i can’t stand the rain…against my window

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

My future, seasonally-depressed self is going to kick me in the face for saying this, but I’m really digging this chilly, rainy weather we’ve been having. I think because it’s the only time when it’s not only accepted to stay in your house under a pile of blankets and watching TV, but it’s actively encouraged.

I always get to a point with seasons where I’m ready for them to be over. When we have a few lingering warm or cold days at the end of a season, it angers me. Yesterday, which was kind of miserable, actually put me in a really good mood. It just felt like everything was in its place. I put a pot roast in the slow cooker in the morning. When we got home, the husband made some mashed potatoes. I donned sweatpants and an ugly sweater, then we gobbled down pot roast until we were sleepy. It was a perfect early autumn dinner.

Seeing that it’s going be creeping back up to 80 this week is making me really irritated. This is not how it’s supposed to be, understand? I have very specific visions of how life is supposed to go at this time of year and short sleeves don’t factor in them! Everything must be perfect! I will project my anxiety about my lack of control in my life onto things that no one controls! Brilliant!

Anyway. I decided to jump into the Bridge to 10k program. I had purchased the iPhone app months ago, but just wasn’t really sure when exactly I would do the runs. Each one takes at least an hour and it’s kind of tough for me to find an hour plus showering and dressing time during the day.

I headed to the gym during lunch yesterday and decided to just go ahead and do week 1 day 1, since it was relatively short and I wanted to get a feel for the program.

Everything was fine until shortly after the second running interval started. It was at that time that I realized that I needed to use the bathroom. Soon.

I struggled with deciding what to do, thinking perhaps I could hold it for a little while longer. In the meantime, I adopted new jogging methods that allowed me to cross my legs in some manner. I also made faces that communicated the storm of discomfort and panic that was raging in my brain.

Finally, I smacked the big red stop button and zoomed to the bathroom. I have to tell you that sitting on a toilet with sweaty legs is not the most…something. It’s just…not.

I debated for a minute about whether or not to return to the treadmill or just call it a day, but knowing that that week 1 day 1 portion of the app was unfinished was going to drive me crazy. So I went back.

4.35 miles in about 53 minutes, with a bathroom break in the middle and a few walking breaks as prescribed by the program. Ideally, I’d like to finish 10k in an hour. Though, really, I’d like to just finish. We’ll see where I am in six weeks.

my i-don’t-have-to-run day (‘cept i did have to run)

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

Normally, I like my Sundays to consist of sleeping, eating, and watching movies and football. This past Sunday was nearly the opposite of that.

I got up at what we here on the internet like to call o’dark-thirty and went to Oakland to participate in the Great Race 5k. This was kind of a big deal for me, because it was my first “real” race. The Race for the Cure was fun and it was a good experience, but I couldn’t do much running. This time, people were actually there to race and while it was still a fun atmosphere, I could tell that there was more intensity in the air.

I got kind of nervous the night before and considered backing out, but by the time I got to the starting line and had time to stretch and warm up, I felt ready to go. I had whipped together a playlist on the shuttle to the start and it ended up being totally perfect.

When the starting gun went off, there was the initial stutter of everyone trying to go, but it cleared out pretty quickly and we were off.

I was surprised at how good I felt. The first jog I had done since injuring my toe had left my legs feeling kind of crampy, perhaps from favoring my left leg, and I was worried that I would have more of the same. But my legs felt fine. My only real discomfort came from the long-sleeved shirts that we were issued, which felt good at the beginning but oppressive about halfway through.

I walked for a bit near Duquesne, deciding not to wear myself out on the small hill, and a few more times for a few seconds while drinking some water.

I pulled into Point State Park at around 38:28 and I was pretty pleased with myself and my time. I was surprised to find myself feeling pretty emotional, even tearing up for a second. I started jogging kind of on a whim over a year and a half ago, because I needed to do something about my physical and mental health. Jogging led to a slow revamping of my diet, which led to a rekindling in my interests in yoga and Pilates. The cool thing is that I consider more challenges and don’t get discouraged because I won’t be the best at them, but excited because I can just go and DO them. All of this is to say that I might be doing some rather foolish things over the next six months or so.

That's my "I'm about 10 minutes away from a caffeine headache," look.

Crazily enough, the Great Race was the first of several big items on my to-do list for Sunday. I still needed to get coffee (see: aforementioned impending caffeine headache), get the baby’s soccer pictures taken, watch the baby’s soccer game, send the baby off with my dad to the Pirates game, do something with the 5 pounds of chicken in my fridge that were thisclose to going bad (ended up making the most massive batch of chicken noodle soup), wrap the husband’s birthday gifts, go to the mother-in-law’s house for the husband’s birthday party with the totally awesome birthday cake in tow, birthday it up, watch the Steelers game, watch Boardwalk Empire.

The baby’s soccer game went really well. He scored what ended up being the game-winning goal and did a really great victory run. There are a lot of things that are really cool about being that kid’s mom. One of the coolest is seeing things start to click into place for him. Score soccer goals? Totally doable. Play Beatles songs on the piano? Got it, though there will be some angst first. Learn Spanish? On it. Understand math? Please. Read books and start to realize that they’re more than just words on a page? That the stories are there to help you understand the world and your place in it? Obviously!

He’s going to be 10 soon. Last night, after some bickering escalated into shouting on my part, I took awhile to cool off. Later, I asked him to come sit with me for a bit and he let me hug him for a long time as I apologized for yelling the way I did and saying mean things (and then “reminded” him that he owed me an apology, too, for being a jerk in the first place). I looked out of the corner of my eye at his head resting on my shoulder, his cute little ear poking up. It used to look just that way when he was a baby, too.