First, I'm a snaggle tooth now. The other night I was eating a delicious chicken tinga taquito, one of many I lovingly prepared for my family, and a filling in my front tooth came out. My children noticed first. The filling is missing, and now I look worse than usual. I probably swallowed that little bit of fake tooth with the taquito, and all I can do is feel the jagged edge with the tip of my tongue.

Something else: it was supposed to be a rainy day, but instead, it just rained in the morning and now it's sunny and 70. Glorious, if you will.

A third thing: I sent some chapters of my next project to my writers' group. I hope they like them. They probably will, and they'll probably have some good ideas about how to make them better. Making them better is a primary aim of mine.

Finally, the time has come to limit caloric consumption. At first, the quarantine seemed like a weird, no-man's land free-for-all. Whatever! We're in quarantine! Eat all the carbs and drink all the wine! Now, it's been like years in here. My stomach hurts a little and some of my clothes feel not the greatest. Maybe some better choices are in order. I run, but as I learned on The Biggest Loser, you can eat your way through any amount of exercise.

I guess that's it.

I've had a couple of magic marathons. My training was solid, I felt confident, and everything went amazingly on race day--strong finishes, even paces, big smiles.

I've also had a couple of just fine marathons. I ran within my fitness and felt pretty good.

And then, there have been a few really hard-fought marathons. My stomach got messed up, my legs dragged more than they should have. I ran through a dark night of the soul to get to the finish line.

This last weekend's marathon was one of the hard-fought ones. After 16 or 17 pretty good miles, I started cramping in my feet and legs. My stomach hurt. I narrowed my focus to one foot in front of the other. About three miles from the finish line, I reminded myself that if I dropped out, I'd have to go home and tell my children that I didn't finish the race because, in the end, I just didn't feel like it.

That's not really the message I've been trying to impart to my kids about sticking with the hard things. I've been more on the "try your best and accept your failures" train lately. I've ridden the "don't give up" car. So, one foot in front of the other, right? There really wasn't a choice.

Eventually, I got to the end and meandered through the finish area. Only one volunteer asked if I needed the medical tent. I made it to the light rail train, which I planned to ride back home. This was harrowing because of my stomach situation, but you'll be happy to know I held off the sickness. When I arrived at the homestead, I burst in the door. Shef stood to give me a hug, and I ducked under his arm and headed for the powder room. On the way, I accidentally yakked on the kitchen floor.

That's the kind of day it was. I pointed at the vomit and told Dan, "I didn't make it." It's true I didn't make it in that one instance, but in the "finish the marathon" sense, I did make it. I just didn't make it look pretty.

My marathon is in two weeks, and I did pretty much all the workouts in my training plan. Well, to be honest, I did have to skip one or two of the hard ones because I'm pretty sure the plan was written for a younger person with enhanced ability to recover. I'm older--a masters runner--and I can only do a maximum of one-and-a-half speed workouts per week.

But, with the exception of that one week where I took an extra day off because I'd tweaked my Achilles tendon (on that run with the turkeys I wrote about), I ran all the miles. Yay!

Last week, I really celebrated my efforts by completing both of the prescribed speed workouts and my final 20-miler. I did that last long run all alone without my headset (I drove to a route and forgot it, which annoyed me till no end). In the final portion of the effort, I kept telling myself, "This is the last mile of your last marathon training run." It was a motivational little mantra.

It was the next day that I realized the problem with my end-of-run, last-mile pep-talk. While it's true that I was in the last mile of that particular marathon training run, I still actually have to go out the door and log the taper miles. I have skipped the taper in many a marathon cycle because I've been too busy teaching, but this time I'm seeing it through. Therefore, I still had a hill workout this week. I did four up-tempo miles yesterday in the early-morning dark. I did them even though I've basically been feeling like my legs are dragging for an entire seven days.

My friend Jordan says that my blah feeling is exactly appropriate. I should be excited to be feeling awful because it means I did the training just right. In two weeks at marathon time, I'll be totally ready. We'll see! I hope so, and I'm looking forward to lightening my load even further after today. Today's my last run over 10 miles. I've got 12, and I'm going with friends. It'll be way better than 20 with no friends and no headset.

Publishing: I'm working on something called "first pass pages," which is when you see your manuscript printed out exactly how it will look in the book with the right fonts and headers and page numbers. It's called "first pass," but really it means "last chance," because it's my very final opportunity to change anything. I'm not supposed to change much -- a word here or an error there. It feels a little nuts to be signing off on all of these sentences, all 96,000 words, or whatever, for the very last time. Many steps of writing Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes have felt like adventures. Reading the pages as other people will (I hope!) read them is one of those steps.

