BUMMED OUT

Shucks. I tried to copy and paste my post from the Ironman Florida 2006 blog, but it wouldn't work. So I have to start over here. I tried to include the picture I included there, but my picture icon isn't working now.

And I'm not running. I think the last time I ran was last week with Mica. Last Tuesday, I think. I haven't run a continuous distance over 6 miles since ChesapeakeMan, and have no idea how I'm going to be ready for RNR Arizona in 2 months. Maybe I'll do "doubles" -- instead of 8 miles, 4 in the morning, 4 later. Four miles feels doable. If I can get up to a long run of 15 or so miles a couple weeks before the race, I'll go for it. I've done that before. If I don't pick up my running soon, I may change my registration to the half, if that's possible. I haven't checked. Or I could walk the marathon. That would work.

Running just feels so lousy since ChesapeakeMan. The pain is gone, it's not that. I just feel slow and heavy and leaden. And here in Carlsbad, NM, it's been windy windy windy ever since we arrived, 20+mph all day every day, uncomfortable for running; plus, we're "parked" right in town, can't just run out the door, have to drive someplace to run, AFTER I find a place, which goes against my grain.

But today we went to Carlsbad Caverns, the "Natural Entrance" (as opposed, I guess, to the "artificial entrance"), walked down and down and down, something like 750 feet of switchbacks. Beautiful in there. It boggles my mind, thinking about all that stuff happening all by itself for millions of years underground. No one suspected until the 1920's when someone wondered how all those were rising out of the ground every night. We took the elevator back up (the "artificial exit," I guess.)

Then we hiked on desert canyon trails down to "Rattlesnake Canyon," although we saw no rattlesnakes, indeed no animals at all except a few sparrows. But the desert plants are beautiful, so perfectly adapted to their dry, inhospitable ground. Prickly-pear cactus; some kind of tiny oak bushes with little acorns half the size of peas; several varieties of yucca; cacti growing in formations like balloon-animals; a shrub with leaves like holly; wild sage scenting the air like turkey stuffing. My hiking boots hurt my toes, being as how my feet seem to have grown longer in the last year or so. On the way home we stopped at Wal-Mart (even out in the desert where there's not another breathing animal besides just us for miles around, you can stop at a Wal-Mart on the way home) and I got new boots. Wal-Mart doesn't carry hiking boots for ladies, at least not real ones, but I found some that feel good in the smallest men's size they had, 7, and with a cushiony insole slipped in (I have a lot of those on hand, being a packrat) they feel like heaven.

Now if I could only motivate myself to run...

Afterthought, Nov. 14:
I discovered, re-reading my own blog, that the last time I ran was just 3 days prior to writing this post. I didn't even remember it till I read it. I think I'm in some kind of a black hole....