155.0 - Half Marathon: T minus 5 days and counting

Holy cow, it's only 5 days from my first half marathon. I guess I'm ready. I didn't get in a 6 miler this weekend like I was supposed to, but I have done my "real" long runs (a 10 and a 9) so I suppose it will be fine.

The Story of My Shoes
I had bought new shoes a little over a week ago and ran my 9 miles on the treadmill in them and my feet and legs felt fine. But when I ran 5 and 3 this past week outside, my shins hurt a little and I just felt off. So I'm going to go back to my Brooks this week and will run the Half in those.

The Brooks are motion control shoes, which I needed last summer when I bought them and was still a "heavy runner" (Runner's World says women who weigh over 160 are heavy runners and probably need motion control shoes). My new shoes are New Balance 768s, which are stability shoes. I got them from a local running store and the sales guy said on a scale of 1 to 10, I over-pronate at a 4. My Brooks correct over-pronation at a level 8, so I don't need that much correction, and by running in the motion control shoes I'm putting more stress on the outsides of my hips and legs.

Which makes sense, because when I ran 9 miles in the NB, I could feel the middle of my glutes and hamstrings working a lot harder than they usually do.

I had asked at the running store if I could run the Half in the new shoes, and they said I should be fine with 2 weeks of breaking them in. But I think I'm not going to, because if I have the slightest hesitation about them and run in them anyway, and then I end up with shin splints or other pain, then it's going to be my shoes fault and a stupid mistake. And it's not worth taking a risk.

So my good ole Brooks with 214 miles on them get the honor of taking me around the Indianapolis 500 track. Aren't they lucky.

***
Saturday was busy. My mom had a Mary Kay party at her house, and I picked up Sophie at 9:30 a.m. from her friend's house where she'd had a sleep over, then drove 30 minutes to my mom's. Luke had had a horrible night and not slept from 1 a.m to 4 a.m., so he was a wreck. I helped mom clean and get ready, then took Luke for a drive to get him to take his nap. When kids are overtired, ironically they don't go to sleep easily, so he needed a car ride to knock him out. When I got back he slept for a while, then woke up and I had to hold him and sleep next to him for an hour and a half so he would stay asleep. I missed the MK party (they did pedicures, which would have been fun but oh well), but got to spend time with friends and family afterwards.

Then, something awful happened. And I wasn't going to write about this but I can't let it go and I'm hoping if I put it out there it will be cathartic, just like all the other stuff I put out here.

I lost Sophie. For about 5 minutes, we had no idea where she was. I was talking with my cousin and realized I hadn't seen her for probably 20 minutes or so, and when I started asking everyone "Have you seen Sophie?" no one had. We looked all over the house, in the basement, and couldn't find her. My mom's house is small, so it didn't take me long to freak out when we called and called and she didn't answer.

So several of us ran outside and yelled her name and asked my step-dad if he had seen her (he was working in the yard all afternoon), and when he didn't know where she was, I really panicked. Full on, Oh my God my child is missing freak out panic.

I screamed and screamed her name, ran around like a crazy woman, while other rational family members were walking the neighborhood calling her name and asking neighbors (who by this time were coming out of their houses to see what all the commotion was) if they had seen a little girl.

It was only about 5 minutes, but it seemed like a lifetime that someone called from the house "WE FOUND HER!"

She had been playing hide and seek, and had found the perfect hiding place and then fallen asleep (which is uncharacteristic of my almost-7 year old, but her sleepover didn't involve a lot of sleep so I guess she was worn out). And it was in a spot that was tough to see her. My mom has a twin day bed, and under the day bed is another twin mattress, like a trundle bed but it's just a mattress on the floor that slides in and out. The mattress was under the bed, and Sophie had crawled up on the mattress and was asleep under the bed. Several of us, including me, had looked under the bed and didn't see her--all you could see was the mattress unless you got all the way down on the floor and looked UP toward the bottom of the bed. Thankfully one of the girls who stayed inside to search for her saw her foot barely peaking out the end of the bed. Otherwise we'd have been calling the police within minutes.

It was by far the scariest thing I've ever been through in my life. And when we found her I got on the floor and bawled my eyes out. Then I held her while she slept for about 30 minutes. Then I was a wreck the rest of the day and most of Sunday.

I wouldn't have freaked out so badly, I don't think, if we hadn't learned on Friday that a man in Mark's men's group lost his 4 year old daughter last week. She had been walking across a KMart parking lot, with her mom and 3 siblings, when an 89 year old man got confused and drove back into his parking spot that he had just backed out of, and hit the little girl, and instead of breaking he stepped on the accelerator. She died an hour later at the hospital. I spent most of Friday afternoon in a funk, crying and upset over how pointless her death was, imagining how unimaginable something like that is. And how it could happen to any of us, at any time.

So when Sophie was "missing" for that brief time period, it all came rushing in on me--this can't be happening, how could I have lost my child, where is she, is she okay, did someone take her, is she lost, is she hurt, is she alive, what kind of mother am I, Mark is going to kill me, I lost her on my watch, oh my God where's my baby girl?!

So Saturday night and Sunday I was extra sensitive and caring and on my Best Mom behavior. Mark had been dealing with his own demons, since he went to the funeral home visitation and saw the little girl and her family. He didn't have to go through what I did with Sophie missing, but he felt my terror just the same.

I'm going to be really paranoid for a while--I wouldn't let them play in the back yard by themselves yesterday, even though it's fenced in and I've let them out there by themselves lots of times in the past--and maybe that's not such a bad thing.

I'm just so thankful she is okay and everyone is healthy and safe. But I'm still weepy and fragile and had a hard time putting her on the bus this morning. I don't want the unimaginable happening, ever again.