Well, I figured I’d check in with a new blog to start the week. My blog is like my journal, I guess, and I had a draining weekend. There was good and there was bad, there was happy and there was sad. But wow, was it draining.
My weekend more-or-less started on Friday. On Thursday night, we got a phone call that Tiff’s grandma took a turn for the worse and we needed to get up and see her while we can. She’s been struggling for a while, but she’s being moved into hospice care. Tiff hadn’t seen her in six months and I hadn’t seen her in eight and she looked like she had aged 10 years. She looked very tired and barely coherent.
It was tough to see her at this end-of-life stage. I’ve known her for 16 years and it’s so hard to see her the way she is now. I couldn’t tell if she recognized us or not, but I think she did. She’s lived a full life, but it’s still tough to watch the end of life on earth for somebody. I just hope any pain she’s feeling is alleviated.
On Saturday, I went to a memorial service for a friend of mine who died from cancer at age 45 a week ago. It was an amazing service, but it was a tough one to sit through. It was hard to see her son go up there, as well has her father and her grandfather. I saw friends at the reception afterwards, but for about 20 minutes, I was to drained to even talk. I just stood next to them silently, apologizing for not having anything to say. Eventually when we drove home, the first song we heard when we turned on the radio was Live Like You’re Dying by Tim McGraw. It was pretty chilling.
I was in a funk the rest of the day, but I eventually made my way down to the Surf City expo with my oldest son, Benjamin, to pick up my stuff for the marathon. He had fun carrying around my 3:40 pacing stick and I was teasing him, telling people he was going to be the marathon pacer. “But daddy, I’m only 9!”
I really don’t remember much about Saturday night, other than I know I was pretty sad reading what my friends were writing about the memorial service on Facebook. I ran a couple of errands and heard this song and I liked it:
Sunday morning, I got up and paced the 3:40 group at the Surf City Marathon. That was fun, a nice release. It’s always fun to help people reach their goals. I felt pretty good with how I ran, going 3:39:49 and catching a lot of praise from the folks in my group. They were happy with the consistent race I ran. In my perfectionist way of thinking, I’m kind of bummed with how I ran the last 2/10 of a mile. I think mile marker 26 was off a bit and even though I knew I was about four seconds ahead of pace for the race, I thought I might have been eight seconds back. So I surged a bit just to make sure I didn’t finish slow.
The race I ran for the first 26 miles would have netted me about a 3:39:57 if I would have held pace, but I ended up 11 seconds fast instead. Really, it was a good job pacing. But in my perfectionist ways of approaching pacing, I blew it late.
Anyways, we had a few friends over to watch the Super Bowl, the kids had a blast and even though I burned 4,222 calories running the marathon, I ate way too much the rest of the day. I was pulling for the Packers because my friend who died was a Packers fan. I’ve never really liked them, but I’ve been pulling for them this season and I was glad to see them come through. Oh, and I won my 23rd annual Super Bowl bet with my grandma. I took the Packers and gave her 2.5 points. My prize? She’s going to treat my wife to a manicure. Somehow, I’m not so sure I won anything.
So that was it, I guess. Quite a contrast to my weekends from last year. I ran a marathon, my first of the year, but I got to spend a lot of time with the family and live my own life. It was kind of nice — is that what everybody normally does?