A 2.5-hour 1/2 marathon, Ha, No Way

Last week during the mountain run with my buddies, one guy said, while laughing “Get ready for your first 2.5 hour 1/2 marathon.” I thought he was joking, how in the world could it take 2.5 hours to run 13 miles?Well today I can tell you.

I was excited to “Run the Caldera”.  In case you don’t know, a Caldera is a collapse of land following a volcanic eruption.

Each year there is a 10k, 1/2 marathon and marathon. The actual race, at least the 1/2 does not go into the Caldera but rather it is run in the mountains, beginning at 7,853 ft and going to 8,857 ft.  I checked out the times from last year, to see who the competition was. The fastest woman was 1:45, the second fastest 2:01. The fastest man 1:39 second fastest man 1:47.  The fastest woman in my age group ran a 2:18. Wow, I thought, this is really slow. I should do okay; my last 1/2 was 1:44 on the road, and so on the trail I figured 2:00 or 2:10. I failed to look up who these people are, only their times.  Boy am I naive.

I scouted the start the day before. It is 63 miles from home and I wanted to make sure I got there on time. It was a beautiful drive that goes through the slightly creepy slightly intriguing Los Alamos. It only took 1.5 hours to get there and was easy to find.

Race morning I woke nauseous and with overactive intestines. I could not eat anything and was most worried about dehydration. I woke several times during the night with a dry mouth but I continued to drink electrolyte water, maybe too much electrolyte water. In the morning I ran the dogs, got dressed and was out the door. I felt better during the drive. I arrived five minutes after the marathon, and had just under an hour to wait for my start. During that time I ate a banana, went to the port-o-john four times and jogged for about ten minutes and did a few drills.

At the line up, everyone stood around casually. The only people to go right to the start line were Los Alamos Cross Country high school boys. We were given directions that we would run on logging roads, over a substantial amount of grassy fields without any trails, up extremely steep inclines of soft sand and rocks and over rivers. He forgot to mention though a field of prairie dog homes with random big holes. I had been forewarned to walk the hill and that I will catch back up to the people who tried to run them, and that was my plan.

I started easy and slow, taking my time. My first mile was very slow, a 9:44 but by mile 4 my overall average was 9:15 as I was able to speed up to 8:00.  I thought if I could average 9:15′s miles give or take I could finish in around 2 hours. Then the big hills started. In the next two miles I climbed just under 1,000′ and was at 8,857′ of elevation. Mile 6 and 7 took me 13:30 and 18:21. The hill was so steep I was almost on my hands and knees. The ground was soft sand filled with rocks. It was a slow going but with awesome views of the mountains. For the next two miles the decent started but my technical downhill running on rocks and soft sand is not good so I was not able to take advantage of it. In mile 10 I went back up 254 feet. And speaking of feet, mine were killing me! I have to buy trail shoes. The bottoms of my feet hurt, my hips hurt, my quads hurt, everything hurt and I was alternating walking and trotting. I met lovely women from Albuquerque. She talked about the trails in ABQ and invited me to come down.  I passed her on the downhills but she later caught up with me on the grassy flats and took off. I could not catch her.

In the last mile I promised myself I would only run, no walking. But when faced with another 105 foot uphill I walked. I just couldn’t take it. Then I looked at my watch. In 4 minutes it would be two hours and thirty minutes. I had about a half mile to go. I had to do it. I picked up the pace, I passed two people, then I passed another guy, suddenly I saw the little house on the opposite side of the start, I ran faster. A guy hobbling on the trail stepped aside. A crowd cheered and a guy yelled,” that is the way to finish it. ” He must be talking to me, I thought.  I pushed harder. My legs got going, I passed 5 people, and I saw the clock and finished with 30 seconds to spare. My lungs felt like they had stuck together. I crossed the finish line and had the same feeling I had when I fell off a tire swing flat on my back as a kid and got the wind knocked out of me. Luckily it only lasted a couple seconds and I was handed my shiny new metal. My fastest pace on the last mile was 6:39.

The final results are not posted but I know was lower than 24th woman and beyond 4 in my age group. There are a lot of super athletes and ultra runners there. A woman who ran the 2004 Olympic marathon trials won the marathon.  Once I know the full results I will post them along with the pictures.

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Santa Fe Ski Basin to Deception Peak!

First this is not my photo nor was it taken today but it is a photo of Deception Peak.

