September

Have you noticed I've been MIA for the last month?  I had zero posts in September.  I don't think I've ever gone an entire month with zero posts since I started this blog.  I just haven't felt like writing.  And there are a couple reasons for that . . . the biggest one being that I am writing a paper every week for school.

But the other reason is that I'm not running much.  My last post was a triumphant post about finishing 15 miles even though I didn't feel like it at first and maybe continuing with marathon training. . . Well, right after that post, 2 days after that post, Chris got a call saying his Grandpa was dying, and then a few hours later that he had died.

His Grandpa was a World War II Vet, so they ended up taking over a week to get the arrangements for his military service.  I had a planned trip with my sister the second weekend of September to go to Leavenworth for the wine walk (that we always do). I was happy that I was able to do that with her because for awhile I was afraid I'd have to cancel it to go to a funeral. 

We even bought special shirts this year!

So, I came home for 3 days and then we went to the Vancouver, WA area (I can't remember exactly where, but it was down that way somewhere) for Chris's Grandpa's funeral.  I didn't care for his Grandpa much, he wasn't a very nice man, but I do really like Chris's family.  At least that side of his family.  We had a very good visit and I remembered how much I enjoy hanging out with them (it's been 5 years since the last time). 

I even ran with his brother who is very into Crossfit right now. 

By the way, never trust a guy who says he thinks he knows where he's going.  We were going to do 5 miles and I trusted that he knew how to get to a trail, we never found the trail and ended up with under 3 miles. 

I didn't take many pictures on this trip.  I just didn't think of it.  We left on Saturday morning and Sunday was Damian's birthday, so they celebrated his birthday with cheesecake on Friday night.

Anyway, back to running . . . I never ran more than that 15 miles at the end of August.  And by the time of Chris's Grandpa's funeral I decided that I wasn't going to push myself to run 26.2 miles undertrained like I did last year.  In some ways I still feel like I'm recovering from that marathon, and all the half marathons I did last year.

I do feel that I do better at running when I have a goal.  Which I don't currently have.  Well, I do, but they won't happen till next year. (I want to run Ragnar and I want an under 4 hour marathon).  I am going to go to my Dad's the weekend of the Tri-Cities Marathon, and I think I'm going to run the half marathon.  I guess I need to figure out when I need to register for that (hopefully I haven't missed it).