How to save a life...

Yesterday, I (kind of) had an epiphany.


I had just arrived home from my friend Charlie's wedding weekend and it was hot. 


It was hot and humid. 
It was hot and humid and I was dehydrated. 
It was hot and humid and I was dehydrated and tired.


During my run, I thought back to high school softball. I loved softball and let's be honest, I was a beast. 


Then I thought back to Mr. Barile, my coach. This man did not accept excuses. Ever. On days very similar to yesterday, he used to make me block balls that he shot at the ground using a pitching machine. Hot, sweaty and with dirt in my eyes and mouth, I did not complain. I knew if I did, I would have been out there twice as long. I can still remember him yelling over the din of the machine, "This builds character, Jessie! Just grit your teeth and do it!"


Why couldn't I look at going for a run like going to practice? If I had ever decided not to go to softball practice because I was "tired" or "it's hot", Barile would have crucified me and then cut me from the team. I work 8 hours a day - so what? I went to school for 8 hours a day and then still had to either practice for 2 hours or play a game for longer.


I'm glad I can call out my excuses when they come. Some days will be harder than others but a run is a run, no matter how small.

J




PS. I went for a run at work today.

Hey, Jealousy

I just looked at the date of my last blog post...Feb 22nd! For shame.


This weekend a strange phenomenon happened. Charles and I were out taking Sadie for a walk when I saw two people going for a run together. I was then filled with the strangest emotion: Jealousy. For the first time in my entire life, I was jealous of runners. I thought back to two summers ago when I went for a run every lunch at Hesser and how easy it seemed. I thought back to how fantastic running every day made me feel. 


Sometimes I feel like I make exercising seem harder that it really is. It's taken some hard introspection, but I realized that I am indeed an excuse-maker. It's something I am working on.

Today I went for my first long run in a while and it felt great. I just need to remember two things: 1) The feeling I get after a run and 2) It's not as hard as I think it is.


Until Tomorrow,
J

Rise from the Dead

Well, not that I was on death's door or anything, but I certainly took a much-too-long hiatus from blogging. I have been exercising, but not nearly what I should be (or want to be) doing. 


'What prompted this blog?', you may be asking. Well, let me tell you.


Today, on our walk with Sadie, Charles and I saw a runner coming towards us...in a cycling shirt.


I looked at Charles, "Is that...Judy?"


It was. As soon as I realized it, I wanted to take a left and veer away from what was sure to be an awkward encounter. I did not, because Judy was too damn fast. She's ALWAYS too damn fast.

"Hey guys!" 


Oh god. Oh god oh god. We haven't been spinning in a month. At least. 


"Hey!  We were wondering if that was you! We recognized your jersey" (in my head I am repeating a brand new mantra: don't call her Judy, don't call her Judy, don't call her Judy...).


"Yeah, I'm wearing my cycling jersey. I run too."


Yeah, I know you run, Judy. You talked about your marathons and triathalons all the time at 6am. Guilt-causing conversations that happen that early in the morning take years to repress.


Judy asked where we had been. I explained that staying up late to do my class work combined with getting up at 5am  had caught up with me. Once I was done my classes, we would be back.



So there it was. Who knows why Judy was there that day. For all I know, she got our address from the Y, and had been running by our apartment for weeks trying to "accidentally" run into us and make me feel guilty about not being in spin class. And knowing Judy, she probably had some recording device on her so that if I don't show up for spin class next month, she'll "accidentally" run into me again and play back our conversation. 


Never underestimate Judy.

Well, you win, Judy. Now I shall start running religiously again.


Until Tomorrow,

J

Le Tired

Today truly was a battle.


3.0 miles, a distance I did last week, but today I was exhausted. EXHAUSTED. Not sure why, I think it could have something to do with oversleeping.


But, I persevered, and tomorrow will be 3.5 miles. Gross.

Also: SNOW (but not enough to keep me contented)

Shades

It always seems like whenever I go to the gym in the morning, I always get stuck on the treadmill with the sun burning in my eyes. Why the Y doesn't have a shade you can pull down is still beyond me.


Not only does doing my "Rest Day" workout in the blazing sun kill my retinas, it is also going to give me premature wrinkles from all the squinting I do. Blimey.




Until Tomorrow,

J

Week 2...

of training for a half marathon looks oddly similar to last week's, except every running distance has been upped by half a mile. Therefore, today I ran 2.5 miles (2.2 of that actually spent running). I'm getting faster and I can run longer!