I was up at 5:30 this morning, too excited to sleep and eager to get to Santa Fe where I was meeting the Striders for my first high elevation mountain trail run of the year.  I was a nervous on my drive, we were starting at over 10,000 feet and running to 12,400. I had no idea what I would feel like since I have only been at elevation 3 days and that was 6,000 feet.

It was great to see the friends from last summer, Jim, Eric, Miriam, Gabe, Caroline, and make three new friends, Maryann Max and Andy. The start of the trail is super hard, straight up from 10,238 feet to 12,409 in about three miles. It was super rocky, there were boulder fields and quite a bit of snow. There was nothing that resembled running, it was purely hiking. I will post the splits at the end, but it took 1 hour and 18 minutes to go 3 miles and I was in the front group.

The Winsor Trail is a steep climb that takes you to the boundary lines of the Pecos Wilderness, where you turn and go up Raven’s Ridge Trail. It is an unmaintained trails with several high and low points along the way. At times we lost the trail, had to scramble over rocks but the views were spectacular!

When we got to the peak  it was about 30 degrees, it was 46 when we started. The wind was intense and we huddled behind some rocks for a couple minutes to take in the views. But the wind and cold were outrageous and we hit the trail to Tesuque Peak which is the site of a hard core half marathon. Once off Tesuque Peak it is all downhill for 5. 5 miles. I felt fantastic. I felt really strong today. In talking with Gabe he too said he was nervous about today, but that the club had been training for 8 weeks working up to this height. I think some people did not have a very good day,  the cold plus elevation was pretty heavy. But I loved it and I felt terrific.

On the way down Maryann took the lead. She is  fast. Last year she outright won the Caldera Marathon. I was being cautious at first staying with the group but then just let go. I kept Maryann in my sights for most of the 5 miles. I stopped twice to tie my shoes thinking someone would come up behind me but no one did and I lost her.  I reached the bottom of the Alpine Vista Trail and was just energized.

I did not take any water or food with me. I was the only one who didn’t but I also did not need it. We ran a total of 9 miles and it took 2 hours. The last bit felt fast, but controlled and strong. After checking my GPS I ran pretty much the pace I ran in the Brooklyn 1/2 marathon which is pretty freakin’ great on a rocky dirt access  road between 12,000′ feet and 10,000. For fun I wore my heart rate monitor. I will post the rate because I have an 18:00 mile where my HR was 162 and I have a 7:30 mile where it is basically the same!

Maryann and Max  planned a 20 mile day because they have a marathon coming up in a couple weeks. They ran their final 10 on the road that goes back  to Santa Fe.

I did a couple of chores in Santa Fe and drove the 50 miles back to  Abiquiu when I  realized I was starving. It was now 3pm and I only had one piece of bread with coconut oil and black strap molasses at 6:00am. Unfortunately the dogs got into the refrigerator and ate about $100 of food so I went to Bodes convenience store just 6 miles up the road and got a BBQ pull pork sandwich AND a ground beef, cheese and chilli burrito and ate them both! Yes I ate a pile of meat and about 3 pounds of food and boy was it just what I needed. I could go run again.

Splits
Average Pace with average HR
1  18:36           63
2  27:25           137
3  25:12           138
4  12:00           136
5   8:00            147
6   8:21            154
7   7:48            160
8   7:42            159
9   7:36            161
9.5 7:30           102 (monitor fell down)

For comparison my HR average for a 9:00 mile is 145-150 at sea level and 7:00 pace is 170  give or take.

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Running the Edge

Before I left New York for Michigan I picked two books to take with me, Deep Survial by Laurence Gonzales and Running the Edge by Adam Goucher and Tim Catalano. Being here for a few days now I have to laugh at the perfect combination of my choice.

It is not exactly deep survival driving 814 miles with dogs to spend a few charged holidays with the family, but the trip  requires some risk management.  Deep Survival is far more extreme,  it looks at who lives, who dies and why,  in various outdoor adrenalin induced adventures. For anyone who loves to read about the wilderness, adventure and life altering decisions it is a fascinating read.

Next I am into the first 100 pages of Running the Edge by Adam Goucher and Tim Catalano who were University of Colorado running teammates. You may have read reviews that it is unlike any other running book and it is. It is self-help, motivation, spiritual guidance, deep reflection all rolled into one. But what stands out is the runners common thread to reject the idea of living a normal or average life. It  talks about one’s biggest fear being wasted potential. Wow this book is for me, especially right now in my cross roads of mid-life but always wanting more.