Trail Running: I've finished the Endless Summer Trail Series, an adventurous race series at area parks. I really enjoy these little forays, heading into the woods and trying to finish faster than other people in my age group. I wish I could say that I don't care about winning, but everyone knows I do care about it. At these races, after my kids and my brother and I try to beat as many people as possible, we eat Dominoes pizza and drink a Summit India Extra Pale Ale. Well, the kids don't drink the beer. That's just for me and for other people over the legal age of 21. The pizza and the beer (and the Coke for the children) are included in the race fee, and if that isn't the best model ever, I don't know what is. I'm already looking forward to next summer's trail running adventures.

Eating Out: There's a place in St. Paul that's getting all sorts of buzz, and Dan and I are heading there to celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary tonight. When I thought to get the reservation, there were only two slots available: 5:15 and 8:00. I had to pick the earlier because, well, regardless of how capital-A adventurous our August is, we still have to be in bed by like 9.

About 75% of the time when I sign up for an endurance sporting event, I find myself lying in bed the morning of the race, at the requisite early wake-up time, regretting it.

This was the case yesterday when it was time to head out to the MDRA 15k. Here's why I didn't want to go: It's a team circuit race, so the field would be fast and intimidating. None of my personal friends were going, so I'd be awkward and alone. The weather was sticky, heavy, and slow--not only would my time lag, but I'd also probably feel miserable.

Here are the reasons I went: I already paid the entry fee. I would probably feel righteous at the finish line. I would score points for my team, even though I never go to practice and no one on the team actually knows me. AND, we're blogging about ADVENTURE in August. A 9.3 mile race in the heat and humidity would qualify as adventurous.

Here are the highlights:

• I met a nice woman in the early miles and we chatted about running, a decade apart, in the same Minnesota small-college athletic conference.
• I met a nice guy who provided helpful hints about the locations of the mile-markers and the conditions of the course and also who called me a "beast" at the end, even though he beat me by at least 15 seconds.
• I was in my team photo for the first time ever. The director of the team asked me my name, so now I know one person.
• Although I felt woozy at the finish, I powered through by drinking water and eating a cookie. The cookie was delicious. Maybe eating a cookie isn't supremely adventurous, but given the questionable state of my stomach after heat running, I thought it kind of was.

Nothing quite delights me like a track meet, and this week Mac ran in a USATF all-comers meet in the 3000. It was his first track race, and he ran it well, finishing in twelve minutes and thirty seconds.

That would be exciting enough all on its own, but as a bonus, there was a record set in the same race. A guy named Sherwood Sagedahl, age 80, ran faster than any 80-84-year-old American ever has at the distance. His time was 13:40.42. He seemed to suffer a bit with the effort, but he finished strong, soaking in the modest applause from the incredulous crowd.

We just weren't expecting this kind of excitement at a small meet in regular suburb with little fanfare. What a surprise delight, and also, kind of an inspiration. Anyone who's running at 80 gets an A in my book. You don't even have to set records for being the best 80-year-old of all time.

I love the sport of running. I've been doing it since I was eleven years old, and in fact, it's the only sport I've ever done on a competitive level.

Well, to be fair, I did also play slo-pitch softball when I was seven or nine or so. As I'm not good at throwing or catching, it was a tough go; but I distinctly remember giving it my all.

In any case, because running is literally the only sport I know anything about, it's lucky for me that my oldest child has fallen in love with it. Or, maybe it's unlucky because it turns out I'm highly invested. We have a joke in our house that I run a website called IntenseTrackMom.Com. I don't really have that website, but wouldn't it be a delightful place to hang?

"Mom, are you the only intense track mom?" Shef asked me recently.

"No," I said, thinking about the other moms of kids on the team. "There's Kelly. She's pretty intense." Shef nodded. It's true that Kelly is pretty intense. I've even seen her on her feet cheering for her kid in the final stretch. She'll even stand up if she's in the middle of the bleachers with people behind her. "And Alice is intense," I continued. Alice's kid is like a ten-time state champion, and she seems pretty into track, as it turns out. "And Josie." Shef and I were agreeing about Josie's intensity when Dan broke in.

"But none of them are quite as intense as you," Dan said.

Is that true? I'm not sure I buy it. Indeed, I'm a highly-knowledgeable track fan, but I never harass coaches or officials. I'm extremely well-behaved. Delightful, if you will.

As you know, I'm a dedicated masters athlete. By "dedicated," I mean I miss quite a few workouts, and in terms of "masters," I'm referring to the USATF definition of 40+.

Just to clarify that in case you thought "masters" meant "skilled."

