48 hours from Hell

So... last weekend was ridiculous!
Last week's mileage was 75 which is pretty close to if not the highest mileage I've ever done in a week! And boy was I tired by the end.

So Wednesday night I probably got my usual 5-6 hours of sleep (not enough). I woke up at 5:30 to do my 6 miles. I finished the final season of 24 :( I took about a 3 hour nap. Then I had another 4 mile run at about 3:30 in the afternoon. Of course it was about 105 degrees. ugh. Then I got ready and went into work. 5-close. I work at a local movie theater and of course we did a midnight show for Harry Potter. We sold out of 9 screens. That's over 1600 people. Needless to say it was absolutely ridiculous. It started out not so bad, but by 10:30 we were getting dominated in the concession stand. I had to get off my register and start doing all the things that needed to be done for the people taking orders. We were running out of popcorn, drink cups, pretzels, hot dogs, lids.. pretty much everything in that concession stand was running low. As a supervisor, it's my job to make sure that everything is stocked and we don't run out. When we're that busy, that means running around the place doing 3892053 different things. I saw some friends there, but there was no way I could stop and talk.

This isn't even that good of a picture to describe it. 

I guess it was lines about that long all night.. but towards the end it was so crowded you couldn't see the floor like that. It was packed in there. 

Sometime around 11:00, I remember thinking we still have 1 more hour before the movie starts and everyone will just go sit still. I was sweating really bad because I was running around.. it was really bad and I felt so gross at the end of the night. Also, around 11:00, our drink machine stopped working in out main concession stand. Couldn't fill people's cups up. Do you know how bad that is? Out of 1600+ people, just imagine how many wanted a drink.. I'm just glad I wasn't on the register having to tell people they weren't working. We opened our side concession stands, but they don't have all the drinks the main ones do.. plus it's just real inconvenience. Oh well. There was nothing else we could do. Finally about 10 after midnight we stopped getting customers. I've seriously never experienced anything like that in my 4 years of working there. After all the people stopped coming, it was time to close down. For me, that means counting all of the items we sell. Yeah, we do inventory every night. It sucks. We were finally done around 1:30, but my manger needed some people to stay until the movie got out to help collect 3D glasses and clean the theaters a little.. at least pick up drinks and buckets of popcorn.
I didn't leave until 2:45ish.

At this point I knew that if I wanted to wake up and do my 10 miles at 5:30.. I most likely would not wake up with only like 2 and a half hours of sleep.. so I just decided to go ahead and run. I ran from about 3:00-4:00 in the morning. It was actually a really good run, I was just super tired. I got in bed at about 5:30 AM and slept till around 10:30. I had to be at work Friday at 12. I worked for 12 hours Friday. It was miserable. 12 pm to 12 am. I was so tired of the place by the end of the day. I almost quit twice that day. The managers were just being real bitches *excuse my language haha. But I work my ass off for that place.. and especially was this weekend. I was doing everything I could and better than anyone else up there can. So to be given the attitude I was or treated the way they were treating me did not go over well with me. Also.. the stupid high schoolers I work with like to talk trash behind my back for some reason.. They're so dumb and I was not in the mood to deal with their shit while working a double. By the end of the day, I was just thinking "why have I worked my ass of for a place for 4 years in a supervisor position only getting minimum wage?!?! walk out now and see how much better you'll feel and how shocked everyone will be" It certainly would have made a statement.. but in all actuality I love that place. I love the people and they love me.. we were just all having a really long and hard weekend. I'm going to be getting free movies for the rest of my life.. soooo I can handle a few rough weekends I guess.

Well, I got off at midnight and slept till about 5:30 before I had to get up and going for my long run. 15 miles. I started off not really knowing if I could physically do it. My legs and whole body actually was just so tired. After about 2-3 miles I was just thinking "you still have 12-13 left.. ahhhhhh" When I finally got to the half way mark.. I was so relieved.. except I knew I had to push myself harder the second half to get the quality run in I wanted. Surprisingly, I was feeling really strong the last 7 miles and it wound up being a really good run. Sooooo anyway, those 2 days just sucked all around.
Work wasn't too bad Saturday or Sunday because everyone had seen Harry Potter by that time.

I've been meaning to do this post all week.. but I've just been busy. This has been a really good week! I'll try to post again during the weekend with an update on this week because I'm in Starkville visiting my amazing girlfriend and it's been awesome so far sooooo I'll talk about that in the next post!

We're almost to the weekend. We can make it! haha

Tired

I'm having one of those days..
I don't really feel like moving or talking. I want to sleep and watch 24.
I really should get out of this mood though.. I guess I'm not in a very friendly state, but I shouldn't be taking it out on others.