I have always had the philosophy, the fear, and the determination to not have regrets on my deathbed. Growing up, my father  talked about how much he hated his job. We would get in discussions of,  “Why do something that you hate so much?”  I vowed then to never be in that position, that I would never do something that would make me profoundly unhappy. He said he did it,  “because of you kids”  to support us and send us to college. I must be really selfish because there is no way I would “waste” my life doing something that I hated, maybe that is why I also vowed to never have kids.  I am not sure why he hated his job but what was tough to see is how it affected his entire life.   I learned some big lessons from those talks, mostly I never want to feel like I perceived  he felt.

For me not having a family of my own is my best choice, I can do what I want and I have. I traveled all over the world, almost all of it paid for by an arts organization, the government, or another country’s cultural department. I have lived  in mountain huts, beach shacks, super deluxe houses, monster apartments and single rooms.  I gave talks and had exhibitions worldwide. I am a tenured professor and I am the chairman of a university department.  I have a second home in another state that I get to go to in the summer. I am making the best choices for me, for who I am. That looks great on the checklist of accomplishments but it is no big deal to anyone who has some passion and a little persistence. It is time for something more.  Enters “Running the Edge.”

Running the Edge is about more, better, and never settling, in ones’ running, education, career, friendships, family, and passion. Running, that is easy to never settle to always chase a new PR. Education that is easy too I love to learn and constantly take new classes.  Career is not so clear. I am an artist, I am  a professor. I am not totally keen on where I teach and I want to make it a better and more competitive department with stronger students and better studios. Or is it that I want to move to a place with stronger students and better studios?  Or maybe I want to leave all together and do something new and different or take the risk of only making art? Or maybe as a money job, I don’t “work” in art anymore and I work in physiology, exercise testing? Then at the end of the day I can go to my studio and make art without having to dump the frustration of teaching art to people I believe are less motivated than they should be? Not making the decisions is passive and I find myself passively waiting for a new opportunity to come through the email to point me in a new direction. Wow that is hard to admit, if I had a friend doing that I would scold them up and down to get their ass out there and make a change and tell them how pathetic they are for not being pro-active. Hilary, you are pathetic, get your ass out there and make a decision to change what you feel is not the very best.

Now I feel better.  I am eager to continue reading Running the Edge. I love the stories that are recounted by  Goucher and Catalano, they make perfect sense to me, the risk and the reward.   What a great end of year reading to move into the better, faster, stronger, smarter me next year. Just the planning of it gets me excited.

So this year in talking with my dad who retired over 10 years ago but immediately went right back to work as a part-timer at the very same job he hated tells me, “Sure I still get mad at my job and I work more hours that I should, but it gives me something to do, some place to go, it keeps me active and thinking and engaging with people.” I will still wonder why that place is not what I would think of as more appealing but maybe it is what is appealing to him, plus it is not my life, it is his.   Now the job is on his terms and he is calling the shots. That is where we all need to be, calling our own shots, making everything what we want it to be and doing what we want to do.

Happy New Year to all the Distance Mavens and here is enjoying a relentless pursuit of excellence in everything.

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So Long Celebrity Status

American Pavilion Superstars

This was the last day I ran at the Biennale. I already miss the superstar status. I have an awesome 1 minute video of my last run. There is an exuberant husband and wife team cheering me on and a man running up to take a photo.

This was such a super experience. I had a great time visiting the city and hanging out with the Guggenheim staff. I saw some incredible artwork by many of them including Diana Cordoba Barrios, collages, Michelle Galletta prints and Matthew Attard sculptures. I unfortunately do have a link to Matthews work – so send me one Matt!

It was great to meet and share a house with Dave Durante and  Sadie Wilhelmi. They are amazing athletes and their performances were incredible to watch. Yes I will certainly miss it all.

Wow I am so happy here I look like am going to bust!

I flew home via Madrid and when I sat down on the plane, the women next to me said, “hey you are the runner!” Yes I had a huge grin on my face, she had at the biennale the previous week and saw me run. I got to celebrate my celebrity status one more time before coming home to paperwork and student complaints.