But anyway, I went to the treadmill yesterday and I did the prescribed mileage and speed for my upcoming 10k. I felt super lucky that the Ironman World Championship coverage was re-airing on ABC. It'd make the 40 minutes go fast, watching all those inspiring endurance athletes who don't skip workouts finish something so daunting.

I was running along, virtually cheering the triathletes when a profile of an age-grouper came on. The guy, Leigh Chivers, was competing for his wife who'd died from brain cancer at age 34, and also for his baby son, who died from his own brain cancer just six months later.

Obviously, I sobbed during this profile. It was a little bit awkward to be hiccuping and wheezing while I ran, but anyone else in the gym watching that particular tv had to have had the same reaction.

Can you even imagine a brain cancer diagnosis for your spouse and then, just a short while later, the same terminal diagnosis for your child? And there was Leigh, biking 112 miles and running a marathon, all after finishing a 2.4-mile swim. He was talking about the importance of determination and positive memories.

People might want to watch the profile. You can find it here at 34:18. I'm inspired by this family. People can be pretty good and mightily resilient.

I've been reading Vikki Reich's daily November blog posts, and I've been thinking: how hard could it really be to just write something here once a week?

Vikki is a humor writer I admire, and her blog is really good. So, it's not as if I'm thinking: it'd be so easy to write something like Vikki every week. No, it's just that when I read her stuff I realize blogging has a lot of value, at least to me. I love reading about other people's lives, and I like going back through the archives here and reading about my own life.

Wouldn't it be nice to chronicle a little longer? Just keep track of the mundane?

In any case, here are a couple of things:

• We've been working on volume this week in third grade. As in, noise level. Previously, we've worked on stamina and coping skills. Those things are still high on our list of priorities, but this week I felt like a lot of people were yelling all the time. We've now worked on self-awareness around yelling. I come around and gently remind people about our goals. I say, "It sounds like you're yelling." We've achieved sporadic and marginal success in lessening the frequency of yelling.

• Mac has me obsessed with this podcast called Six Minutes. It's a story about a girl mysteriously lost at sea and the family who takes her in. Also, it's about helicopters and bad guys and hoverboards. It's transformed our commute. Each episode is--shocker--six minutes long. If I can't listen to my new Spotify playlist that includes "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" and has my family engaged in a whole new round of mom-mocking, then I choose Six Minutes.

Here I am finishing the hardest 5k I've ever run.

We're finishing the first week of summer vacation. Actually, I'm just thinking of it as "summer, "and not as "vacation." Last year, when I reframed the whole June-July-and August phenomenon as not time-off, but rather the start of my other jobs, I just felt much happier. I wasn't expecting to be luxuriating and feeling relaxed all the time.

Indeed, I'm not living a life of leisure over here. Instead, I'm being a novelist and a full-time parent and studying for my new job. All of these are time-consuming endeavors, but also a lovely change of pace from my normal 9-5. Or 6:30-5, as the case may be.

I've got a daily task list. It includes laundry and clutter clearing. And, most importantly, I've got butt-in-the-chair time to make progress on the book. The comprehensive revisions are due to my agent by August 6th. I'm excising two characters and adding one. I'm writing more internal thinking. I'm reworking the conflict. To be honest, it feels less like revision and more like re-writing, but so far, I think the changes are making the book more and better than it was before.

In addition, I've got running on the calendar. I joined a running team to celebrate my 40th birthday. I was lured by the possibility of scoring points for the team now that I'm old. Sure enough, I ran an extremely hard 5k last Wednesday. It was the slowest 5k I've ever run, and yet, I finished 2nd in the Women's Masters division. That's a point-scoring position! Yay for 40!

Let's do this, summer. I'm ready for you.

In last week's newsletter (let's be honest, if you're not getting the newsletter, you probably want the newsletter), I wrote about how I have this tendency to sign up for races and then under-train for them.
I did this once again with the Citytrail Loppet.  What happens is you sign up, think you're going to run a lot and be ultra prepared, and then you don't run and aren't. In any case, here are a few stand-out moments from my weekend single-track foray:

