4/4/07 Training

Wednesday morning, I have part of it "off," with Katrina and Julian at Tonya's.

This morning, I tried hard to get the younger two to Tonya's early enough to have time to do things before Julian's skating class. I succeeded...and failed. I got them both there by 8am, but was far too tired to do anything. In fact, I spent most of the day dragging around looking for a nap. Katrina now wakes me up reliably once a night, sometime between 3am-4am. I'm never sure if she's really hungry or not, but once I start feeding her for real (this weekend!), she'll lose the benefit of the doubt, and I'm going to be a lot less gracious about nighttime nursing.

Despite overwhelming tiredness, I succeeded in shopping at Trader Joe's this afternoon after picking them all up. I know, I have it backward. I'm supposed to use my time without the kids to grocery-shop, not grocery-shop after picking them all up, right?!

You'll never guess what I'm doing this week. Really, you won't. Ready?

I'm "training," if you can call it that, to run in a 5K race!

The Big Bunny Fun Run is this coming Saturday, and I got this wild hair just a few days ago. My goal is only to complete the race in a non-walking gait, but I'm prepared to drop down to a walk if need be. It's 3.1 miles, so the odds are high that the need will be.

I've never run in a real race before. The closest I've ever done were the "mile runs" at St. Ann's, when I was in elementary school. In 4th grade, I achieved a 5-mile pin, by running around a concrete track that was 1/7th of a mile, in a park somewhere in Brooklyn Heights. (I wonder if that track is still there?) I guess a 9-year-old can run 5 miles without any training or modern high-tech footwear. Let's see if this 43-year-old can accomplish far less than that!

My mom-pals are all going to a rodeo at the Cow Palace tomorrow, and I'm sorely tempted to join them. It was a lot of fun last year. Though I really need to go to the Y tomorrow to "train," I'm a lot less motivated to do outings like that without Gabriel (he'll be in pre-K tomorrow morning). So unfair, I know, because there's still Julian, and he might get a huge kick out of it. Certainly if I had just Gabriel at age 3-1/4, I'd have gone. So why not if it's just Julian? Yeah, partly it's dealing with a baby....but I'd do it if Gabriel were around. I guess the negative of dealing with the baby would be outweighed if I had two kids who'd get something out of it, not just one. Poor Julian. The middle-child syndrome abounds.

This is why I want to pull Gabriel out of every-day pre-K starting in June. I want to do things with him too this summer, and not be bound by a 1pm pickup every day. I hope I don't regret that, 'cause the boys together are often a major, royal, supreme, stunning pain in the rear end!

4/4/07