la vita è dolce

so i have some catching up to do. i believe we left off on tuesday, which was my (you can guess) birthday =) i think a lot of people thought i was being silly by going to practice on my birthday - after all it's a day for booze and cake and presents right?

but a birthday is also a celebration of life...which for me is also directly tied into why i run in the first place. this running and fundraising allows me to celebrate/give tribute to bouv in a way that also forces me to not take for granted to greatness in my own life. there isn't a run where i don't think of him in some way, often using the memory of that grin to get me through a hill or a last mile. running has pushed me farther than probably anything else in my life. running one marathon is something i never thought i could do - nevermind three-going-on-four! and unfortunately, i can't really describe the sense of "aliveness" that comes with having pushed one's body to travel 26.2 miles on foot. and then, at the risk of sounding like more of a sap than i already do today, there's also the wonderful feeling of having people like you get involved, donate, cheer and encourage me to the finish line...la vita è dolce, no?

so really...to not run on my birthday just wouldn't have seemed right.

so i left work early but a little later than i would have liked, came tearing through the house, changing and grabbing water like a maniac, got a(nother) birthday kiss from the boy, and ran up to the park where practice was just getting started.

we had a mission moment from a woman who had run the san diego marathon last year. she was running for her dad - he was diagnosed with a form of lymphoma 8 years ago, and basically has been in chemo ever since. she said that his life has pretty much been "on hold" ever since then. he was really excited about her running because they are from san diego and he would get to see her cross the finish line.

leading up to even weekend, they found out that her dad would have to go into the hospital for a course of chemo. because he is technically allergic to the treatment, where usually a course of that sort of treatment would take a day, he has to take it very very slowly - over three days. which meant that he was going to miss his girl running over that finish line.

but as luck would have it, the hospital is just off the highway that the san diego marathon is run on, and the enterprising dad convinced his nurses to take him up to the roof so that he could see his daughter run by (coordinated by the wonderful world of cell phones of course).

so somewhere around the 8th mile, the daughter stopped on the course with her running buddy, turned looked up at the roof of the hospital waving her arms to her dad, who was standing on the roof with his nurses, looking down at his daughter, one of a sea of purple - all running for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

and the daughter's voice got all choked up as she told us how moving it was for her dad, who had been fighting this disease for so long, to see so many people running, in part for him - she said that it lifted his spirits in a way that nothing had for a long time and gave him hope.

i got teary as we headed to the hills and knew i'd be able to take them on today.

our mission was to run the upper part of the north hill "efficiently", then recover on the way down, and then the next time we would run up the hill "comfortably hard", and recover on the way back down. repeat.

i did so, and managed to get 10 hill climbs (+ the recovery downs), and with the warm ups, i'm guessing we ran about 5.5 miles. it was a good solid run and i was glad i had done it. i stretched with the team and headed back home, where my man greeted me with a glass of vino and a cheese plate. probably, not the ideal post-run meal but that's when i traded the running shoes for the party hat and celebrated "properly".

today's mileage: 5.5
time run: n/a
season mileage to date: 111.6