It's all downhill from here...

Hopefully, this will be me on Sunday...

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...except it will be on pavement not tall grass. And my hair will be in a funky bun/ponytail thing, held somewhat back from my face by a sparkly headband. I am not so sure I will look as joyous, but I will be running downhill...or so they tell me.

The way I see it, things could go one of several ways...

One:  I show up for the race feeling incredible and invincible. I have no pain anywhere, and my passion is exploding with the brilliance and power of fireworks. I am focused and in my zone and ready to attack the course.

Two:  I show up for the race groggy and achy and unmotivated. My right leg has no strength, and my left calf has a stabbing knot right in the middle. I am angry and zeroing in on how miserable I am and how much it is all going to suck.

Three: I show up for the race late and miss the whole dang thing.

Four:  I sleep in and loll about in bed until whenever, then get up and do whatever for however long it takes to do nothing before remembering that "OH, CRAP! I was supposed to go run in a race this morning!"

Five: Something between One and Two... and this is probably how things'll shake out. Three and Four are highly unlikely as I paid for the race bib already, and we runners are notoriously cheap ;-)

Yesterday I opened up the betting window on my finish time. If you'd like a piece of that action, click here and leave your guess in the comments. There will be a lame fun prize for the person who guesses the closest :)  I know, I know... some of you are thinking "Yeah, right... this chick still owes me a prize from some other dumb contest she convinced us to play." I refer you to this post detailing my distaste of the post office. I promise your prize will get to you...really...it WILL.

In an attempt to get me into that space of One (see above), I saw my acupuncturist today. We continued to refine Operation Get-XL-Out-of-Hell. We discussed my test results and my clinician's ideas and melded them with my acu's Eastern-based ideas. I started a few new things, and lots of needles were stuck into my feet and legs and arms...sort of like this, but this isn't a picture of me. I am already starting to feel a bit better. Yay :)

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After acupuncture, I headed to my physical therapist's office for a massage. See how badly I want to be in that space of One as outlined above? The massage dude made me cry. The psoas and iliacus and iliopsoas are not easy muscles to work on. And when you have a screwed up gut full of what feel like sharp rocks that need to be shoved to the side so he can dig around in there... agony.

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The best news is that I am seeing the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. And that feels amazing. I guess it is always darkest before the dawn. And I'm hoping it's all downhill from here. This expression confuses me though. Isn't it a bad thing when things go downhill? But I know that it is easier to actually go downhill. Ugh...I'm confused now. I think I'll just focus on the light.