A Plan, A Plan! (and a short Sam update too)

After a bit pondering last night, and some talking with Ryan about my running, I have come up with a new plan. I decided to leave the little penciled-in mileage notes in my planner, but I am not going to be beholden to them. I will use them as guidelines, but try not to stress over what I "have" to run for any particular day, or any particular week. As Ryan pointed out, I could follow the plan to a T and still not have a good race. Or I could run whatever the heck I want all winter/spring long and have a good race anyway. He also noted that 50 miles is a long way and it is not normal to run that far. We just happen to be friends with a lot of kick-ass people who do these ultra distances for fun :-) Ha.

So anyway, I am not sure why I got so worked up over my run yesterday, but it did get me thinking about things. I took a look at the calendar and realized there is still a lot of time until Pineland. There is still time for many 20+ mile runs. And that, oh yes, I have one other ultra on my calendar before that, and perhaps I should focus on that for the moment instead. Somewhere, back in early January, in a fit of "Why not? What a great idea! It will be grand!," Ryan and I signed up for the TARC Spring Classic 50k on April 28. Given how the past 2 months have gone for Ryan, I don't know if he will run. But I am definitely running. I had originally thought maybe I should do it as a training run for Pineland and go for time on my feet. But I think I will try to race it, you know, just to see how it goes. If it goes well and I think I can run Pineland a month later, awesome! If not, I will have gotten in a good spring ultra (a shorter one, yes, but still). Phew. I feel better now.

~

As for Sam, this morning, she walked down the stairs without me holding her hand. She held onto the railing with one hand and her baby and pretty (ie. little lovey and little blanket that she sleeps with) in the other hand. I stayed by her side, but let her walk down all on her own. She is getting so grown up! She's a little late in doing this, probably, but she is so small that some of the bigger, more physical things like this, and climbing into a kitchen chair all on her own, have taken a bit of a backseat to her verbal development until now. She has also moved up a room in daycare and has progressed down the hall to the "big kid" zone. She is so excited, because it means she has finally caught up with some of her friends who moved down there first. It is just so cute. Now if we could just get her potty trained and sleeping consistently for long stretches in the night, we would be set :-)