Week 17 – 8 miles.

Of all of the long runs scheduled during this training, I would not have expected one of the shortest to also be the most difficult. After all, I’ve gotten through 13, 14, (15 turned to 10 because I was sick) 17, 18, 19 and conquered 20 with much more ease than planned (not to say it was easy, just easiER than I dreaded) so I went into this week, the last long run before race day, thinking “piece of cake!”

(mmm cake…) of course courtesy of Pinterest

WRONG.

As mentioned in yesterdays Laziness 2.0 post (one should not post while groggy on phenergan), Bryan and I went on a “Date Night” Friday night which included going out to eat and running a couple errands……. Is it just me, or do date nights get more lame as we get older? Dinner and errands! Woo hoo! Bring on the wine and fancy outfits! I’m not sure if I should feel more ashamed of the lameness of date night or the fact that I was excited about it. But I digress.

I got a couple gift cards to Applebees for Christmas and so off we went. It was busy so we sat at the bar. I had a glass of wine and ordered an under 550 calorie meal…..with a side of fries. (what? I have to offset the calories somehow). The food actually tasted quite good – it was a chicken skillet with veggies, some rice and a spicy sauce….seemed safe. (HA!)

Then off to Staples to buy a 2012 calendar and oogle over one of the new giant screened computers that’s a touch screen (I may or may not have exclaimed aloud “oooo! I want one!”) before heading over to Walmart for some groceries and good quality people watching.While we didn’t see anyone quite like this:

(people of Walmart — thanks pinterest)

we did see a women in PJ’s, and another sans bra. (ick)

We headed home. Then my stomach started to hurt. Great. Bryan, the human pharmacy, gave me a phenergan and I went to bed hoping to sleep it off.

No such luck. To spare you all the gory details, I did NOT sleep it off. I was, in fact, up multiple times enjoying the company of our master bathroom commode. (I would have written it a poem, but I didn’t feel well) While I can’t be sure it was food poisoning vs a flu bug, the timing of the whole ordeal leads me to think it was food related.

Needless to say, there was no run for me yesterday. In fact, thanks to the drowsiness side effect of phenergan, I slept. Literally. All day. So long in fact, that I wasn’t even aware that a human could sleep for that long. Aside from probably a couple hours total where I got up to go to the bathroom, eat a popsicle, drink some  juice, or blog while groggy, I slept for nearly 32 hours.

Well, there went Saturday.

I felt much better this morning, though not yet 100%. Just for fun I decided to step on the scale. While I definitely do NOT condone the food poisoning diet, I wanted to see the damage.

Yup. Down 3 pounds. (trust me, not for long)

And because of my slight overbearing obsessiveness, decided to brave the 8 mile run anyway. My stomach was less than pleased (and yet still, thankfully, remained intact), my time was horrible (it was more of a run/walk) but I did it.  And with that complete, I have officially completed my last long run before race day in a mere 7 days.

Man time flies.

Holy cow I’m done with the training!!!!

Here’s hoping my stomach is back to normal by then.