Today I remembered another rule of the gym:

ALWAYS WIPE DOWN YOUR MACHINE AFTER YOU USE IT.

Yes, chick on the treadmill before me, I am talking to YOU. I don't care if you didn't even sweat, you just "glistened" during that workout. I don't want to touch the buttons after you just did. I don't know where those fingers scratched or wiped during your workout, and I don't EVER want to know. Ergo, I DEFINITELY do not want to touch anything you have.


Especially not after I heard a Y employee explaining to a little old lady earlier:


"So say you scratch it, and then touch your arm and touch your face. Then you've already spread it to three other places"

THIS WAS A DIRECT QUOTE.


So, people of the Y: Clean yo'self.


Until Tomorrow,

J

Fan Karma

Well....yesterday was literally a day of rest. After working from 8:30-1 I got home, crawled into bed, and took what I thought would be an hour nap. Fast forward three and half hours, and cue me waking up to realize I need to shower immediately and drive up north for Charles' mom's birthday. Holy cow! Apparently, when I nap; I nap hard.


Today's 3 mile run took a back seat to a lesson in karma.

The YMCA has floor fans, and since running tends to make me sweaty, I like to pick the treadmill that has the fan facing it. So I hopped on my treadmill and began to run. 


Enter a younger male, who was making it painfully obvious that he was a runner. Not only was he wearing obnoxiously short shorts, but he was wearing a teeny-tiny tank top. His entire outfit seemed to say "Look at me! I have 0.1% body fat and chicken legs. Watching me run will be like watching a skeleton run if the skeleton was a model for Dick's Sporting Goods and proactiv (a BEFORE model)." 




Harsh? Don't care. Why? Here's why.

This douche-bag o' bones apparently feels that HE needs the fan more than I need the fan. Excuse me? Who is going to need the fan more? The person with more insulation, that's who. But no, he takes the fan, and points it at him. So I'm stuck watching Christian Bale circa The Machinist run in MY FAN WIND.


But only for about 30 seconds. That's how long it took for karma to kick in and give skeletor a tweaked leg muscle.

Oh, so sad.


The other glorifying moment at the gym today was that I outlasted everyone who got on a machine while I was there. 3.2 miles and counting! :)


Until Tomorrow,

J

Cable

For those of you who may not know, Charles and I do not have cable. We do watch shows on Netflix and Hulu (NOT Hulu Plus - I'm not paying $8/mo. to still have commercials, let's get real) but I don't get to channel surf and be reeled into a show I've never seen before.

Enter the beauty of elliptical-ing at the YMCA.

Imagine seeing a girl on an elliptical and watching a reality television about a business makeover. Now imagine the girl has the biggest grin on her face.  Now imagine her poking the guy next to her and saying "This show is hilarious!" 


That's me.




For me, there is nothing more distracting while working out (on a "rest day", mind you) than crappy television I have never seen before.

Until Tomorrow,

J

New Record!

Undoubtedly, while training for a half marathon I will encounter lots of firsts. 

Today is the longest amount of time ever spent running on a treadmill. Last year, when I trained for my 5k, I  ran mostly outdoors since it was the summer/fall and avoided the treadmill like the plague. Now, the treadmill and I are forced to cohabitate, and I'm hoping our relationship is a symbiotic one (I run on the treadmill, and the treadmill doesn't electrocute me....similar to the relationship of a sea anemone and a clown fish).

 

And yes, I did walk 0.4 of that 2.6 miles, but that's okay. I'm pretty damn proud of myself.

Until tomorrow,

J

"Rest Day"

Wednesdays are considered a "rest day" in my half marathon training schedule. "Rest Day" will continue to be in quotation marks because there is no actual rest on "Rest Days". Instead of doing the logical thing (aka actually resting), on "Rest Days" I am supposed to do any exercise other than running. Well, let's be fair, a few weeks down the road when I'm supposed to run 6 miles, I may actually use a rest day as a day of rest, but I'm not convinced that I should be resting from any exercise at this point in time.


Today, I chose to use an elliptical machine at the YMCA, and I feel that it is important to revisit some of my gym rules. 

• Please try and remember to bathe and/or use deodorant regularly. This should cut down on the outrageous odor you exude when you choose to pick the machine directly next to mine when we are the only two people in the gym.
• Brush.Your.Teeth. Preferably before you ever leave the house. I should be breathing through my mouth because of my exertion, not because I want to avoid smelling any part of your swamp-gas-breath.

Oh, and by the way. Weight: 249.8 

Until Tomorrow,

J

Oops...