• My running pal, Paula, called me the night before the race to remind me to drink a lot of water. It was going to be sunny and hot on race day at 80+ degrees.  "Yep," I replied, thinking of the importance of hydration as I poured a stiff gin and tonic.
• As we milled around the starting line, we noticed that the crowd was extra fit, even for a running race.  "I don't see any cotton," Paula said.  Nope.  Everyone was wearing technical clothing and seemed perfectly muscled and slender.  "I usually rely on a third of the field to be wearing a cotton t-shirt," Paula said. "I'm looking for someone to beat," a friend told me.  "I volunteer," I agreed.
• I'd signed up to be in the first and fastest wave of the race, but on surveying the field, I demoted myself to the second.  Fewer people would need me to move over on the narrow trails to pass.  This was a good choice.  
• Even though the runners are for real, I've noticed that people are generally pretty cheerful and chatty in single-track trail races.  Like, racers in front of you will say, "Let me know if you want to go by!" while leading you deftly through the woods.  It's nice. And then, when people do pass each other, they generally offer an encouraging word or two.  I upheld this tradition heartily.  But, not weirdly or creepily.  It's a balance.
• Something that still weirds me out about trail running is that people generally walk up steep hills.  My high school cross country coach made it seem like the worst, wussiest thing you could ever do to walk up (or down) a hill.  The trail running people have a different philosophy. Their theory is that running hills takes more energy than it's worth in terms of total time.  I like this philosophy, and I think I could probably, with a little time and concentration, turn it into a metaphor for life.
• At the finish line, you got a pint glass and a technical t-shirt with a cool sun logo.  Who doesn't like swag?  I'll remember the effort fondly in my new t-shirt.  I didn't run super fast, but I had a super good time.

So, I finished that dumb race. In the end, I'm glad I did it; but man, it's kind of dumb.

You run for awhile, you cheer on your van-mates for awhile (I taught my van-mates a cheer AND gave them Silly Bandz), you "rest" for awhile (I think I've slept for about 2 hours in the past 37), and then you do all of that two more times.

Liz explained that the reason for increased safety policy at this year's race (we were all required to wear reflective vests and blinking lights and headlamps and use crossing guard flags) was that someone in a different Ragnar in another state got hit by a car.

"Yeah," I said. "That's because this is actually DUMB. It's DUMB to run in the dark on the side of the road."

But anyway, here's the elevation map for my second leg, which was 6.7 miles.
I started this leg at about 11:00pm on Friday night.



As you can see, I encountered quite a few hills, including a 2-mile incline at the beginning of the run. I'm certain this is the biggest hill I've ever climbed while running. Later, at the end of the leg, there's an even steeper incline that lasts for more than a mile.

Let me tell you, this particular run was really flipping hard.

So, Ragnar! That was an experience! Let's do it again sometime later in the future, maybe.

We'll see.

NEVER

Here are some rules from my high school cross country team:

NEVER stop at the bottom of the hill (that would be bad for the psyche, and running is 90% mental).

NEVER stop on a hill (that would be wimpy).

NEVER stop at the top of a hill (momentarily, you'll feel so much better).

Here's the rule from my college cross country team:

NEVER embarrass yourself, the team, or Vanessa. Vanessa was the coach.

These days, I have a few rules for my own personal running team of one, but I guess I try to frame them positively. Like, Believe in yourself! And, Try to run a couple of times per week! But, I do have one NEVER, which is: When training for a marathon, NEVER skip your long run. That's the key to finishing marathons on two or three runs per week.

Finally after months and months of loneliness and despair on my part, my sister will be home in 27 days. I cannot adequately express my relief and happiness about this fact.

My immense relief and happiness survived even her very first homecoming request: she wants us to get pedicures together.

My birth mother (her mother) communicated this desire to me, and I mustered as much enthusiasm as possible.

"I'll totally do that," I said, gamely.

"Won't it be fun?" Martha asked, excited.

"Well," I continued, "you know I don't currently have any toenails."

That wasn't quite true. I do, at this moment, have 5.5 toenails of the usual 10.

Still, it's probably going to be the best homecoming ever.

We've reached the point in the year where school is just sort of dumb.

The students are done, the teachers are done, the administrators send out long emails filled with elaborate plans to JUST KEEP THE LID ON!!

We have six days left.

In the midst of all this, I'm scheduled to run a marathon this weekend. I feel sort of like this marathon could be the worst idea of my life. I feel paunchy, tired, and over Diet-Coked. This is not the ideal condition to be in days before a 26.2-mile race.

But, I did do some running in preparation, so it's likely that I'll haul myself and any cellulite that may or may not have recently developed over the finish line in order to acquire the t-shirt. Needless to say, I'm expecting a pretty slow time.

Marathons are a combination of training and luck. My training since school started has been pretty spotty (as in, I've run six times in the last four weeks), and I had a some bad luck in the form of wicked foot and calf cramps beginning at mile 14 and continuing through the end.

Still, I'm so happy to have finished this race! I didn't make my time goal, but I gave it a good shot. I saw a lot of great friends on the sidelines, and three of my best and oldest friends were also in the field. Between the four of us we've now run thirty marathons. Amazing! Only four of those marathons are mine, and I think I'll probably do another one sometime. It's a pretty cool way to spend a morning, after all.