done, we went and had another glass of wine. Well, she had one and for some reason I had two.  At 11pm.  When I'm sick and also have signed up for a 10k in the morning.  (I know.  It makes no sense at all).

But the movie really really required two glasses of wine to analyze it.

So then we head back to her house to watch the ball drop in Time Square with my daughter (who had been babysitting friend's daughters) and it wasn't until 1:30AM that I got to bed.

Apparently I was channeling my inner 25 year old.  But lord she really needs to grow up because my 47 year old self just can't keep up.

As expected, a terrible night sleep ensued:

1.  wine=no sleep guaranteed!
2.  wine = headache=repeatedly wondering why I do this to myself
3.  My son showed up at 5.30 in the morning and decided to play his guitar and sing.  At 5.30.  AM.  In my house.  And wake me up.  He assures me that I grossly exaggerated the volumn when I asked him to stop singing at the top of his lungs (and lets be clear, there was no asking at all -- I went storming out to the family room and  said  yelled "what in the hell are you doing singing at the top of your lungs at 5:30 in the morning??????!!!!! yeah, one of my finer mom moments.  But really?

Anyway (and if anyone is still with me on this rambling all inclusive post, I'm impressed) I still had a couple of hours before I had to get up because of the 9:30 race start but there was no sleeping now.  I spent the next three hours trying to decide if my sore throat and lack of sleep warranted a DNS.  During this I got dressed, ate, nuun'd, and generally made it seem like I was going to go.  I finally decided I'd go run the race and come home and go immediately back to bed.  I was being superstitious that if I blew off a race on the first day of the year, it would set the tone for the rest of the year.

Yeah, I'm silly.

Half way to the race I realize I'd forgotten my inhaler -- this is bad.  It was cool this morning and I was a bit stuffy headed -- two things that will trigger the exercise asthma.  But I didn't have time to go back so I realized there was a great chance I'd stop breathing during the race which seemed kind of apropos to the night/morning.  But I kept on driving and told myself to just try and not race it -- just treat it as a nice run.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA - Even my totally out of it self knew that was a big fat joke.  But a girls gotta try.

It was a lovely race -- and in an effort not to go on for too much longer, I'll do the race recap tomorrow.  The hightlights were that I didn't stop breathing (yay!), finished in a respectable for me time of 53.11, and at the end I met this 59 year old woman who is a sprinter (she ran the 5K) and has been running since she was 21 when she was first ALLOWED to.  And she said at first she ran barefoot until her teammates pooled their money and bought her shoes -- but they were mens shoes and too bid so she had to stuff socks in them.  Imagine.  She still races annually in a track meet (didn't get more specifics).  Unfortunately I didn't get any contact information from her and she's from So Cal so who knows if I'll see her again.  :(.  She was lovely though and got 2nd place in her age group.

Did I go back to bed today?  No. And no nap either which isn't like me.  Not sure how I'm functioning but I did manage to do a lot of laying around.  Thank god for the holiday tomorrow.  I just have to get this cold gone as quickly as possible as 1.9.12 is the magic day.  Marathon training begins.