Approximately 10 days after my last post...and good to see THAT resolution really worked. 

But here is a great post (subject to personal taste) that should make up for the lack of blog in your life (if you even noticed I was gone).

Today I set myself a goal. This goal is not to be confused with a new years resolution because as you can tell by the lack of blog posts in 2012...resolutions are stupid. How a resolution differs than a goal is beyond me, and in all actuality may even be synonymous but I digress. 

My goal is to run a half marathon. 

Now, you may be thinking to yourself "Why in the world is she setting herself another goal when she hasn't even hit her weight loss goal yet?"

To you I will retort: "Because I can!" and also: "Setting this running goal for myself will help me focus on exercise which in turn will aid in my ability to get to my goal weight." 

I am not expecting to be able to run a half marathon in the 3 months my new handy-dandy training schedule is showing me. I also should probably specify that I will probably end up walking during a half marathon, especially my first one (holy crap, did I just say first? As in not LAST?!)

Today was my first gym visit since making this goal (I made this goal at breakfast). I got on the treadmill and set off of my first mini-goal: 2 miles. I've done two miles before, but usually that's pretty lofty. Now it's 2 miles out of an eventual 13.1 I will be running. (Ironically, once I got home and looked up this beginners training schedule, the first Tuesday is listed as a 2 mile run day. It's FATE!)

While trundling along on the treadmill (I literally just wrote dreadmill on accident... Freudian slip, perhaps?) I found myself thinking of all the excuses I've used in the past for why I can't run longer distances.

I'm just not built like a runner

I have bad knees from all those years of catching

Those ear buds never stay in my ears 

I'm stuck in phase 1

Hearing those excuses in my head made me realize that my ability to run a marathon completely laid within my brain. I have strong legs, two feet, a fully functioning joint system that allows me to bend my limbs and propel forward, working, non-smoking lungs... I've got all the equipment to be able to do this. I've just got to retrain my brain.
I used to cover up the treadmill dash with a towel or a magazine so that I was never aware of how long I've run until I decided I was done and then would whisk the cover-up away to be pleasantly (or devastatingly) surprised. No more. If this is going to be a true goal, I: 

1) need to be able to track my pace and see how long I've run for

2) need to be able to overcome my mental block for running

I started this brain-training a little after 1 mile. I looked down at the treadmill dashboard (MISTAKE!) and saw that I had gone 1.3 miles . Immediately, I could feel the exhaustion that was non-existent before that point set in. That's when my legs spoke up. "We're not tired. We can keep going. We're not tired. We can keep going". I shut my brain up and kept going.

Did I walk at all during that 2 mile jaunt? I will not lie to you - Yes, I did. But if you've been following for a while now, you'll remember that this whole journey is about small victories leading up to larger ones. Today's small victory was that instead of just stopping at 1.3 convinced that I had run as far as I could, I didn't listen to the part of me that didn't think i could. I pushed through. 

This is the beginning of the end of "I can't."

Until Tomorrow,

J

Happy New Year!

Well, I have decided that my New Years Resolution is going to be about blogging better! I don't need a resolution about working out (that was my LIFE RESOLUTION, BABY!) but I really appreciate people reading this blog, but in order for you to do that - I need to give you something to read! AND I hope all of you have enough faith in me to know that I am working out even if I don't blog about it. Maybe subconsciously I am lacking on the blog aspect because I no longer need it as a motivation to work out - I'm working out regardless! Yay! :)

Today, I decided to stay in and work out because it's 10 degrees outside, and I didn't want to brave the cold more than necessary.

Today, I began p90x again (cue scary, ominous music).

Now, I am not officially starting it to completion - right now we don't have reliable space in our apartment to be able to do some of the cardio workouts without our downstairs neighbors thinking the ceiling is collapsing on them. However, the weight training aspect is something I have been missing, so this morning I popped in "Chest and Back" thinking to myself: So it's been a few months...how far behind could I have fallen since Charles and I were last doing this religiously?

The answer to that question is FAR.

I could only do about 75% of the push ups I was doing back in the summer. My arms and shoulders are so sore, I've actually hired someone to type this blog for me (dictated, not read).

BUT I feel like a BEAST! 

* I googled 'beast' and crazy anime came up...I modified the search to cute beast and this is what came up. 

...oh, and feeling beastly is a good thing, mind you. I love feeling so powerful after!

Looks like I may be adding some weight training in with my cardio again. Here's to 2012!

Until Tomorrow,

J