I ran 14 miles this morning. It was super hard. I feel like it shouldn't have been that hard. I still have to increase my mileage by 10 miles before I reach my max. Not sure how this is going to go over feeling like I did this morning. I'm going to take next week a little easier. I went 3 weeks pretty hard and 1 easy for the last cycle and this one I'm going to do 2 hard 1 easy and then the last 1 a little harder I think. After talking to my super fast girlfriend about her run this morning, it made me feel even a little worse about my run. She was 17th at nationals in the 10k.. so she is really really good, but her run was just barely slower than mine. I just feel like if I want to be a really fast guy.. I should be running even faster. She assures me I'm running really strong and probably faster than most of my teammates. I'm just going to spend the next week focussing on getting the mileage in and not so much on pace.

I've watched like 9 episodes of 24 in the past 24 hours. It's sooo addicting and I have nothing else to do.

I finished my nutrition class last night! I got a 91 on the test which I wasn't too happy with, but I still got a 95 for the class! I can deal with that!

I overindulged myself last night. My family and I went to The American Cafe last night. I wanted pasta, but I got like the cheesiest one. I was able to pick off most of the cheese, but then of course I saw they had a peanut butter ice cream pie. I wound up eating most of it by myself and it was huge. I just kept thinking that I was running 14 miles in the morning and I needed all the food I could get and that tasted SO good. I shouldn't have gotten that, though. I should have waited till I was home and eaten something else. Oh well, it's in the past. I haven't done any circuit work in a week or 2.. starting to lose whatever abs I was getting :/ My peanut butter intake certainly isn't helping! haha

I have to go in to work at 5. Hope I'm awake and ready to sell some large drinks! (There's a contest going on to sell large drinks. Each drink has a point value and the first 2 people to 3500 points get $50. Right now I'm in the lead by about 400 points and I'm at 2476 I think.. sooo I'm almost there and with Harry Potter coming out soon we're going to be so busy!)

Well.. I'm going to get back to my show.
Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Summer in a nutshell

Pretty much all I do every day is run, eat, nap, watch 24, maybe do some homework for my Nutrition class, and work! I pretty much love all these things so I don't really care that I don't have much of a social life outside of these things haha. I know, it's sad.

Such a great show. I've watched 6 seasons in about a month and a half.

Each episodes is about 45 minutes long and there are 24 episodes in a season.

If you haven't seen it, you need to. It's addicting.

Well obviously I haven't blogged in a long time.. I guess I just thought no one ever read it or that I just didn't have very important things to say. I kinda want to use this as either a training log for my running or maybe just a way to share with people the things I learn as I grow in my faith. But I guess I feel like I haven't learned too much to grow in my faith.. which needs to change and I keep a running log on paper sooo doing it twice seems kind of pointless and I don't even know that people really would be interested to hear about my training. Most of this summer I haven't even really wanted people to know about my training..

I guess I'll address my running, though. This summer has been really intense so far. I want to be really good this year and so I'm taking all my runs pretty serious. I don't run hard every day, but I just stay focussed. On aerobic development runs, I start off at my easy pace, but the last half I get my legs going and by the end I'm running 6:00 pace. Apparently this is faster than some of my teammates have been running. I'm not sure though because none of them ever talk about paces.. Everyone just says they are having pretty solid runs. I wish I knew what they were really up to. Are they working hard at all? Are they working as hard as me? Are they running faster than me? I just can't wait to see where I stand on this team because I haven't really known since November where I stand. Anyways, some days I feel really tired and my legs feel super heavy and it makes me wonder if I can keep this up until November. I mean, that is a long way away. I start thinking about the really hard workouts we're going to be doing when we get down to school and I wonder how my legs are going to hold up if they're already this tired. I guess I'll manage. I also wonder how I'm supposed to do 10 mile tempos at 5:20 pace if I can't even do 10 miles under 6 minute pace without being pretty shot.  I know it's early and I'm not supposed to be there yet, but I feel like I'm running a lot faster than I ever have before so I'm excited to see what kind of season I'm going to have. Hopefully my hard work pays off!

Yesterday, me and my girlfriend Haley were looking at the stats on our blogs. Although I thought no one reads this thing, I guess quite a few people that read her blog tend to find mine and see what I'm up to. haha soooo Hi all of Haley's followers :) I'll try to blog more so that you can get both sides of our relationship or at least see more of the real me and not just all the nice things she says about me :)

A Week Away

Spring Break! I finally get some down time! I've been home for a few days now and it's just great! I brought one of my friends back with me Saturday and we went to see Rango... but it sucked so we went to Just Go With It. It was actually pretty good! Then Sunday I got to go to Central Church again! Love that place. Our pastor wasn't there this week, but the message was still good.. just not the same as when Ernie gives the sermon. I've definitely enjoyed the food of being home. Home-cooked meals are so great. Today was a very boring day, though. I woke up and was on the couch alllllllllll day. pretty bad. I finally did some stretching and tried to run. It just did not feel right. I could tell it was getting worse with every step. I stopped at the stop sign. Didn't do any damage.. still doesn't hurt walking, but I just want to be running. Maybe tomorrow I won't be so lazy and tomorrow will be a successful day of running...

