The first step of staying on track is making sure you have a plan. My goal is to feel productive, strong, and ready to tackle marathon training beginning in June/July for Rock ‘n’ Roll Savannah. I have been running steadily, but with no structure whatsoever so on Monday morning, doubtlessly while acting like I was taking some important note, I scribbled down what felt like a reasonable guideline for my week; 3-4-6-7-5-4-4. I had already done 3 miles Sunday and Monday was a gimme after being up at 5:30 to drive back to Florence from my parents’ house. It is admittedly unambitious, but it feels good to more or less keep up with a schedule again. I say more or less because I ran more than planned on Monday, Tuesday, and today but knocked Wednesday down by a mile; felt bad since it was supposed to be the longest run of the week, but I was a loser and ate some grapes and crackers leftover from my lunch at 3pm at work, took a nap when I got home (usually I would eat a snack at home, loaf around, and run within an hour or so), and left to run around 7pm and realized I was running on empty after about two miles. The real victory was that I bought a Gatorade G2 two miles from home instead of candy at the CVS like my bad self was trying to tell me to. Pro tip: if you are running and your brain is like, “hey, you are really tired and you haven’t eaten in a while, but I am pretty sure if you ate some WILD BERRY SKITTLES you would feel really good and run fast until you get home in like 20 minutes,” your brain is lying because probably your jaw will hurt from chewing and you will have a gut ache. But I am not sure because I drank gross artificially flavored sports drink instead.
Tomorrow I have to force myself out of bed to run before work in the morning…another habit I have dropped while not training for anything, but what is the beauty of living two minutes from work if not sleeping until 7AM every morning? Then again, when will it ever be that convenient again to get up and run in the morning? I am mildly traumatized because the last time I did, I saw a turtle in the gutter, did not pull him out of the road because I didn’t want to be wiping turtle poop on my face for the next four miles while I sweated, and when I made it back to where he was, he had become crunchy turtle paste on the roadway. Sad.
On Saturday, I am going to run a 5k with my mom and brother, who is visiting from Colorado. I hope that by registering at the elementary school on my way to their house tomorrow night and by enlisting them to participate with me, I will manage to toddle myself out of bed and run some hills. Dream big!
I think I extended my running streak to something like six weeks solid before finally throwing in the towel in favor of some margaritas on a Sunday afternoon at home. Good deal, I would say. I thought I would get obsessed if I didn’t stop sometime. Since then, I have taken a day or two off, but have mostly stuck with 3-5 miles per day. Internship is still going well enough. I have seven weeks remaining and after that, I will have to figure out something else to do with myself. I wouldn’t mind a job that allows me to run all day and foam roll and eat large quantities of food, but I suppose my current gig of telling people to back off the sodas and eat some vegetables, punctuated with some running, isn’t the worst deal. I just need to work on the getting paid thing.
What else? I have been crutching on the treadmill at the hospital gym big time for the past few weeks. It started when pollen went up and my allergies were awful for a couple of weeks and then I just settled into the soothing sounds of Hoarders or Wheel of Fortune while getting reprieve from the evening heat. Has anyone noticed that Wheel of Fortune has gotten ridiculously hard while Jeopardy has gotten easier? True story. I know like half the Jeopardy answers and can’t solve a damn puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. Another really fun thing about being in Florence during the week and then visiting my parents’ house in North Carolina or my own house in Georgia on the weekends is that every single weekend I get to readjust to pollen wherever I go and experience a good hacking cough after going outside. So, there’s that. I ran a slow 5k a couple of weekends ago at Twilight. FUN.
I feel grossly out of shape which I attribute to doing stuff like a) running on the treadmill and watching TV and listening to music and b) just being lazy at heart or something. My weight is fine, but I do not feel fit at all. I think I need to do some other cardio besides running, but I am not motivated to do anything else except when I watch sports on TV. Yesterday, we were watching the Players Championship (not sure when I started to like watching golf, but I do) and my dad said maybe when I give up running I’d be a good golfer…no mental game for that, though. I would get mad and throw the clubs, which makes me think I’d be better at tennis where I could also get mad and throw the racket, but in better outfits. Basically, I need to throw some stuff. When I started dietetic internship, I told myself it was not the time to worry about being in good shape or keeping up running a lot of miles. There are other things to do first, but it’s one thing to tell yourself that and another to keep feeling like you are being really slack week after week after week.
Here’s nominal proof that I still run. I am wearing spandex, therefore you know I am running. You get sunglasses because you don’t want to know what my face looks like under there. Yowza. Bad deal.
The nice lake behind me that my head is obscuring.
Something good about feeling out of shape is when I go home, I don’t mind running with my dog who cruises like a 9:30 mile on a good day including pee breaks. See also: earning his undying love. He is so sweet and starts getting excited when he sees me getting running clothes out and then really loses it when I put my Garmin on and it starts beeping. I feel sad that I am not home much and hate to disappoint him when I don’t take him with me. He looks weird in this picture and that is why I like it.
Bye peeps!
