Like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body

That's how it feels to take an ice bath.  As of 8:00 p.m. I have officially crossed over into marathoner territory.  I know that probably seems weird to see, since all I seem to do is talk about running, times, and getting faster, but to be honest, I don't really think of myself as a runner.  Much like I don't think of myself as an artist. These are things I like to do, but they're not who I am.  Except that, they really are. I mean, if you ask anyone at work to tell you about me, I'm sure they'd all say runner and artist at some point in their description.  But tonight I'm officially crossing the bridge into runner.  For the first time ever, I took an ice bath.  Yes, it was as terrible as it sounds and it was as cold as you think it is.  Of course I'd be happy if I never had to do it again.  Will I do it again though? Most likely.  See, getting in was awful.  Sitting in the water for 10ish minutes was torture.  Warming back up was a desperate race to get on the warmest clothes I could find.  But how about those leg muscles?  They feel amazing.  Better than they've ever felt.  I guess this is going to have to be one of those suck it up type of routines that becomes necessary to the process, even if it is miserable in the moment.
On top of the ice bath, I've also stretched and foam rolled more than I ever have before in my life.  In case you can't tell, I'm not fooling around with this sub-4 goal.  In fact, the owner of Title gave me a great piece of advice that I intend to follow as well.  While we were talking about how it's been hard to not be anxious about running a sub-4, he said that I should write down my goal time.  Clearly I've been writing down all along my goal and I thought for a minute he just couldn't hear me over the music playing at the club, because he looked at me like a lunatic when I said I was keeping journals anyways.  After a few seconds of clarification though, it became clear that he didn't mean just write it down anywhere.  He meant, write it on my arm on the day of the marathon.  Somewhere visible to me, so that I can look at it as a reminder to get myself moving or keep myself going.  That seems like a perfectly logical idea to me and a great way to force my motivational speaking voice to push down my self-doubt voice if it starts to feel hard.  Last time I wrote things on my shoes, this time I'm going straight for the arm, because I will beat that 4:00 time.
Before I go, I do have one more running related item on the agenda.  You may remember that I wanted to return the Nathan belt I bought the other day?  Well, I did go to Dick's today and the store did take it back, so that's a big plus in their column.  I did want to buy a scoreboard for basketball while I was there, but I couldn't find any, so they also get a mini-minus.  A scoreboard is kind of weird item to have at a sporting goods store, but also could have been there, so it was really a hit-or-miss errand anyways. In place of the hydration belt, I received my OrangeMud single barrel hydraquiver today. It is everything I hoped it would be; lightweight, small, portable, and a large enough bottle.  However, I've never run with a backpack type item before and I don't think I want to break it in at the marathon.  So as much as I love hands-free, I think I'm going to have to stick with the handheld bottle for one more run, and then retire it to the sidelines. BUT, for all of you who do run with backpack systems, here's a very important question. Chafing; does it happen and how do you stop it?  The way this little vest sits, it would seem that the straps are going to lead to a lot of underarm chafing.  I thought about loosening the straps, but then I think maybe the pack would bounce around too much.  A second option that I tried was safety pinning the straps down against the sides of my tank top, so that they follow the same contour and are held in place.  That worked as a very short trial version, but if I've learned anything from Mythbusters, it's that just because something works in small scale for a small period of time, doesn't mean it will hold up in full scale during an extended time frame.  So fellow backpack runners, do you ever have the chafing problem? How do you prevent the straps from rubbing? Or should I just invest in a lot of shirts that have sleeves? If you have any tips on this very important subject, please leave them below.  In return, you can check out these pictures of my ice bath and see my little hydration pack sitting pretty.  Oh and I also got my official BAA acceptance email yesterday and I now show up on the list of entrants for the 120th Boston Marathon!!!!!!!

Like any good runner, of course I have a ziplock bag full of spare safety pins

I added a Chewbacca.  I might already have this picture on here, but either way, here it is,

This house made me laugh while I was in traffic this afternoon. It looks like a face with a picket fence beard. 

