Some Sundays are pretty perfect.

I have no complaints about today.  I have few complaints in general, really, but today is pretty fantastic so far.  I had something like 20 people over last night for homemade deep dish pizza, and it was so fun.  I hope everyone else had a good time, because I had a really good time.  I love cooking for people, and I have the greatest friends in the world, and the pizza was pretty delicious, if I do say so myself.  The funniest part was probably that almost everyone who came brought a six-pack of beer, so the entire bottom half of our fridge was full of beer, but we worked our way through most of it over the course of about 6 hours.  And 5 pizzas!  5 of 'em!  Grad students are a hungry, beer-guzzling people, it turns out.  I was also really pleased that the dogs were overall quite well behaved.  A lot of the people here were dog people, so they seemed comfortable with them and were good about petting and patting them when they deserved it and telling them to get their noses away from the food when they deserved that, and the dogs were so happy to have so many people here.  I think a good time was had by all.

So despite all the revelry, I was really good about drinking lots of water, and I woke up feeling weirdly good this morning.  I did about 6.5 miles up in the hills yesterday, and we're playing frisbee this afternoon, so I didn't want to overdo it, but I felt better than I expected to, and I did a good, quick little 5.5 miles with the dogs this morning.  It is a gorgeous day out.  The sun is shining and there's a nice, cool breeze, and it's somehow beautifully warm and cool at the same time.

Now I'm home and I made myself some coffee and pancakes and I put on some new music I treated myself to - the weekend before last, after frisbee, one of my friends invited me to an impromptu concert thing in San Francisco.  And despite the fact that it was Sunday night I had plenty of things to do, I went anyway, and I was so glad I did.  So anyway, I bought the EP by the girl we saw, and it's really nice Sunday morning pancake music.  I don't think she was intending that, but it works.

I'm starting to get really pumped for Napa Valley.  This is almost certainly premature, because it's in a little over 5 months, but I'm starting to get really excited about marathon training again.  I didn't know if that would ever happen again, because after each marathon, I've been ready for a mental break from running for a while.  I love it, but those 4 hour runs really cut into your life.  The thing about a 4 hour run is that it's a whole mental journey.  The physical exhaustion only really kicks in for the last 2-3 miles or so.  It's making yourself head out the door when you know you're going to be gone for 4 hours, and making yourself keep going when you get kind of bored and tired of running, that's the hard part.  And after you've broken through the mental barrier of knowing perfectly well that you are capable of running 26.2 miles, you don't even really get the mental charge that comes from the accomplishment itself anymore.  It almost becomes a bit of a chore: "Aw man, I'm supposed to do another 20 miler this weekend," like "Aw man, I really need to tackle that pile of laundry."

Anyway, now that it's been over a year since my last marathon, I'm totally ready and anxious to do another one.  It's been a long time since I ran 20 miles, long enough that I miss it.  There's something so meditative about settling into a pace and just holding it for several hours.  Your mind drifts all over the place, and then you get to the end and it almost feels like waking up from some weird dream.  Running that far is definitely a completely different experience, physically and mentally, from normal everyday runs.  And I have to be in a certain mental space to actively want to do that, and I am suddenly feeling like I'm in that mental space again.

I think it must have to do with how busy I am this semester.  It's my whole momentum phenomenon; now that I'm back to doing a lot of school work all the time, I'm just feeling generally more hard-core and like running 20 miles is probably a good idea.

Also, I really want to go run through Napa.  It's going to be so gorgeous, and the idea of running through the countryside early in the morning is just so appealing to me right now.

Running, running, running.  I didn't think this post was going to be about that.  I thought it was going to be about how I'm leaving for San Diego and Boston a week from today and I'm not ready for either of those conferences quite yet, but in a way this post is about the fact that I'm in a very good place, mentally, right now.  I have a lot to do, but I feel really good about it, for the most part, even though I could easily be freaking out if I let myself.  It's a good feeling to be at a place in my life where I can think about all the stuff I have to get done and just be ready to buckle down and do it without worrying about whether/how it will get done.  It will get done.  And I will do it.  But I'm not going to worry about it in the meantime.

And so some Sundays are pretty perfect.  You wake up without an alarm clock, take your dogs for a run through the Berkeley hills, fix yourself some coffee and pancakes, listen to some lovely piano music, and then you plan the rest of your week before you head out for some frisbee with your friends. I can't really think of a much better day than that.