June 25, 2000 -- 7:26 PM EST

These are no ordinary feet. But before I tell you what they did, I'll tell about the weather.

Today, we took my mom out to lunch for her 49th birthday. We got lucky because there were breaks in the rain while we were walking to and fro restaurant so nobody got overly wet. She was joking that she's about half a century old and I asked her if she was going to start telling me that I was a quarter of a century old in the fall when I turn twenty-five. She just laughed. She enjoyed the fancy picture frame we gave her and then we came home and I eventually went to nap and skipped the 20 minute walk that was scheduled today in favor of cozying up in bed with a book while listening to the rain pound my roof..

It's been raining all day long today, and when I popped out to the yard to take the photo of my feet it was still drizzly and overcast. Yesterday was the same thing -- rain, rain, rain. While I am glad for the super-thirsty and yellowing lawn, it was more than a little annoying to me. I'm starting to dread hurricane season.

Yesterday's workout was a three hour block. Adrith had planned to take her walk at the beach, while I was leery of the weather and wanted to do part at the gym and part on the trail. Well, that didn't happen. I wrote this big, long, cranky entry in the training log about the bad rain and how grumpy I was about staring at the same walls most of this week and again yesterday for several hours. Big time cabin fever. I felt like I was going mad, a mouse on an elliptical cross trainer, never stopping... Ugh!

Today though, I feel better, and I feel less irritable. So I can look at what I accomplished yesterday in a better frame of mind. Ok, so I got kicked out of the gym because it was closing and I didn't get to go for the full three hours. Who cares?!

I ran!

I ran for two hours and fifteen minutes on a cross trainer!.

I ran for eleven and half miles, and I only stopped once halfway to eat a snack to refuel.

So again, those are no ordinary feet! I think those feet could have taken me right up to 13.1 miles, a half marathon distance, if I had been allowed just another fifteen or twenty minutes.

How do I feel about all this? Weird. I'm happy, and relieved to know I can cover half-marathon and if that's the event I end up doing I will be ok. I probably won't be as fast on pavement with the pounding and the weather elements beating down on me, but hey, I can handle the distance. That's the main thing to me. I'm not looking to win -- just finish!

The other part of me is in disbelief. I feel like I don't know my own body. Last weekend it kicks out this amazing 5K, and then this weekend It does more than triple that! I'm not consistent yet though. I'd love to get fit enough to where I could knock out these distances as par for the course, rather than these supergalactic milestones in my training.

I don't want to take any of this for granted -- it's amazing and wowing to me. I never ran a mile in my life until now. But since I don't know where my fitness level is with any kind of certainty I feel funny trying to set any kinds of goals now. What a reasonable goal? What's too much? I suppose the thing to work at now is being consistent? I don't know.

Surprisingly, I'm not all that sore. When I first got home yesterday my butt felt sore, and when I woke up this morning I made Paul rub my toes, but other than that I feel just fine. I'm still waiting for it to kick in though -- I'll probably feel it badly tomorrow.

Mentally though, it's starting to dawn on me that I seriously need to revise my idea of myself as being non-athletic. What a hoot!

~Astrophe