You have to pay to play.

We interrupt this blog to announce something very exciting: Linae, Andy and TriTurtl are now officially Iron, all coming in with times well under the cutoff. I am so, so, so proud of and inspired by you. Enjoy the achievments and keep coming back for more. Thanks for your support and encouragement this year - although you were training for THE BIG SHOW, you all never hesitated to check in on me while I piddled around with short races. MUCHO LOVE! YOU ROCK!!!!!!

Ever since I first started running and lifting weights, back when I was 16 or so, I had this philosophy: you have to pay to play. (It probably stems from my mom's old orders: "if you're sick enough to stay home from school, you're sick enough to tell your friends you can't come play.") Well, I follow that philo to this day. There's nothing wrong with staying up late or partying the night before a key workout - so long as I understand that I still have to do the workout. Knowing how shitty I'll potentially feel the next morning can some times reduce the shenanigans I get into that night.

And, some times it won't.

Saturday night, it clearly didn't. What started out as an innocent night of sushi and sake ended up going terribly wrong. Let's just say there was lots of yelling and making asses of ourselves, a lot of talk about sex - including ex sex, my least favorite variety to discuss. There were tons of drunk texts - most of them so dirty I refuse to share WITH ANYONE, but the funniest and most embarrassing one was not only raunchy, but I actually forgot what I was texting about AND TOOK THE TIME TO TEXT THAT to the textee. Despite asking for my phone to be taken away from me. We played Wii Bowling and Wii Tennis and - here's how you know we were high as kites - we did it as we SANG BRITNEY songs. Then I hit a drive-through on the way home to try to soak up the booze with grease - because that always works, right? - effectively eliminating the 1000-calorie deficit yesterday's 11-miler created.

Oh, it was ugly. No, it was what my dad would call "oogly," which in dad-ese is several levels worse than ugly itself.

But, my philo is my philo - it's not just a rule, it's more like a credo. So, not only did I get up at 6:15 on Sunday and run 11 more miles, I also did a 90-minute ashtanga yoga class immediately after. It hurt like a mofo. The yoga saved my life - no lie - but the run hurt like crazy. I still managed to run exactly one minute faster than Saturday's run, though. Weird. This week's planned mileage before I had my setbacks was 29 miles; I made it to 25. I have to tell you, I think that is a damn fine accomplishment. Maybe it's nothing special, considering how slow I was, and considering that a "real" runner would have made this a 30-35-mile week, but for everything I've been through *and* considering this is going to be my first marathon, I'm very pleased with myself. It was a wonderful way to round out a crazy weekend.

The karmic twist to this story? Now the keys on my phone don't all work, so it is impossible to text. Someone's trying to tell me something.