Sunday, rainy Sunday

Or the time it rained enough to make me sleep until 9:30 a.m.  To put that in perspective, during the week my alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. I usually try to get a little bit more sleep on the weekends, but 9:30 is a bit late in my book.  I feel like I wasted my entire morning and it was time for lunch before I even digested my breakfast.  But I'm taking a page from Milli Vanilli and blaming it on the rain.
Obviously it's raining so that left no room for a run.  Alright, alright, I wouldn't have gone for a run even if it wasn't raining, but that's neither here nor there.  Technically it's taper time, even though I'm not following that rule.  I fully intend to keep running this week.  I know, I'm getting wild here, but relax, I'll only be running little 3 - 5 milers.  What I do need to remember is the stretching part.  I've noticed that I'm terrible at stretching after a run and I really need to work on getting better at that.  How can I be faster if my muscles are all wound up?  So my goal for this week is to stretch every day for at least 30 minutes.  Believe me, it's as boring as it sounds, but if it really works, I'll never complain about it again.  I've also decided that 7 days is close enough to start obsessively checking the forecast, which I've done about 5 times so far.  As of right now, the weather is sunny and 57, maybe even a little cloudy.  In short, perfect running weather.  The final debate for that is going to be, shorts or capris? That's always the hardest decision and it's usually a game time decision too.  Shorts are cooler and easier to deal with, but capris offer more compression should I need it.  Plus, 57 is borderline weather in that regard.  You could go either way with that temperature and probably be fine.
While I'm on the subject of race day gear, I've decided that the Nathan belt just isn't going to work for me.  It's just too uncomfortable.  Of course this raises the point that now I've spent money on an item I"m never going to use again, so that's cool.  Since I bought it at Dick's Sporting Goods, I've contacted their customer service to see if I can exchange it for a store credit, and I'm really hoping the answer is yes.  Look, I know that I used it once, but the belt itself is basically like new.  The only issue would be the two water bottles and I know from years of working in high-end retail that there's a 99% chance that they can contact the distributor of Nathan products and get two brand new replacement bottles free of charge, and then resell the belt at a discount rate.  My hopes aren't very high though because when I contacted customer service to inquire about the exchange, the response I got said that she couldn't find an order with my name on it in their system.  I'm not sure why she would be able to anyways, since I bought the product in the store, but maybe she just didn't realize that.  However, if I do get turned down for a store credit, I'd definitely think twice about going back there.  Most of what I want I can get on Amazon for the same or less price, so it's not like I'd be missing out.  But it would be nice to know that there are still places that care enough about the customer to take care of something like this. I know you'll all be waiting eagerly for my update when I finally get an answer though.
That's about all I have going on today, except for more laundry, because that never seems to end, and there's only two of us.  I made Oreo truffle balls for work tomorrow, to ease the pain of not winning the powerball like we planned.  Well, at least not winning anything substantial, we won about $25, which is still less than $1/person.   You know, I'm fine not winning $1.3 billion.  I don't even know what I would do with all that money. Take a few trips, pay off the house and Ryan's car, and then what? Even with that money, I'd still go to work everyday, so it would be wasted on me I suppose. I just want enough to pay off my student loans and to replace my car.  Really, $100,000 would be fine by me.  So if anyone has $100,000 that they don't want, you can just send that on over.  Or if you want to donate a car or pay off my loans for me, those are also options.  Until one of those magical things happens for me though, I'll still be here, writing away about anything I can think of.  Aren't you all just the lucky ones!

This is what happens when I try to stretch at home.  No wonder I always forget to do it.  

Oh yea, I finally labelled my baking jars, like I've been meaning to do since we got them last month, after I shattered the original sugar jar all over the floor.  Believe me, these labels are super important, because for a minute, the powdered sugar and the flour were next to each other.....