21 days

First to start off, this post is unfortunately not about zombies.  Sorry.

It's about how many days until probably the toughest day of my life.  The Broad Street Run. 10 miles of grueling conditions, rough terrain and obstacles.  Okay, I'm lying.  It's a straight, slight downhill course and everyone says it is pretty easy but still, 10 miles.  I ran six miles today; my farthest distance ever.  I'm not going to say it was awesome and felt great.  It was awful and it sucked and next weekend I'll be out there again trying to go even farther.  I've never really been the "push it 'til I puke" person but today that almost changed.  Around mile four, which usually isn't that much of a challenge (weird saying that), I started going hazy an needed to sit for a few minutes.  Then the nausea.  Then the fast, uncomfortable search for a bathroom.  Once I was able to run again my legs, back and stomach started cramping. One more mile to go and I finished by jog/limp/walking.  Six miles took one hour and 23 minutes.  I'll take it.

It's tough finding the time to get my training in and will be tougher now that my weekends will be spent at the restaurant.  My first official shift will be this upcoming Saturday so I'll be trying to get my long runs in during the week.  I know the rule is to never increase your distance more than a tenth but I don't have a choice and so I've been doing a run/walk method, the majority of it running.  Should all go well, I'm looking to finish in around two hours but registered for two and a half hours.

So school.

First week of quarter two is over and so far so good.  I like all of my teachers and feel that I will learn a lot this quarter.  In our first class for Skills 2, we had to draw our plating, base it around a flavor profile and have it ready in a five minute fire time window.  It was so much more intense than my Skills 1 final that it's a pretty good mix of super intimidating and exciting.  Intro to Food Service seems like it will be a change of pace and it will be a good way to find out about all the different types of jobs I can get and how to get them.  I'm excited for my Nutrition class since it is something I am into normally anyways.

I'll be walking away from my job of three years this week.  The job that ended up pushing me into culinary school via partial unemployment.  As happy as I am to move on to bigger and better things, it's sad in a way.