Oh look - I'm not too late to get a blog post in for July! Since I seem to be writing an average of one a month. Go me.
A day in the life: weekday edition
Ideal
5am - Wake up, run, stretch, roll, do a couple of strength exercises, start the coffee, prep breakfast, chug Nuun, and shower
6.30am - Little squirt wakes up (thus forcing everyone else to get up as well). Change, feed, entertain, and dress him.
8am - Mr GCA carts kidlet off to daycare and heads to work. I finish my coffee and get going on work for the day, as I work from home.
12pm - Pump/ lunch break/ a bit of cleaning/ chores/ dinner prep.
1pm - Back to work.
4.30pm - Start making dinner
5pm - One of us retrieves kidlet from school, where he has been a delight, taken lovely naps, and refrained from walking over any of the infants in the infant room.
5.30pm - Playground time.
6.30pm - Dinner, bath, lots of reading and playtime (parent and kid), kid runs around the house being adorable and hilarious
7.45pm - Squirt bedtime
8pm - Sit down to work again with a nice cup of tea, work uninterrupted for an hour or two
9.30pm - Locate whatever book I'm reading from wherever child has stashed it, read a bit
10pm - Fall asleep.
Reality
5am - Kid sits bolt upright in bed and fusses till 5.30.
5.30am - Pull on running clothes and stagger out the door.
6.30am - Come home to offspring crying because he can't find mom, and dad Will Not Do. Hasty shower, breakfast, kidtertainment.
8am - Mr GCA carts kidlet off to daycare and heads to work. I put coffee on for the day and set up for the first of 30628235 conference calls.
12pm - Emerge from fugue of conference calls and untangle my brain. Work through lunch.
4pm - Contemplate a run, decide it is too late OR go for a run, take a hasty shower, retrieve kidlet at 5pm, and cook dinner while singing to a disgruntled kidlet who feels he's starved of parental attention
4.30pm - Start making dinner
5pm - One of us retrieves kidlet from school. His teachers claim he has generally been a delight. 'We're going to miss him when he goes to the toddler room next month,' they chirp. I suspect this is code for 'He is great but we are exhausted'.
5.30pm - Playground time.
6.30pm - Dinner, bath, lots of reading (parent and kid), kid runs around the house being adorable and hilarious
7.45pm - Kid runs around the house being adorable and hilarious
8pm - Kid still running around the house being adorable and hilarious, but it's getting old
8.30pm - Squirt finally asleep. Lose 30 minutes to Facebook, Instagram, and Spider Solitaire on phone
9pm - Sit down to work again with a nice cup of tea. Tea goes cold as kid coughs himself awake and has to be put down again
10pm - Read ebook on phone and pass out with kid on our bed.
2am - Squirt wakes up hungry and gets milk
2.30am - I get hungry and wander to kitchen for trail mix
3am - Fall asleep again
Meanwhile,
...I am still on the no-plan training plan. To run faster, I run faster. The idea is to get comfortable at slightly faster easy pace. Think 9:00-9:30, the faster end of which would frankly be my HM goal pace anyway - I should learn to run this pace by feel.
Right now I'm training ('training'. Where are my laughing/crying face emojis?) for a sub-2:00 at the Baystate Half on October 16. If all goes well* this summer, I might even be able to make that goal.
BUT...an offer ('offer') for the Cambridge Half Marathon just landed in my inbox. It's $65 till August 1, including beer, cider, and a gender-specific long-sleeved tech shirt. The Cambridge Half is literally in my back yard - it's about a mile and a half from my front door, and I'd run to the start line as a warmup. And it's November 13 - a mere month after Baystate.
SHOULD I sign up? Could Cambridge Half be a backup (with potentially cooler, better weather...or possible pouring freezing rain...you know...New England) if I don't hit my arbitrarily selected time goal at Baystate? And if I do, could it be done as just another particularly well-supported long run?
*Break out the laughing crying emoji. Last week I ran a grand total of 17 miles.
