still running!

In more than one way, as in I'm also running like crazy with everything else in the world and don't have very much time to update this thing...

I've missed updating on my 9 and 11mi runs, I'll ignore the little baby runs in between them for now. They went really great thanks to Kathy and some praying and praise and worship, sung poorly and only during exhales during the last mile to mile and a half of each run. I've noticed that's where things get pretty rough. I even brought extra jelly beans (JellyBelly makes a SportBean that works as an energy supplement and tastes pretty good - nice!) to try and get a little extra push at the very end, but no luch. Around mile 9 of 11 I felt pretty great, but still ended up quite rough, my legs just didn't want to work so well. An extra special thanks to Kathy this weekend for the 11mi run as I couldn't make the group run on Sat. morning (turns out neither could she) so she ran with me on Friday morning instead. I got over to her house a little after 7am, and a little over 2hrs later (only 1 1/2hrs actual running time!!) we made it back there, much relieved, and I've completed my longest run ever. I'll be saying that a lot coming up, seeing as they'll just keep getting longer...

I then proceeded to jump a plane to Vegas for a wedding. For anyone who knows Lizzy Alexandr, you should be pleased and excited to know that he's now married to a really great girl, and looks pretty fantastic in a preppy tennis outfit too (I'll maybe be able to post some pics soon). Outside of time spent with the wedding party, Seth and I didn't care for Vegas much. It was going to be an entirely other post, but I'll just say it and get it out of the way, thinking that I might not have the time to dedicate much more online time to it than that, but feel free to ask me directly if you care and have the chance.

So for all the praying types - I need a lot of money to keep this up. I've gotten some (and thanks to ALL who have given so far) but it's nowhere near the $2350 needed by October 1 to recommit, and there's no way that I could make up the difference myself at this point. That means I would have to drop out. I've got some ideas cooking, some opportunties that I haven't gotten final word on yet, so there's still a chance, but I'll need some divine intervention to make up about $1750 in 2 weeks.

On the praiseworthy side of things - I haven't had problems with shin splints for a couple weeks now. Which actually works out nicely, since my knees seem to be taking up the slack....I've been stretching out my IT band and trying to be extra careful. We'll see how it goes, but I'm pretty pumped about my shins being back to normal, that is definitely an answer to prayer!

Alright, consider yourselves caught up....I'm supposed to be running 4 miles today, hopefully the weather will cooperate.