Okay one last video just for the fun of it you can see me flopping around with excitement at the end:

Hilary Lorenz in front of Track and Field Title Plate

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One Week in Venice

If you think I am sitting at outdoor cafes along the Canal Grande seeping wine or drinking espresso you are dearly mistaken. In the last 6 nights I have not eaten at a restaurant, only once had espresso, and have only had one glass of wine at a cake party last night.

You must think I am crazy to not partake in all kinds of extravagance in Italy, but Venice does not seem extravagant in behavior, in art and history yes.
Last night the party, made by Tuey, one of the Guggenheim interns who works at the American Pavilion, started at 6:30pm near a church. The entire square was completely empty. Tuey made a cake, named “Patrick” and we all sang Happy Birthday. The party was very well represented with friends from Norway, Belgium, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Australia, Japan, the US and my personal favorite Canada. I am sure I am leaving someone out.  At 9:00pm we went to a bar to listen to a band. The bar was filled with the young fun people of Venice. Because I live in Lido, kind of like Brooklyn to Manhattan, I went home at 11:00. (Or maybe because I am old and I hate being tired in the morning) The boat I came on had stopped running so I had to walk to the other side of Venice. There was no one on the streets as I navigated the narrow passageways. I got to the vaporetto and waited 17 minutes to get my boat to Lido, another 15-20 minute ride. I realized today that it already seems normal to take a boat to work. I had not even noticed that there are no cars or bikes in Venice, but clearly one sees the canals filled with boats moving people, fruit, furniture, everything that the island needs.

On a typical day I am up at 7:30 and out the door at 8:30 to be walk around to see anything that is open. Today I saw an amazing video exhibition by Lech Majewski called the Bruegel suite at Chiesa di San Lio, the Church of San Lio. The video used paintings of Bruegel with real like actors in period dress performing events up to and including Christ’s crucifixion. Just thinking about Bruegel and crucifixion you can you imagine how intense this is. And being shown in a church in an alter piece format it is pretty hard to top.

I also visited the first market, the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frai, one of the largest churches in Venice, completed in 1440. It has a treasure trove of art from Titian including his tomb, Bellini and Donatello. Next door is the Scoula Grande di San Rocco completely decorated by Tintoretto who spent 23 years filling the interior with depictions of the saint and his heavenly consorts. This is the most spectacular thing I have seen.

Lech Majewski

San Roco

The other excitement, a man asked me for my autograph today. It told him I am not the artist and he said, “I know but YOU are the runner on the tank.” Yes, I really like giving my autograph.

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Gloria – Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

Running in the Venice Biennale. The biggest and most illusive artist dream is to be in the biennale, and one never knows how they might get here. Never in a million years would I think running would get me here.

I arrived on Sunday and look the waterbus to Lido. Lido is kind of like Brooklyn to Manhattan. The biennale is just two waterbus, vaporetti, stops from the apartment. It was cool and rainy so I was not sure if I could run on the tank. Fortunately it cleared up and I did two “performances.” It was really cool. I wanted to start laughing but I had to stay serious and keep my head up looking at the lamppost. Seeing the tank tracks moving under me incited a bit of vertigo.

I watched Sadie and Dave’s performances after mine, they are really cool. The pavilion rooms are small and you are very close up to the performers. There is huge tension in the room. You can hear and see them breathing, feel the pressure when they are balancing on the airline seat sculptures. We each perform for 15 minutes, first me, then Sadie, then Dave, then me again. Clearly I have it easy and don’t need much skill to run. The treadmill is very slow only on 5 mph because the tank shakes. This lets me practice quick turnover to make it look like I am running faster, with 180 steps per minute. Clearly Said and Dave have the real skill.
They have been performing all summer and previous to the exhibition were choreographing.

Got to run, it is time for me to go again. More later

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Venice Biennale Bound

Just a quick post before I go to the airport. My flight to Madrid leaves shortly, then to Venice. I will be there at 11:30 Sunday morning while all of you are getting ready for the marathon. My first run will be at 4:00, I suspect many of you will be between 13 and 18. Good luck NYC Marathoners.

The three athletes for the time I am there, all sharing an apartment in Lido are Dave Durante, Sadie Wilhelmi and me. Here they are preparing for the biennale

Dave at the Olympic trials
Sadie
The Dave and Sadie Blog

And I ran and did squat with rocks you don’t need to see a video of that. You will see one soon of me on “Track and Field”

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Adirondack Nancy

Marathon Euphoria!

Yesterday was a real treat. I rode the 6:45am Amtrak  to D.C. to surprise my friend Nancy who was running the Marine Corp Marathon for the second time.

