It's half marathon time

After something like two months of "training" - the half marathon is in less than 48 hours.

A few friends asked if I was "tapering". LOL. I think that's for people who do serious training. Also, I'm pretty sure tapering involves resting in general, so...

My preparation in a nutshell:

• Long runs of at least 8 miles each weekend
• One culminating distance of a ten mile run
• At least 3 other weekly runs
• Several 5-6 mile super hilly stroller runs
• One non running work out each week (online Barre mainly)
• Trying to eat vegetables sometimes
• Completely forgetting to hydrate until writing this blog post

Not the best, but not the worst either. Most of my mid week runs were only 2 or 3 miles. I wanted to build those up to a longer distance, but when it came to getting up in the morning, the struggle has been so real. My new school starts earlier in the morning, I have double the amount of kids as I did last year, and I'm a year older and more tired. 

This week I don't know what came over me, but did something real dumb. When I say what I did, parents of babies will get it, and everyone else will think I'm crazy and overreacting. 

Since Royce was about a week or so old, he's been sleeping swaddled in the rock and play. (Prior to that, he would only sleep nursing.)

Back when he was teeny tiny...how did he get so big?

At five months, his little feet were sticking out the end, and it was getting ridiculous. I had to move him to a new bed. I don't want to put him in his own room until he's sleeping better, since it's on a different floor. I decided to put him in the pack and play in our room. So that's already a transition. We started that Monday night. 

Tuesday night is when I acted a fool. My ultimate goal was to have him sleeping in the pack and play or crib (aka a flat surface) unswaddled. I ignored all advice to do the transition slowly, even ignored Eric (rightfully) questioning me, and let Royce have both him arms out. I was going to just do one, but I didn't know which one to do, so I decided to just try both.

He wasn't ready.

I just love waking up to that smile. 

I finally gave up and reswaddled him around 3am. It wasn't terrible, but it definitely wasn't a great night of sleep.

This sort of sums things up. 

I really try not to complain about sleep, since I chose to have a baby, I love that baby, and it's not exactly like he's asking so much to, you know, be fed when he wakes up hungry. But I think the five months of sleep interruption just caught up to me this week. I'm so tired it hurts. Royce has amped up his night nursing game lately, so it's not even like Eric could take over and I could go sleep all night. He would gladly do it, but I would wake up in the middle of the night horribly engorged and defeat the whole purpose. Plus, I just got a clogged duct this week, and I'm terrified of going down that road again (the picture in the first post still haunts me). Again, I hate complaining, because I love breastfeeding, I love snuggling up to his soft little head in the middle of the night, I love that I don't have to say goodnight to him at 7 and not see him again till morning (like Dalton). I just wish that I could magically transfer the ability to lactate to Eric for like...two nights. 

Long story short: I have a baby, I have a full time job, I have a two year old, so I'm freaking tired.

He wanted to play with the Whoozit so he brought Royce the matching one...I die. 

Mentally, I think I'm in some sort of weird denial place. I still find myself thinking things like "it's only a half". I need to fully accept that the version of myself who thought things like that is gone, and there's a new, much less in shape version that will be running this race. I'm not even trying to put myself down, just be realistic that I'm in a different part of my life now and I'm not some super duper endurance runner at this time. To help with this, I'm not running with my watch (still the same Garmin 305, chugging away since 2009). I am running with my FitBit, because I'm not crazy, and I will send you a challenge request BTW. I don't want to finish and feel bad about myself because my time will undoubtedly be slower than the last time I did a half, when I was at my peak fitness. I want to finish and feel badass, because I just ran a half marathon just five months after having a baby.

On the #motherrunner topic, Eric is bringing both kids, I told him a million times he did not have to and I could just see them all at home (and I meant it, bringing both kids to a crowded place is intense), but he is insisting (he's kind of awesome like that). I'm not going to lie, I think it would be kind of awesome to see Dalton at the finish and cross the line with him. I'm not sure this is possible or even allowed, since it's a huge race, and he's also his own person with his own opinions about things, but let's just say I'm not ruling it out. I 100% plan to be all over social media, you can count on that. 

37 hours and counting - wish me luck!