Getting Nervous

My first 5K is just around the corner, and I didn't run all last week. Stupid. Very stupid. The papers piled up, and I just couldn't justify going out for an hour run with three classes of papers waiting to be read. I've always prided myself on only having student work for a week. Never longer. The result was not having the time to run. Today I got out, took a three-mile walk with the dog, and I could tell I hadn't run in a week. Just walking was difficult.

All week, with the pile of papers, I kept thinking there has to be a better way. Part of me thinks I should lighten up on the week-only rule I have. If students don't get their papers back after a week's time, do they really care? I decided to find out. I kept the papers from one class for a second week, telling the students I just hadn't been able to get to them since there were several parts to the whole project and it was taking me longer than usual to get through the papers. All of this is true. The students' response was no problem, totally undertandable. We just went to work on another project, moving forward in the course, and all is well.

For the next two weeks, I'll be working on getting back to where I was before taking the week off. Hopefully I'm not as out of shape as I thought I was earlier today. I am kind of sad, though, that my running ticker isn't moving as fast as it was through July, August and September. I was really hoping to get to 500 miles by December 31. I'm barely into the 200s, and it's that I just don't have the energy to do the 5 miles each day now that I'm well into the semester. With my work, the kids' school activities, and the usual other stuff, I'm barely able to get in 3 miles a day.

All I can do is what I can do. Two weeks to the 5k. I can do this.

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