View to a run

This is how I felt around Mile 18 of last year's Big Sur Marathon. Someone yelled, "Keep it up, you're looking good." I knew their heart was in the right place, and I was grateful for their encouragement, but ... well, actually I was thinking, "I look like crap, I may break down and walk, again, at any time. From mile 14 on has been one big disappointment, one that comes with the added pain of blisters pulsating under my toenails and a feeling of knives being plunged into my kidneys. Thanks for your words of encouragement, but if you'd really like to help me, shoot me like a lame horse right here, right now."
With that in mind, I never quite know how to cheer on runners. You want to let them know that you appreciate their effort and respect the pain they're enduring, while at the same time wanting to give them strength in the only way you can, verbally. Geez, sounds like something out of one of those transcendental, interpersonal, sports through seance classes I took in college (needed to boost the GPA).And how do you express those feelings in five words or less (which is about all you have time for)? Appreciate, Respect, kick butt girl! Doesn't exactly flow smoothly off the tongue.
So as I watched my daughter run at a recent cross country meet, I stationed myself at the top of the last steep hill on the course. I stood there madly clapping and exorting her to pump her arms, to lift her knees . . . And I may have yelled "You're looking good, keep it up!" (But I meant it!)

Two days off, unless you watching a cross-country meet, doing landry, watching two dance recitals and walking the dog are things you can count in your mileage log ... didn't think so.