Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to plan what we’ll do, outside of the obvious day or two at Disney and day or two at Universal Studios (with plenty of time reserved for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter).

I shall return to Epcot to admire all the flowers.

So, I’m in search of suggestions, specifically shopping and eating ones. Anyone?

“You will never run a 50-miler like I will never get a dog!” –Tish Hamilton, my coworker who is driving out tonight to pick up a cockapoo puppy

Tish tweeted earlier today about the JFK 50 Mile Run, how it’s the perfect 50-miler for a first-timer.

I’ve entertained the notion of an ultramarathon before, but I was thinking more along the lines of a 50K. (That’s about the shortest race distance that’s longer than a marathon.)

I Googled the JFK 50 anyway, and I learned that this year is its 50th anniversary. Hmm. That probably means cool shirts and cool medals. And, last year, the “A” qualifying standard for women was a 4:30 marathon. I have six sub-4 marathons under my belt. It’d be nice to feel like one of the “fast” people for a change.

But really, why on earth am I considering this? This race would likely take me at least nine hours. Nine hours! Of running! That’s crazy-talk. I don’t like running that much.

I know, deep down, that I’m only considering this because I like to do impressive things. And honestly, running marathons doesn’t feel all that impressive anymore. I’ve run six of them now, and even when I’m completely miserable for the bulk of the race, I can no longer take too much satisfaction in just finishing.

The Empire State Building Run-Up? I had never done anything like that before, and it sounded uniquely crazy. I was excited to just finish. And this 50-miler, if I did, in fact, manage to finish, would please me in the same way. (It would just take approximately 8 hours and 43 minutes longer.)

I don’t know. Tish says you don’t have to train all that much more for one of these, but she regularly trains a lot more than I do (i.e. 6-7 days/week, 40-55 miles/week versus my 4-5 days/week, 30-50 miles/week during marathon training).

I am at least going to check out the registration guidelines for this year’s race when they’re updated March 1.

Footnote: Someday I will return to blogging about topics other than running. I promise. Stick with me, non-runners.

I avoid secluded trails and paths when running in the wee hours, so a whole lot of my routes take me past the McDonald’s near one of the busiest intersections in town.

The number of times I’ve nearly been run over on the sidewalk where people enter and exit that McDonald’s far exceeds the number of times I’ve nearly been run over anywhere else.

People must really love their Egg McMuffins.

It alarms me how many cars are lined up in that drive-thru every morning. Sure, the coffee is only 89 cents (for any size!). Sure, breakfast sandwiches are delicious. Sure, you don’t even need to get out of your vehicle.

But breakfast is arguably one of the easiest meals to make at home–I’ve been doing it since middle school–and starting your day with McDonald’s sets a certain tone for the rest of the day. A bad tone. Plus, it’s gotta be faster to chow down a bowl of cereal before you leave the house than it is to wait in that infinite drive-thru line.

I enjoy the occasional breakfast sandwich, for certain, but I save them for weekend mornings when I’ve stayed out too late (and consumed too many beers) the night before. (“I already feel disgusting. Might as well make it worse!”) Unless there’s an exceptionally high concentration of alcoholics in my small town, it’s hard to explain why this McDonald’s is so bustling on weekdays before 8 a.m.

And weekday-morning McDonald’s customers don’t seem to sympathize much with runners like myself. On other parts of my route, drivers yield to pedestrians on the sidewalk or in a crosswalk. Not in front of the McDonald’s.

I frequently run behind cars blocking the sidewalk as they wait to turn out, and the driver, facing the other way, hasn’t even considered the possibility that someone might be running or walking. (“Don’t you have a car?”) Drivers trying to enter will see you, assume you’re going to stop, and gun it to turn in in front of you and make it to the drive-thru 10 seconds earlier than they would have if they’d waited for you to pass.

I especially enjoyed the guy who sped up to turn in front of me into the exit. That was my closest call, as I wasn’t even looking for someone coming in the wrong way.

I guess I shouldn’t underestimate the willingness of fast-food junkies to run me over if it gets a paper bag full of grease, salt, and carbs into their hands sooner.

And I managed to stick with it, more or less, for an entire year!