You may recall me telling you about Nancy last year. The short version is, Nancy is a serious hiker, a real outdoors adventurer but she had never run. She has friends, me being one of them, who always talk about running. So she decided she wanted to know what running a marathon is all about. This is one trait I  love about Nancy – her fearless curiosity.   She found an on-line program and told no one, not even her husband. She trained in total secrecy, made her hotel plans, and then only told her husband a little more than a month before the marathon. She emailed me on her way home from D.C. telling me of her great success and all the fun she had.  In our first conversation after the marathon she was already saying, “next year.”

So this year I made a secret plan to cheer Nancy. We had been emailing quite a bit. She started doing track workouts in Lake Placid, about a 40 mile drive  from her home. She gave up hiking to run more miles. Her tallies  are hugely impressive:30 weeks training, 169 miles of hiking, 15 high peaks, 610 miles of running. Nancy sent me an email one week before the marathon telling me she was going on “a little backpack” How can any backpack, especially in the ‘Adirondacks be little?

Because no one knew I would be in D.C.,  I had to make a good plan to see her. I looked at her time last year, 5:24  and estimated a faster run 5:00. I made three hand painted signs. Once in D.C. I ran directly to mile 16, and waited. It only took about 15 minutes and there was Nancy. She saw my sign “Nancy Morrill is a Star” and shrieked with joy, we had a very quick hug and I yelled to her, “go, go.” I crossed the mall and caught the above photo of her at mile 19. She was simply jubilant and just motoring along.

We had one more brief greeting before I jumped on the Metro to the finish. I ran down to mile 26, my phone dying so I could not  track her but she kept tight to her pace. The road was packed with people, and like clockwork, there she was. I was screaming to her, trying to send energy because there is a seriously steep uphill at the end. It goes straight up and is rather cruel.

I did not know if I would see her again but I thought it would be really nice to actually talk. I had no idea where she was staying or what exit she would leave the athlete village, so I just picked the most crowded exit and sat myself there. I figured I would wait 30 minutes and see if she comes by. If not, I would go to Chinatown and get a hopefully non exploding bus back to NYC. Thirty minutes passed and there were a lot of people so I gave it a few more minutes and guess what? Nancy came walking down the road. Holy Cow! What an exciting moment. I was so thrilled to see her, to congratulate her, and give her a big hug. I had not seen Nancy in 2 years. The day could not have been more perfect.

Nancy’s marathon was  magnificent! She ran 32 minutes faster this year, a 4:52 and was 20th out of 90 in the 60-64 age group, that’s 65.7% AG. I do not know anyone who has taken over 30 minutes off their time in just one year. She was just amazing.

So will next year be a Boston Marathon Qualifier, is only another 7  minutes? No, next year is all hiking, her number one passion. Rumor has is it, her plans include some big mountain in Nepal.

more photos will hopefully follow

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This skinny grey haired chick will kick your ass!

Williamsburg Hipster

In woke up this morning at 5am, after being at a dinner party until midnight, wondering why I god’s earth did I think it would be fun to sprint back and forth over the Williamsburg Bridge at the crack of dawn. I text my always ready for an adventure  32 year old running buddy, “David, doesn’t sleeping in sound good?” I immediately get the reply, “race, then go back to bed.” darn

The first annual Bolt the Billyburg, is a 2.75 race beginning in Brooklyn at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge, run up, over and down, then back up over and down. But it starts in Brooklyn so I ran over the bridge to get there, a nice warm up. The race was super well organized by Mikal Cook, Rouge Runners Production. It was Mikal’s first time organizing a race and he did an awesome job. He has to be a runner to do this so well, though I know nothing about him. It was a small very friendly group, everything was like clock-work. Afterward we went to PIPS- Art and Table Tennis Space and  received cool t-shirts, the winner and slowest guy got a hoodie and there was PBR and water.  At 8:00am I would sleep the rest of the day if I drank  beer  so I stayed with water.