A week away from Starkville.. what am I going to do? I feel like I might as well have stayed because I'm just sitting in the house alone. haha I'll find something to do though!

AAAAAA

Sooo school! A little stressful for unnecessary reasons.
I'm sure I covered in a post earlier this year that I'm in 20 hours.. and whew it's catching up to me. Luckily we are over halfway and I am 99% sure I can get another 4.0! After midterms I do.. and I should be able to keep up the same work effort or less and keep it. Lately, I keep missing like 1 question on a quiz or something with only 10 questions. I hate 10 question stuff. I study and study and study.. for what? to get tricked by one question. Still and A.. just the lowest A. I just freak out because then it's going to be easy to drop to a B if I happen to miss 2 on a quiz one time or something. Not like that would be the end of the world or anything... well tomorrow I have another one of those stupid 10 question quizzes that I had to read like 15 news articles for. who knows what kinda of questions will be on this quiz but oh well.

I found out that because I will not be running in the first meet, I get to go home on Saturday! I'm pretty excited.. mostly because I get to go to Central church! Secondly because I'll get to spend time with my family and thirdly because I'll get to work and make some money and see some free movies!

Running.. running running running...
Cross training was not going so hott earlier this week. After every bike workout.. I was in a lot of pain that lasted all night and the next day and would have me limping. I ask my trainer about it. She suggests switching bikes/aqua jogging. I aqua jogged that day, but I was really tight/sore and in a little bit of pain that night, but it didn't really continue over to today. Today I tried the new bike.. didn't do a workout, but would up still getting a good one in. 24.2 miles in 65 minutes! And after I finished.. no pain! no limping! yay! What's weird today though, is that what has been bothering me today was not really my back muscle I was struggling with earlier, but it was more hip flexor and mostly IT Band issues. I'm just glad my back wasn't hurting. I know what to do to help my IT Band and hip flexor. I have no clue what is REALLY even hurting when I get the back pain. Everyone says it's muscular, but what muscle? What can I do for it? Apparently, just rest. Well hopefully a mixture of this new bike and aqua jogging will not make anything any worse and only help me get better!

Last thing before I go - My girlfriend is really helping me keep this positive attitude about coming back from this painful back stuff and just hard times with recovery and stressing about school. As bad as I think I have it.. I don't at all. At my worst of worsts.. I have it made. I definitely need to keep myself humble.

stupid mike just got my computer wet.

Down to the Wire

Down to the wire
I wanted water but
I'll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I'll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me, testing me


-John Mayer "Vultures"


Well, I am currently listening to John Mayer trying to relax. Maybe writing some stuff will help.

My current frustration is running, so I'm going to start here while my minds on it. If i was going in order of importance, school would be my next update but, oh well.
Things were going so great since my last post wayyyyy back in early February when I was just getting back into shape from the muscle spasm I had before Christmas break. I was finally pushing through workouts up in the top group or right behind. One Saturday morning we did a tempo. I only had 8 miles, some other guys had less, but a couple had 10. I stayed with the guys that had 10 for all 8! 43:13 for 8 miles - I was pretty freaking happy about it. I mean, not amazing, but I was back in shape! I felt great! I felt part of the team again and worthy of being on the team! So then what happens? The next workout we have was a fartleck on the farm.. Gravel road.. really loose gravel.. pretty windy, and from the first interval everyone was sprinting! I was dying, but I was determined to stay with the top group no matter what. I had just run an 8 mile tempo with them; I could hang on for a 20 something minute fartleck. Of course, a little over half way my back started hurting. It was the same thing as before Christmas. At the end of the workout I couldn't even do the cool down :( It's been 2 weeks. 2 weeks today actually, and I haven't run over 1 minute at a time without wanting to just absolutely die in pain. It hurts when I walk too. I don't know exactly what it is, but my trainer assumes it's the same thing it was last time. I feel like it is and the only thing I could do last time was rest. It doesn't hurt while I bike, but it sure hurts afterwards. I'm starting to wonder if it's doing any good. I feel like I'm actually getting a good workout by biking, but I'm starting to wonder if it's keeping me from getting better. I took yesterday off because I was at home and didn't have a bike or anything to cross train on anyways. Today I felt sooo good! All day! Didn't hurt walking or anything. Once I got off that bike today though, it was back. Painful. I feel like I'm just going to have to start all over again. I've been kind of paranoid lately that there's just some freak thing wrong with me that I'll never be able to fix or figure out how to keep it from coming back. I just want to run. I don't want to be scared that my back will hurt. I love running. I hate seeing the team workout and I can't be in the mix with them. I would rather be dying in a workout than on the stupid bike, or feel the way I do just walking around. It's a whole different kind of pain. Today, the guys did a workout I used to do in high school. A Michigan. It's the freaking hardest workout I've ever done I think. I used to tear those things up.. I so wanted to be able to do it so much faster today than I did in high school to show how far I've come. Once you finish something like that, you just feel strong. At least I always did in high school. Always did the whole freaking thing by myself too because the guys on my team were panzies. Workouts like this make me miss running so bad. I'm going crazy without it. On the other hand, in church on Sunday and actually just in my life in general lately, I've been feeling that I let running take too much control over my attitude, and life in general. I've realized this before, but I really need to do something about it. I guess I feel if I'm not moping about how pissed I am that I can't run that people will think that I don't care, that I'm faking it or something stupid like that. I shouldn't even care what they think.. but it's just hard anyways.. one of the things you love most being taken away from you. It's kinda like if Haley broke up with me right now. I'd still have to see her every day. I'd have to watch other people carry on relationships with her and the only thing I'd want is to be able to have that again. Life goes on though. Running doesn't DEFINE me. It is a talent that the good Lord gave to me and if He wishes me not to use that talent right now, then I need to find another way to glorify Him. I'm going to turn this situation around! I control my attitude and I'm going to make it a good one.

