A blustery, thoughtful 5 mile run inspired by crazy dreams

Yup...well...tonight my time management skills were not their sharpest again. Truthfully they were off to a rough start from the get go when I attempted to take the train in to work for about the third time this month (I've been spoiling myself by driving in during my quest to start work at 6 am for most of this month). I got to Dalhousie station at 6:38 am and there were no parking spots left. Rather than driving to the next station to park and arriving late I opted to suck up the $17 to park near my building and arrive on time. So anyhow....needless to say I didn't run with the Roadrunners tonight, so I was on my own. I decided to head out to Edgemont since it was close enough to arrive and finish running before dark. I wasn't feeling the crazy hills at the start of where I normally run though so I started a bit further on. This pathway is pretty quiet so my thoughts really start to wander normally. On a blustery night like this one it was even more quiet than usual, so it made for some interesting thinking throughout the run. I was remembering a recent post by No Wetsuit Girl that you have to read - but really she referenced an older post of hers about some of the crazy race inspired dreams she was having at the time that was leading my thinking. (You should read both posts if you haven't already...they are really good.) I've been having crazy running nightmares recently - mostly involving waking up in the morning and looking down at my right ankle and seeing it swollen into a heartbreaking cankle. I start hyperventilating because the Nike Half Marathon is a month away, and I'm just starting to train for the Goofy and this can't be happening to me... I'll put it in words now and say my ankle at times feels funny even now, although I know it is mental over anything else. I'm guessing the nightmares come from a certain amount of anxiety that I feel about starting to train for the Goofy because for as strong as I feel on some of my back to back runs, running that often still worries me. I ran a grand total of 92.17 miles last year over a period of about 2-1/2 months that resulted in a stress fracture. So far this year I have run 464.83 miles... I know I wasn't in a place where I probably should have attempted marathon training and that things are different now, but I guess I still have that deep seated worry in the back of my brain that creeps into my subconscious while I sleep. When I was looking at starting up running again last fall I walked into a Running Room store to talk to them about their group training programs to get some more information. I told the fellow behind the counter how I was recovering from an injury and I wasn't sure if I should try the 10K training group or not since marathon training really hadn't gone so well. He made an important point that the biggest thing about coming back from an injury is the mental aspect of it, and having to trust yourself a bit that you aren't going to go back out there and get injured right away if you are smart about it. Sometimes I think I'm there, but I guess the dreams indicate that I still need to learn to trust myself a bit more. Maybe one of these days I'll go back to having the non-running related dreams like where I show up to school but I've forgotten that I'm actually supposed to be back at school and I have no books and I don't even know where my classes are. Except I've been out of school for over six years now. Right....I think that will get an interpretation at another time....

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Anyhow, back to the fact that I ran tonight... Since I was attempting to beat the incoming storm and the impending darkness I only went out for 5 miles. I took my new Asics Gel Kayano 13s out for a spin to see how I liked them. I wasn't intending to put these in the rotation just yet since I've got a pair of green 2110s with 160 miles on them, and a brand new pair of pink 2110s that recently just came out of the box. I'm not loving the pink 2110s as much as my green pair though, so I'd like to see how I feel about the Kayanos in case I'd like to pick up a second pair for the tail end of my Goofy training and races. Truthfully I wonder if I don't love the pink shoes because they are pink....and for as much running in skirts as I do I'm not much of a girly girl and these shoes just scream girly girl to me. So far I like the Kayanos so we'll see where they go (plus they are orange...not pink). Oh....and the 5 miles went well.