Signing on the dotted line

It's one thing to make race plans, but it's a whole other to start plunking down $$ for race registration fees, and I've been doing a lot of that in the last couple weeks.  So now I'm officially signed up for:

• Crazylegs Classic 8k 4/24
• Lake Monona 20k 5/1 (1 week later!)
• Madison 1/2 Marathon 5/30
• (As of today) Bellin 10k (6/12)

     And....

• Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon 10/3

So yes (I say to myself) I'm going to put it out there and (hopefully) run another marathon this year.  Originally I'd said I was going to wait until I ran the Madison 1/2 in May before I made the decision, but the race is more than 1/2 full already, and the website said that it filled up in May of last year.  So here I am signed up for 4 (soon to be 5) new races in 2010.  Hopefully this will help my focus and motivation as I go out for another tempo run this morning.  

Speaking of running, I had several anxiety dreams last night.  One of which involved trying to run a 1/2 marathon in my Danskos.  The rest of them involved work.

Again, I'm so glad I don't have a job that involves something I should actually be anxious about.  We have a data meeting this morning, and one of the presenters told me Monday, "If anyone asks me any questions, they are all coming straight to YOU."  I know she didn't mean it that way, but it definitely felt like a challenge to the validity of my data analysis.  It's funny because looking back on it, someone presents data I've worked on at every data meeting, and it's never occurred to me to be nervous before.  In fact, data meeting is one of my favorite things we do.  (Data meeting is pretty much what it sounds like.  Once a month, different members of staff present their current research).  So I spent all yesterday morning reviewing the topic (as if I hadn't just spent a morning last week working on page proofs for the paper).  I feel confident about what we did.  The paper has been accepted to a journal.  Need to stop worrying.

Thanks to everyone who commented with picture advice.  Even after D helped me get it resized, it still didn't look that great with the blog color scheme, and the picture looked really grainy.  So I'm back to square one on the header.  We searched for some sunrise images, but I didn't find anything that said "this is it."  So I'll leave things alone for now. 

Otherwise we had a nice, simple taco salad dinner last night.  Unfortunately for some reason Blogger is refusing to let me upload an image right now.

Well, time to run and beat the rain.  My beloved spinning has been cancelled until October on account of good weather.  Have a great Wednesday, all!