Seriously?!?! Ugh. Moving on....less than a month to go...

After a mentally exhausting, life sucking, working 14-16 hour days, canceling my pole fitness classes, missing my friend's birthday party, missing a painting and wine tasting night out with a friend, not running because I was working late two weeks - I was sucker punched in the gut with an extremely disappointing and demotivating rushed performance review/push the button meeting.  Followed by email after email of all the other people that got promoted and each one felt like a kick while I was down.  I went home Friday night, after not eating all day because I had no appetite and felt physically ill by the slap in the face "you're awesome, but you got an average rating", and had a beer and another and another.  It didn't make me feel any better.

On the brightside, I offered to personally match donations made to my fundraising all last week and by the end of the day Friday I had ~$400 in donations posted to my page.  With my match and my company's match for my donation my total will be very very close to $15,000!!!!  I will be increasing my goal again if I get to 15K.  I also baked cookies for the Dana Farber team run the next morning.  I made 3 different kinds of cookies - oatmeal awesomeness, chocolate toffee, and chocolate peanut butter chip.  I worry that the back of the pack runners might miss out so I keep baking more and more each week.  This week was perfect.  We had more than enough to go around.  Knowing how much everyone really looks forward to them and enjoys them makes me feel good baking them. 

Saturday morning I did an 18 mile training run with the DFMC team on the marathon course.  We started in Newton Center and ran down the hills into Wellesley and back.  It wasn't pretty but I got it done.  I think the lack of food from the day before plus the beers dehydrated me and caused a serious case of lead legs.  I got really gased on the last 3 miles and just had nothing left in the tank, but I pushed through it and finished.  That mental toughness and determination will help me on Marathon Monday and I learned my lesson, beers and no food the day before is a bad idea and doesn't count as "carb loading".

I am hitting the reset button this week and hoping to get back into a routine of mid-week runs.  This weekend will be the last really long run before the taper begins and I want it to be a good one.  I know I can physically do the marathon, I should be pretty close to my goal time based on how most of my training runs have gone.  I need to now focus on stocking the barn with positive mental training bails of hay.  Over the next 4 weeks, I need to do whatever it takes to stay positive and avoid a lot of the media coverage and avoid re-living last year.  It's a new year and not only will I be Boston Strong, but I really want to run Boston STRONGER than ever.