Steve's 12 for 12

First a quick recap of the week. This week was "Aşa să aşa" or so-so in Romanian. It wasn't a really great running week here in Bucharest, but it wasn't really bad either.

Monday's excuse: The weather turned seasonable cool to start the week. When that was combined with a late departure from work and a longer-than-average commute - this became an easy day to blow off.

Tuesday's excuse: I had a better reason to not run Tuesday. Somehow, I duplicated Dana's earlier "sleeping" injury and woke up with an awful catch in my neck. I could not turn my head to the right at all. I was in pain, cranky all day, yelling a my coworkers, etc etc. So there goes another lost day.

I got it together on Wed (8 mile) and Thursday (4 mile) with two pretty good runs as the weather (and my neck) improved.

Friday and Saturday: It got cold and windy again these days as a front came through. What is this, winter or something? Yes, I know - very lame, but I took a powder on both of these days too.

12 years of bliss, 12 miles of torture

To salvage the week, I decided I had to get the long run done on Sunday. If you've been keeping up with the family blog, then you know that Sunday was our 12th wedding anniversary. We didn't do anything special due to the amount of travel plans we have already made this year. However, we did get some big fat shoarma's at the City Mall for lunch.

I then had one of my great ideas. I'd run for 12 miles, 1 mile for every year of our awesome marriage. I'd use the time to mediate and thank God for the perfect Helpmeet that Dana is. So I headed out around 1 hour after lunch (keep this time in mind).

"Hello Steve, It's me, the shoarma"

Due to the cold weather and my lousy adventurous run last week, I decided to stay in Titan Park for this one. Everything went as planned for about 4 miles. At this time, the aforementioned shoarma began to talk to me from my belly - specifically it wanted out. The rest of this run was so torturous, I barely remember it. An old lady said something to me at one point with the Romanian word for 'run' in it, but I was too sick to translate the rest. About the only other thing I remember was keeping an eye on where I was in relation to the various port-a-potties scattered throughout the park. Somehow, I didn't puke even though I had to slow down to close to 10 min/mile in spots. Of course, stopping wasn't an option for an intelligent guy like me, and I did gut-it-out (nice pun, eh?) and finish the 12 miles.

Who would have thunk that devouring a 3/4 lb shoarma 1 hour before your long run is not a good fueling idea?