Let’s celebrate by looking at this extremely attractive photo of me cutting a birthday cake.

Happy birthday, blog of mine. Here’s to many more years of awesomeness and people remembering the correct way to spell my name.

If you’ve never done a stair-climb race before, you go out with no idea how to pace yourself, no concept of how fast will end up being too fast. The actual running in such a race is limited–it’s more power-climbing, taking steps two at a time, and using the railings to hurl yourself upward. Your lungs burn. After the first two or three stories, you see no one except the volunteers stationed every few floors, unless you’re passing or being passed. It’s eerily quiet–I remember hearing the tinny sound of a climber’s ringed hand sliding up the metal railing a few floors below me. You try not to look at the floor numbers because you just don’t want to know how far you are from the top.

When you emerge onto the Observation Deck for the lap to the finish line, the cold, fresh air punches you in the face–in a good way. It was snowing out there last night, and a cloud enveloped the top of the building. Almost immediately after you cross the line, you’re ushered back into the warmth…

Today, [my coworkers who ran] and I are all coughing like seasoned chain-smokers–the product of forcing lots of indoor air into our outdoor-conditioned lungs. But the race was a fun, unique experience, and hey, we earned some great-looking medals.

And here is my great-looking medal:

And here’s a photo of me, wearing said medal, in front of the stuffed King Kong in the lobby:

My official finish time was 16:58–better than I expected, since my coworkers who’d run before guessed I’d finish in about 20 minutes. (There’s really no way to know how fast you’ll be able to do this until you do it.)

I was the second woman in the media heat and 19th out of the 225 women who ran. I’m pleased with that, and I don’t feel the need to do this race again.

It was a very cool experience, but I was not doing so well yesterday. I was exhausted from my long day in NYC–I got up around 5:30 and didn’t get home until 12:30–and I think I’m allergic to the Empire State Building’s stairwell. My coworkers were just coughing, but I couldn’t stop sneezing and tearing up. I took Benadryl, which only made me exhausted. But I went to bed before 9 p.m., slept for 10 hours, and now I’m all better.

Just visiting all 50 states would be a great life goal, but it’s harder to get yourself to plan those trips if there’s not a specific reason to go.

(Especially to a state like, say, Wyoming. I don’t have a clue what’s there. I am sure it is scenic, but it’s not a top tourist destination.)

I love to travel, and I love to run, so this is the best of both worlds.

Repeating this marathon this year. How could I not?

When I initially decided to do this, I thought, “If I run a spring and a fall marathon every year, I’ll be done before I’m 50!”

But limiting myself to two marathons a year feels like a waste of training. You prepare for 16 weeks to run a marathon, and if you end the season there, you need to go through the whole mess again before you can rack up another one.

(Training: It’s hard, time-consuming, and not nearly as fun as racing.)

I learned last fall that if I run two marathons about a month apart, I have enough time to recover from the first one while still keeping my fitness. (I also learned that two weeks is not enough time between marathons.)

This will also allow for repeating states, and since I’ve already run three in Pennsylvania–and I’ll probably return to Philly when I finally feel ready to BQ–that’s important.

On the docket this year: California (again), Vermont (possibly), Virginia (almost definitely), and another late-November, early-December race TBD.

Any suggestions?

And this week, he made me a different sandwich for lunch every day of the week. (Seriously. Most awesome thing anyone’s ever done for me. /gushing)

Here are some photos from Sandwich Week. (This is incomplete because I wolfed some of them down before I could take a picture.)

On Sunday, we made these, and I learned that mortadella is basically bologna with even more fat in it. Yes, please.

Monday’s lobster roll. I boiled him myself.

Wednesday: Philly inspired ham and cheese “zep” with hoagie spread. Probably my favorite one, due to the huge quantities of meat and cheese.

Yesterday: Fig, camembert cheese, and parma ham on flatbread. The fanciest/most experimental one. Camembert is a little potent for me, I learned.

Today’s sandwich, fresh mozzarella with basil and tomato, was the simplest one but also one of my favorites. I’m looking forward to making this several times a week once tomato season rolls around.

