Since I have a few new readers, some of you might not know that I am obsessed with the panda. This started many years ago and culminated in me going on Pandacon a few years ago. That year I got to see the panda babies in San Diego as well as the pandas of DC.

I have panda trucker hats, tank tops, t-shirts, stuffed animals (not a lot), and even panda poop paper that I bought while at the San Diego zoo. Most of these items were bought by my friends and family. They run across panda something and buy it for me.

Well, I finally bought myself something panda related:

Yes. I finally found some sort of panda bling. It wasn’t cheap, but the minute I saw it I knew that I had to have it. It’s tacky as hell but you KNOW I will rock the shit out of that ring because I do NOT care. (Sidenote: Sorry for the blurry cell phone photo. I do have real cameras, but hate to pull them out for crap like this.)

In other news, in about 2 weeks I am done with my undergrad. I repeat: I AM DONE WITH UNDERGRAD.

There is only one problem…I “might” be failing a class. I hope not and I’m busting my ass to make sure that doesn’t happen. There have been skipped runs and everything trying to get caught up and a better grade in this class. I would hate for ONE fricking class to keep me from graduating. Seriously.

In other news, I’m registering for a couple of duathlons. No biggie. I want to do a race a month, but we’re not finding any I want to do. I don’t mind riding my bike and Coach thinks that it can give me a bit of relief from some of this heat and still improve my cardio so I’m going for it. I PROMISE not to become one of those bloggers that only talks about triathlon. I find the bike boring as fuck, but I want to try new things and find ways to workout 7 days a week. I also want to really improve my fitness. However, I am always a runner. I will still run 5 days a week. Period.

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Today’s run: 5.3 miles | 54 minutes or so (I am too lazy to download my stats.)

I almost “postponed” this run until this evening because I woke up feeling tired and nauseous. (I was up around 3am like it was the middle of the day. I hate insomnia.) At the last minute – I have a narrow window for running in the morning since I have to be at work at 8:30 – I got out of bed, threw on mismatched running clothes since I haven’t done laundry in eons, ate a clif shot block thingy, sucked down some water and headed out. And…I had an EXCELLENT run.

I think I was nauseous because I was hungry. I usually would not take in nutrition before a run, but maybe I need to. I felt far better on this run than most.

I did 6 x :30 bridge repeats that KICKED my ass. They were in the 8:30 range. For uphill, y’all!!!! Sadly, when I got home this evening I realized I did the wrong – and harder – workout. Whoops. I’ll just swap them out.

I’m pretty sure that I’m undertrained for my half marathon. (Is that possible?) I have 5 weeks. If I can squeeze out my 12 miler and 2 x 13 milers then I’ll stop stressing. Fortunately, I’m boozing less and sleeping more. I kind of feel like I’m on track…just like with school. Woot!

How’s your training going? Have you ever run a race undertrained? Was it scary? Should I stop stressing out?