Well I haven't exactly caught up on my Bible readings. I'm like 2 chapters behind :o
I'm spending tonight to catch up. It's much needed. And then to catch up on sleep. I was up till 2 last night/this morning working on a Bio 2 lab. Kill me. haha

Well wish me luck with this attitude change, but also pray my back gets better. I fully believe in the power of prayer :)

A Month. Really?

It has been over a month since I've said anything on here. How sad. Well, a lot has happened since early February: Valentine's Day, some great workouts, some fights, some really goooood times, signed a lease, and had another freaking muscle spasm.

Well let's see...
I'm still on top of my Bible readings, well except for yesterday. But I'm just about caught up and will catch up with no problem. Since February I have finished Leviticus! and I may have even still be in Exodus, but I finished that too! I can't really say I've understood everything or been 100% focussed like I should be, but it has still helped and been great to read. I've only missed one church service this year I think. I'm going to feel bad whenever I go back to Starkville 1st Baptist, though because they notice when I come, so they have probably noticed I haven't been there in a while. I've come home to church twice now, I went to 1st Presbyterian with some of the guys on my team, I missed the one service and I tried out the church Cross Point. Neither of the churches I went to really moved me the way Central church does here at home. I'm excited to go there in the morning. My relationship with God is getting stronger every day. I always tell myself I'm going to be one of those people that prays before every meal, but for some reason, when I actually sit down, I forget. How does this happen? I don't know. I walk in the cafeteria saying "Alright, remember to pray when you sit down" and then when I actually do, I just start talking to people and eating. Is this a bad thing? It obviously indicates that I become too focussed on food and talking to people than God, I think. It's just weird, but I pray a lot now-a-days. I also have been watching the church that my sister goes to in Knoxville! I REALLY like listening to the guy that gives sermons to the university students. He's really good about relating scripture to life and suggesting how to apply it.

I feel like I wrote enough in that paragraph to make this a post, but there's still a lot more for me to talk about, confront, or whatever I'm using this thing for. Maybe just one more topic for tonight.

My girlfriend. Not even sure where to start with this one lately. I feel like we have so many ups and downs. One minute we're fighting, the next we're laughing. One minute I feel old and married, the next I feel the "young and in love" way most people do our age. I mean, all in all it's great and I wouldn't trade it for the world. She's doing a pretty decent job battling her ED lately. There are some aspects I feel that could be a lot better, but I can't imagine going through it and am in no place to judge or make assumptions or tell her what she should do. Sometimes I just want to scream STOP COUNTING. JUST EAT IT. or something along those lines. I kind of did last night actually. Probably not one of my finest moments, but she recognized the problem and confronted it so I was proud of her. It's just weird how hypocritical situations with her and food can be.. like last night she's explaining how healthy the french toast we just made was, but then she was sooo scared to eat it at first. That's one thing I don't understand. I just wanna say listen to yourself haha. Also, she's very smart and clearly knows her problems. She's told me them 32789 times and how to fix them, but for some reason actually doing it is another story. Well, that's the case with a lot of things. "Easier said than done." I feel like this paragraph has been really depressing or I've sounded harsh, but really I'm so proud of her because I know it takes some strength that I don't even know if I have to fight something like that. I KNOW she'll get there one day. Also, she's a freaking beast at running. I'm jealous. 7th at SEC Indoor Championships in the 5k! If she wasn't sick, I think she could have gotten around 5th, but 7th is so great! I feel honored to be dating such a stud runner. haha

Well, it's late. I'm tired. This is long enough. I'll update soon on running/school/other less important matters hahah