Busy fizzy

Well it's turned out to be a pretty busy month for us! So busy, all my running plans flew right out the window. Probably somewhere along Highway 128 last week. Maybe at my baby brother's graduation which was followed by a barbecue hosted at my house. Darn that delicious potato salad and ice cream cake. When we returned from our camping trip, I had gained four pounds back. Grr. I was hoping that with all the walking around we did I at least kind of balanced out the cupcakes and extra calories that come with beer battered halibut and bacon wrapped albacore. Yeeeaaaaaaahhh, not so much.

I started off this week right, with two miles on Monday and three miles yesterday. Nothing today, not yet anyway. The days are getting hotter and hotter and I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to get any mileage in unless I do it first thing in the morning before anyone gets up. Yesterday was AWESOME. I had my doubts, especially when just a few yards into it, I experienced ponytail fail. My hair is pretty thick and rambunctious, and when I tried to tighten the hair tie, it snapped in half. So there I was standing on the side of the road, looking like a lost lion/runner/flower child trying to figure out what to do. Tied the dang thing back together and luckily it held. I kept telling myself, 'three miles, three miles, three miles'. At around the one mile mark, I felt like quitting already. For whatever reason I started thinking of a few years ago when a co-worker was telling me how he makes his candied yams. He said that he adds butter until he thinks he can't possibly add more, and then he adds more. I thought about how my life was like that in a lot of ways. How I didn't think I could possibly eat another bite, and yet I did. And how I couldn't possibly weigh any more, and holy cow, I did. Why haven't I ever used that theory for the positive side of my life? For once, why can't I just go the extra step? So my new motto is "When you think you can't possibly go any further, go further." So I pushed it yesterday. Pushed it past the jackass truck drivers honking their air horns and that one passenger that actually hung out the window and yelled at me (truly, I swooned). Pushed it until I hit the 1.5 mile mark where I could finally turn around. Pushed it all the way until I started wheezing and decided that I had made it close enough to 3 miles to start cooling down. My husband thanked me for that, said that he would not be happy to hear that I collapsed somewhere along West Capitol. =o)

I can't wait for October 2nd when I can truly put myself to the test and finish the half marathon that I am training for. It will be 13.1 miles of pure torture I'm sure, but I can't wait to have that sense of accomplishment that will accompany crossing the finish line. I especially can't wait to have rights to put a 13.1 sticker on my car! Fifteen weeks to go....

Another week...

So here we are, the first of June. The weather still doesn't feel like a Sacramento summer. It's up in the 80s finally, but nowhere near typical temperatures. Jacob and I ran together yesterday. It was really nice to have some motivation right there with me, pushing me until the very end. I think I have created this mentality that if it hurts, I should just stop. And not like ouch that hurts but like I'm pretty uncomfortable. How am I going to ever push myself if I just keep quitting? I'm really only quitting on myself and not giving myself the benefit of the doubt. So following him yesterday down West Capitol, it became a mental game. Follow him, you can do this. Side cramp? "You think that kid from Washington that ran 24 hours didn't have side cramps? C'mon he pushed through it, so can you!" Sore legs? "You don't think that marathon runners have sore legs? Get over it!" It was an exhausting run, but I felt totally awesome afterward. And Jacob was motivated enough to actually get out of bed early this morning and run again by himself while I got Isaiah ready for school.

So my face....I'm pretty fair complected. My face becomes ridiculously red when I run. Seriously. If you see a tomato with legs and frizzy hair running in my town, it's probably me. Why don't any of the other runners that I see have red faces? They glide by with their short shorts and long lean legs glistening in the sun. You can see every muscle in their legs contracting as every stride hits just perfectly. Their breathing looks even and they make it look absolutely effortless. Me? I plod along, every breath like I'm gasping in the middle of the Sahara. My pants, because I'm not feeling shorts-worthy yet, are more often than not stuck in the tongue of my shoe. My face is red as a tomato. My hair is fuzzy and sticking out in a million different directions. And yesterday, just because I wasn't feeling self-conscious enough, my underwear refused to stay put, so I felt like I had a wedgie the whole time. (The good news about this is that that means I think my butt is shrinking wooohooo!!)

I figure that if I'm putting myself out there now, pushing myself now, maybe someday in the near future I will be that gliding runner that makes the sport look effortless. For now though I remain a newbie runner, still finding my stride, still trying to figure it all out. And I'm ok with that because at least I'm out there. Right?