Yes....

I think I've beaten this bug-finally. My voice is returning to normal, and I have strung together two good nights of sleep in a row. It's good to feel human again.

Today is a very satisfying rest day as well. It's satisfying because I did get through the gnarly Pfitz lactate threshold run on Tuesday-twelve miles, with seven at tempo, followed by the twelve miler scheduled for today that I moved to yesterday. The fact of the matter is that I REALLY need that Thursday night ballet class for the time with other adult females, no kids around, and the time out of the house, so it was a small price to pay to flip-flop the schedule and have two hard runs back to back.

It usually falls on deaf ears since everyone thinks you have to be able to dance already, let alone dance well in order to take an adult ballet class, but I'll put that out there again that it's GREAT flexibility and strength training for runners. Especially if you're like me, and just don't have an interest in yoga, despite the fact that it's obviously another excellent way for runners to stay limber and healthy. There's something about the fluidity of motion in ballet that translates well into good running form as well-so that's another perk for me.

Besides looking forward to tonight's class, my idle time with no running today also caused me to go ahead and register for a second 10K this month. That means I'll have back-to-back 10K's on the last two Saturdays of the month, but I figured, hey-it doesn't mean I have to race them as the end-all and be-all, I can work on my pacing, and just wake up each Saturday saying whatever, no big whoop, so I've got a speed workout today. One race is road, and the other trail, so there's another factor that should save the legs from taking a beating.

In other news, I've been slowly but surely taking care of some things that added stress and probably contributed to my getting sick. I'm nearly through with a bunch of little things I have to do associated with my home-based business this time of year, our middle daughter has made some great progress since a somewhat surprising report card.

It's also the time of year for the annual San Valentino couples only dinner at our favorite local Italian place.....okay, it's actually the ONLY local Italian place where we'd ever pay money to eat. When you're married to a good cook who is also Italian, you just don't tend to go out for that sort of thing unless it's both different and better than what could be made at home. He's Sicilian and this is Northern Italian cuisine, so we look forward to this dinner every year. We skipped it for the first time in many years in the midst of moving last year, but have happily reinstated the dinner for 2009. Sometimes you just owe it to yourself to take that time out, free of work, school, and responsibilities. It's a nice re-charge and de-stresser that gives us more energy to handle whatever curveballs will be thrown our way in the following week.