The Hopeful Wanderer: Every single night's alright, every single night's a fight, and every single fight's alright with my brain

Those of you that know me know that winters are hard for me. I've gotten pretty good at living with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Or maybe it's just that I now live in a place where it is sunny and warm most of the year! But no matter where I live the winters are filled with listening to a lot of Fiona Apple. Gosh that girl just gets me. Some people think she's crazy. Maybe that's why I like her so much... makes me feel a little more normal. Well the title of this blog post comes from this song.

To get through the winter, I like to focus on training for future races. The next race coming up is the Moab Red Hot 55k in February. I've put in some good training with the last few weeks being in the 45-50 mpw range. But I've just been really disheartened this past week. First off, I've had some foot pain acting up again. It's always a different pain, but always on the same foot. This time I have pain on top of my foot on my metatarsals. I think it's tendonitis and it SUCKS. The downhills hurt the most and I just want to be able to cruise again.

On top of that I have just had some awful body-related stuff. When I kick my mileage up, I sometimes get really bad heart burn. I've heard other runners mention that this happens to them too. The thing is, I know that 50 mpw isn't that much compared to what elite runners put in. But with working retail I either work all day and don't run at all or I put in long two-a-days. Like this last week, for example... I've been working a lot for the holidays. So on Christmas Day I did a 6-miler followed by a fast, hilly 6-miler. Then on Friday I did a 10.5-miler before work followed by a 7 miler after work.

In theory I feel like I should be able to handle this. There are countless people who are able to handle many more miles than I can and make it look easy. But for some reason when I hit the 50 mile mark, my body starts to break down. On top of the heart burn I've had some GI stuff that I won't go into but suffice it to say that when I looked it up on the internet I got a little freaked out. So last night's fight with my brain went something like this: you are not made to be a competitive runner/ you suck and maybe you should just do 5ks from here on out/ ha, you hope to run a 100-miler someday, what a joke.

Well, there's one thing I'm determined not to become and that's a whiner. Since I'm the world's biggest feeler, I'm going to try to focus on what I actually know. 1) I've been eating a lot of cheese lately and I'm lactose intolerant so that's not going to help anything. 2) I don't drink enough water and I always have a nagging dehydration-headache. 3) I'm hungry all of the time and we are poor so I eat a lot of low-quality food. 4) I spend all day everyday on my feet and maybe I should do some strengthening and stretching exercises for them. 5) After having surgery on my back in 2012 I have done exactly zero things to strengthen my lower back and hips and I usually just try to ignore them even though they are clearly the source of all of my other pains.

So with that said, no more whining. I finally got an iPhone so I've become addicted to taking pictures and using Strava while I run.