Not because it’ll make me a better runner, even though I think it will. Not because it’ll prevent injuries, even though injuries suck and I want to avoid them. And not even because I particularly care about being strong. I know enough guys (and a few ladies) with more upper-body strength than an ectomorph like me could ever build, and I can recruit them for help on the rare occasion I need a really heavy thing moved.

No. I am strength training for the Dayum Moments.

No matter how much I run, if I’m not doing any kind of strength training, my body looks approximately like it would if I weren’t running. I’ve never been one to balloon up too much if I’m being a total slacker. I run because I enjoy it.

When I got into the habit of going to a full-body strength class in early 2010, I started noticing that I actually looked as fit as I felt. I’d catch a glimpse of my stomach in the locker room mirror, and I’d see shadows around my ab. (No, I never worked out enough to get more definition than some on either side of a flat-ish rectangle atop my stomach. It was still an improvement over no definition.) I’d raise my arms to pull up my hair, and I’d see biceps. I’d say, “Dayum! Muscles!” Hence the term “Dayum Moments.”

Sometimes these moments are captured on film. Here are a few:

My first Dayum Moment. This photo was taken during my 800-meter PR race senior year of high school. I had joined a gym that spring and this was my first glimpse of arm muscles.

After a few months of consistent weight training in spring 2010. My back! My arm! I should be in the WWE!

Near the end of last fall’s Philly Marathon. My right quad. Check that out. Granted, I wasn’t strength training much at the time, and this is probably just a spasm caused by running 25 miles, but hey, I’ll take it.

They say that people who work out for vanity’s sake aren’t as consistent about it as people who work out because they enjoy it, but how am I supposed to enjoy picking up and putting down objects in a too-hot room filled with people grunting? Suggestions?

(Here’s where I’d insert the Hitch poster lifted from Google Images, but as I’m trying to get away from using potentially copyrighted visuals on my blog, I won’t.)

I fancy myself a morning person. Breakfast is my favorite meal. I’ve done the bulk of the mid-week training for most of the marathons and halfs I’ve run before work. And I have trouble sleeping past 9 a.m., even on weekends when I’ve been up and about until 3 or 4.

Lately, though, I’ve been struggling. I discovered the beauty of the lunch run–it breaks up the day! it’s warmer! it’s lighter out!–and now I can’t get up to run to save my life. In fact, I can’t get up to do anything at all.

My alarm will go off at 7:15 and I’ll snooze three or four times before emerging from the covers. I’ll make myself some coffee and breakfast, then I’ll sit at the table long after both are gone, reading a magazine or browsing the interwebs. Some days, it’s 8:45 before I start getting ready to actually leave. How did I become such a blob?

When I start the day this way, it tends to continue in a downward spiral of feeling sluggish and not terribly productive. I know it’s not possible for every day to be a tremendous win, but these kinds of days are huge losses.

I need to get my morning mojo back. But how?

The butchery demonstration. By the end of the night, the entire pig (minus the head) had been cut up and packaged.

It was a total foodie event. Though I love to eat, I know almost nothing about food and cooking. I didn’t fit in at all, though I suppose I fit in better than the woman who turned down a plate at one of the stations by saying she was a vegetarian. (Seriously!)

However, I ate some things I had never eaten before (and some I may never eat again), such as:

- Head cheese. From Wikipedia, “Head cheese is not a cheese but a terrine or meat jelly made with flesh from the head of a calf or pig (sometimes a sheep or cow), and often set in aspic.” My thoughts: Weirdly chewy and gelatinous. Pass.

- Blood sausage. Wikipedia, again: “Blood sausage is a type of sausage made by cooking blood or dried blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled.” I had two of these. The one from The Monkey Bar chef was pretty delicious and actually tasted more or less like sausage. I’d eat that again. The texture of the other one was unpleasant–like mud.

- Feet Meat Hot Dogs. Tasted a lot like hot dogs made from whatever they’re usually made from. (Those could contain feet, for all I know.) I was down.

- A pickled oyster. Not made of pig, obviously, but it was atop a hunk of pork belly. Oysters taste like loogey. Never again.

The whole experience, however, was incredibly cool, despite my slightly upset stomach today. Adventurous eating FTW.

They were out of the stuffed ears, but the bacon popcorn was to die for.