G - day minus 140

I'm sick. I'm pulling out of it, I think, but I'm still not feeling like myself so I'm going to pack it in tonight and hope I can sleep it off. Its just a cold, but it hit me pretty hard on Wednesday. I somehow managed to get out of bed and go to class, but that's pretty much all I had the strength to do. I wasn't throwing up or anything, but you know how it is, I just felt terrible. Not too good considering I had a final the next day, but I managed to study a little and the test was pretty easy compared to how hard I thought it would be.

So I skipped my run on Wednesday and have been going short yesterday and today. I can't stand it, but yesterday I could hardly catch my breath on my five miler; it felt like I was running underwater. Today was better in that I ran some hills and felt strong, but still only five miles. Somewhere, I think on runnersworld.com, I heard that your immunity takes a dive after a long distance race. I'm inclined to believe that because I haven't gotten sick since I've started running, but now that I've ran a longer distance race, I've gotten sick a short while after. Now, I know causation doesn't imply correlation, but its a theory. So, because of the short week, I think I'll forgo my long run this week, and put in two longer, but not that long runs. To see how much endurance I can recoup, not mileage.

Now, I love Daily Mile, I love the people I've met through it, but one thing I have a love/ hate relationship is the weekly milage leaderboard. Usually, I'm at the top, if not at the top. This week: 20 miles total, and obviously towards the bottom. I can't stand it, being a competitive person because I know I can do better, but I'll try to keep it together- on Monday eveyrbody starts out at zero. I shouldn't say that, it makes me sound cocky and arrogant as hell. Martin Parnell is running his MarathonQuest 250, his quest to run 250 marathons to raise money for Right To Play is my friend, so if all goes well, he'll put in 131 miles per week, and I'll be perpetually in second. Naturally, if you make the list long enough, I'll fall back far enough into oblivion, which is why I like to keep my lists short.

I switched to new shoes, well actually old shoes, but they're a new pair. I switched to a new pair of Adrenaline GTS 8's from my Adrenaline GTS 10's which had, I dunno, 530 or so miles on them. I could have kept running in them, but it seemed like a good idea to switch as I was at the end of a training cycle. I love both shoes a lot, I think I'm on my fifth or sixth pair of 8's, and will probably get a few more pairs of 10's- they're just a little different. I don't know if anyone was reading this when I switched to my 10's from an old pair of 8's, but I was complaining a lot from what I thought was Morton's Neuroma. If I remember right, I was close to a race, or something like that, so I was freaking out. In reality, I was probably just overreacting to adjusting to a shallow toe box. Well, I'm getting that pain again between my fourth and fifth metatarsals, but its confined to going up hills at this point. I'm re- adjusting to the wider toe box, and I really hope the pain doesn't flare up that badly again. I'm wondering what will happen when I get a narrow toe boxed shoe again?

Speaking of new shoes, I'm thinking of getting a pair of Green Silence's, Brooks' eco- friendly racing flat. I've never owned a racing flat, so I'm really interested to get some. However, that will probably make me push another 100 or so miles out of my 8's, but they're durable shoes and they can handle it.

In other news, why do I feel like I'm being robbed at gunpoint when I do anything at St. Thomas besides going to class. I like the school, don't get me wrong, but I'm glad my parents are footing most of the bill. I know St. Thomas is a private school so they can do whatever they want, but I'm really not a fan of some of their practices. But I don't want to get the St. Thomas suits mad at me- or should I say, The University of Saint Thomas presented by Best Buy suits (cheap shot, my bad), so I'll stay away from most criticisms, but here are a couple. So I had to buy three books for January Term, which cost $50 total. I sold all three back yesterday for a grand total of $8. ARE YOU KIDDING ME ST. THOMAS? This semester I rented all my books from chegg.com and, although I wont be able to sell them at the end of the semester, I saved like $280 over the bookstore.

I also just finished reading Ultramarathon Man. Good book, very inspiring, and almost made me go out the door and run 30 miles. I'm probably not anytime soon, but how fun would that be? maybe I'm a masochist, but I think that would be awesome. I was thinking about checking out George Sheehan's book "Running and Being" because I want to read it, but second semester starts Monday, and I don't think I'll have time to read it.