Perspective

Sometimes your perspective changes on things. For example, what constitutes a date night. 

It used to be you spent days picking out your outfit, and tons of time getting ready, and being nervous about what you were going to talk about.

When you're married, it's throwing a dress on five minutes before you leave and going across the street to get the most delicious Eggplant Parmesan I've ever eaten.

We had big plan of watching Glee after, but the DVR wasn't working, so our plans got even more exciting.....

Shopping for a new trash can AND laundry basket!

When I said throw on a dress, obviously I meant over my Aspaeris Pivot Compression shorts

I'm really glad I'm married because sometimes I think about how much I would fail on a first date.

Last night Carolyn invited me to a sneak preview of 50/50. This was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time, I highly recommend everyone cancel or rearrange your plans this weekend and go the second you finish work on Friday.

Considering this movie is a true story about the main character's battle with cancer, it gave me some perspective on my whining about my workday woes. 

It apparently didn't give my fellow movie-goers the same perspective. There was some sort of technical difficultly, and everyone started yelling and booing at the people in charge, because God forbid they are interrupted while watching a movie they paid a whopping $0.00 for.

We had to watch the scene where the main character first goes to chemo three times. Really, he was the lucky one. The people on the other side of the screen had to rewatch something they had already watched, not once but twice, then wait nearly five minutes while they fixed it. I haven't even told you the worst part yet though. During those not even five minutes, we weren't allowed to use our phones, because it was a sneak preview! Now it's clear why the guy getting chemo was the lucky one, right? I mean, can you even imagine going through that? No wonder people were completely throwing hissy fits.

Saturday, I listed all my mile splits so you could all be super impressed with how my speed decreased throughout the run. My awesome friend Mike emailed me saying he graphed them all. He totally changed my perspective on listing splits. This is way more user friendly.

And who doesn't love graphs?

Lastly, several people have asked me if my upcoming marathon seems like nothing, because I've ran as many 50Ks as I have marathons (2 of each - didn't that sound hardcore though?) and I'm training for a 50 mile race. 

Um, hell no. The marathon is huge. 26.2 miles is still a long freakin way to run.

My perspective on distance has changed to some  extent. I clearly remember being ready to give up on half marathon training the first time I was supposed to run seven miles, because I honestly thought that was too far and I couldn't run it. Last week, a 7 mile run was my shortest workout.

Now that I've done more 20+ mile runs, they don't seem as scary. But, they still seem pretty far, and I do still get some anxiety about running that long.

Still, I don't feel any less intimidated by the marathon coming up. I'm tapering for this marathon, and I'm not using it for a training race. Unless I don't do well, in which case, it will have been "just a training race", and I'll delete this post, if necessary.

Part of the reason is a 50K, for me, does not feel like crossing the finish line of a marathon, then running five more miles. It's a totally different experience, start to finish. In a marathon, you're gunning for a good time, and running hard with very little breaks. In my 50Ks, not that it's been easy, but it was more about enjoying the experience, chatting with the friends I'm with, and it's so much more relaxed. I'd maybe compare it to taking a traditional class vs. taking a pass/fail class? Either way you want to pass, but how you get there when your grade counts requires a lot more hard work. As far as the 50  miler affecting how I feel about the marathon, running 50 miles is just ridiculous. I'm not even thinking about that yet.

Maybe if I run like 10 marathons it will seem like no big deal, but I'm definitely not to that point yet!