I am confident that I was the oldest runner. After all, Billyburg is the home of the young hipster set. But don’t let my grey hair fool you, I can kick the ass of many under 35 year old dudes, and I did. Yea, grandma got respect at the end, boys coming up saying how I blew by them, a PT telling me what good form I had as I came down the final 200 meters at 5:30 pace. That is not a fast pace if your only running 200 meters  but after running 2.75 miles up from 0 elevation to 400 twice, back to 0 then 400 again, I was moving. Here is how it looked:

Bolted the Billy

We started in two waves and I went in the second. I spotted who my competition would be. David tells me I could win the women’s race, my main concern: Do not get beat by the pink skort. I let pink skort go in the first wave and I would chase her down, and I did. But thinking our waves were 1 minute apartment, I was wrong, I did not push quite as hard as I should have. Pink skort beat me by 6 seconds! Crap.  Oh but it was a fun. The race was two hours ago and my lungs are still burning.  For almost 3/4th mile  you climb, then the fast downhill, and another almost mile climb. David came in second and I came in second. The winning guy ran 16:??, David ran 18:?? I ran 20:43, averaging a 7:30 pace overall, the last guy coming in around 24:00.

At the beer and cheer  I met a girl from my hood who I made a running date with, then David and I tucked our butts back in and walked briskly back over the bridge to Manhattan.

Lastly, today is October 15th. I have just one more run to do today and I will have completed 50 runs in 50 days!! Woo Hoo

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NO NYC Marathon YES Venice

 I woke up this morning and said to myself, “I am not running the marathon.”

This is not totally out of the blue. I have been contemplating it the last couple of weeks because frankly I have no fire in my belly to run it. The idea may have started  back in May when I was awarded a slot at the Venice Biennale to run on the Allora & Calzadilla “Track and Field” sculpture in the American Pavillion.

My time is immediately after the marathon. I spend the past two weeks trying to find the best flight,  it looked like I would run the marathon, rest 4 hours and  on an 11 hour flight, have one day of rest then run 4 times a day for the next 8 days.  I can hear the sighs. Then last Saturday I ran one of my worst 1/2 marathon on history waking up the next morning with a stuffed up head and hacking cough that I still have.

And there were still  unanswered question. Why is it that every run I do I feel like I am fighting my body? For any of you that follow this blog you know I started asking this question back July when I was  in New Mexico. I had a theory that all my runs in NM were all anaerobic. So does that mean I short-changed my aerobic fitness? Could I be overtrained even though I was running under 30 miles a week?  Maybe I a undertrained because I never did runs over 13 miles – but those miles were at 13,000 feet? So I ran more once I got back to NYC, 230 mile in the last month and I still feel like I am fighting my body,  I am not tired or sore but I am cranky with major anger issues.  This calls for expert help.

I called Coach Roy Benson. I very sadly learned he has retired from personal coaching but we could still chit chat on the phone and meet up at the Millrose Games! Coach is a smart one all right and boy will I miss him. He asked me how long was I running in NM before it got easier? “What do you mean? It was suppose to get easier?” If I wasn’t such a numb skull I would have called him before I went to NM to train. Apparently I should have thrown away my watch and ran  really slow, working only aerobically until my body got used to the high altitude. Only then should I start to push the pace. A good indication of that would be the ability to run at a mile pace 30 seconds slower than what I run at sea level for an extended period of time.(that is the calculated physiological difference at 7200 feet)  For example before I left NYC an easy long run would be 15 miles at  8:45 – 9:00 pace. There if I trained right what would feel easy would be 9:30′s for 15 miles. Yea, I didn’t do it that way. I pushed every single run as hard as I could. What a dork.

Coach said, “Hilary you know the answer to this, throw away the watch and only slow jogging for the rest of the month. You have an obligation in Venice and you can’t show up all broken. Only jogging! And if a few weeks from now you get the idea to start running harder, call me, I will put you back in place.” Gosh Coach, I am really going to miss your sternness.

I need someone like that in my life every day! “Hilary you cannot marshal a race and run a race that happens at the same time! Hilary you cannot write a review for an exhibition that you have to go see the same day you are running a 20 milers and have friends in from the Netherlands that you are taking to dinner and still spend 3 hours walking your dogs!” In my mind I think, “oh that is so fun yes I want to do it, and that would be fun too I want to do it” and so on and so on. I don’t overbook myself because I think I am super woman. I overbook, overrun, over everything  because I think it will be fun. And it always is, but stressful because too much fun is not fun.

Back to Venice. I booked my ticket to fly out on Saturday Nov. 5th  and by  4pm Sunday I will be  wearing the USA Olympic Uniform and running onto a WWII tank. I just might pee myself with excitement.

Dang I am feeling so happy I am going out for a little jog with my dog.

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