If we’ve failed at blogging about training (I assume successful blogging rule #1 is be consistent, so we’ve indeed failed), Todd has a boot on his foot when he’s not running, and I have a letter from my condo about leaving my sneakers in the hall (more on that later), to prove we’ve been hitting the pavement.  Here are some photos I took running over the past month.  Please excuse the predictable sunrise-on-water nature of all of them.  I can only be such a creative smart phone photographer at 5:45am.  I’ve also included a photo of shells I found in Siesta Key, a propos of nothing.  Oh, and one more, too.

I haven’t done enough races that they blur together in my mind, or to pay for a 26.2 sticker to put on my car.  If I got one for free, though, I’d smack it on with pride.  Then, when I move back to NY and give that car back to my grandparents, people will look in awe at that elderly couple, at least one of whom is a marathon runner.  How did they do it?! (Just kidding, Granny and Pop-Pop!)

Every race is different, and this upcoming one, for better or worse, snuck up on me.  And, unless my sister has really been holding out on me, this will be my first race that won’t be my fastest one.  This is my third marathon running alongside someone who’s racing for the first time, and my second marathon where it’s her first, not mine.  Are these totally boring and inconsequential comparisons?  Definitely.  But I bet other runners think about them, until marathons stack up more than birthdays, and they only remember the really great or really awful ones.  I haven’t had an awful one yet, but there must be some stipulation in the laws of probability, of which I remember nothing, that guarantees I will.

Until then, I’ll keep plodding along on my long, boring training runs, even when it starts pouring outside, and I know I can’t get any more wet or more dry so I might as well keep going.  When I get back to my apartment, I’ll leave my soggy sneakers in the hallway, a wistful, fleeting attempt to keep my apartment tidy.  Then, I’ll get a letter from the powers that be in my condo  that not one, but two neighbors (I think I only have two, so 100% of my neighbors) complained about sneakers left in the hallway.  The powers that be will remind me in the most polite of passive-aggressive terms, “being that the hallway is not an extension of your apartment, we would like to ask that all personal belongings be kept inside your apartment.”  Did you know I lived in the Trump Towers?  Me neither.  Would you have imagined the Trump Towers being situated just a stone’s throw from government-funded housing for crazy people who smoke cigarettes outside their apartments wearing puffy down jackets in 90 degree heat all day long?  Ditto.

If I get sick of running, I may take up the worthwhile cause of fighting age discrimination in South Florida condominiums.  For now,  see (a handful of) you at the finish line!