The Happy Gardener

13 more days to go. I ran today after 8 days. I've been resting my shin/calf over the last week (well, not completely - I did have a dance performance last Sat'day and had a couple of practice sessions for it over the week but still) and was getting worried if I could get back to running ok. I got on the treadmill, walked for abt 10 mins and stretched a little before starting to run. The walk felt ok so I thought the run would be good too. But when I started, my shins were still stiff and sore and I felt like I was just shuffling my feet. After a couple of miles though, they felt better. But my breathing was a little out of whack and I felt pretty thirsty soon so I stopped at 4 miles ( I had planned to do 5 initially). Anyways, it felt pretty good after the run. I spent a good half hour stretching and stopped by CVS and bought a knee support(have occasional issues with the left ITB) and a re-usable ice wrap after spending another half hour poring over all the details on all the

Every since I started running, my list of favorite things has changed: 1. Having no shin splints. 2. The sweet pain that comes when you stretch your muscles a little further than the last time. 3. Crossing the finish line 4. The deep, deep, dreamless 10 hours of sleep on the night of the long run. 5. Cool wind in my sweaty hair. 6. The disconnected conversations of the runners after a long and tiring run. None of us can concentrate long enough to say something meaningful. 7. Running on pine needles - the softest surface on earth. 8. My running shoes 9. Spending 25 minutes in the shower after the run. 10. Eating ice cream with no guilt whatsoever. 11. The 1 hour drive back home from Boston after the run. 12. Flat stretches of land. 13. Lazy and languid Sat'day aft'noons .

Last Saturday was our 21 mile run. It was to be the longest run we would do before the marathon. Interesting tidbit for the non-marathoners out there : You never run the full 26 miles while you are training for the marathon - the wisdom behind that being you don't want to run the marathon twice. I didn't know that either. When someone explained it to me, I was like "Huh, of course, it makes sense!". I mean, really, it wouldn't feel the same way when you victoriously run past the finish line in the marathon and think "yeah, it feels the same as it did the last time on the practice run", right?. Coming back from the little detour and focusing on the last run again: As I was saying, the 21 mile run was on 29 th September. I had been having issues with my shins for the past couple of runs and my legs weren't really feeling all that great. But I knew I had to do this run 'cause this was it. This was as close as it can get. So I planned to get to Davi