Category: Slacker

This is how we do

My new boss recently told me how impressed she was by my dedication. I didn’t know what to say. Partially because I am socially awkward and partially because I don’t feel very dedicated these days. I have been hitting my 3 days of running but cutting back on speed and mileage has often left me feeling a little low. A little uninspired. Running’s always hard but sometimes it’s so hard you wonder what the hell you keep doing it for.

Running motivation quote gift for runner by JenniferDareDesigns, $10.00 — source

Why do we put ourselves through it? Why do we commit to the craziness? Some get up at the crack of dawn to get in a run. Others run at night in the dark. Runner’s run tired and injured and cranky and mad and sad and hungry. We run when it’s freezing cold outside, or when it feels like the side of the sun. Running in the rain can be fun until you fall on your ass. Running puts you at risk of crazies, inattentive drivers or animal attacks. You could run on a treadmill but sometimes you wind up feeling like a hamster on a wheel. Squeak, squeak.

And your body? Something usually aches. It could be a hip or a knee. Your ankle or crappy shins. Tight calves or hamstrings. Black toenails, no toenails, hide those feet! In my case, a crappy stomach. But we keep running. What person voluntarily chooses a sport that has a side effect called “runner’s trots”? I think we’re all slightly masochistic or just a little crazy. What does Einstein say about insanity?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

Oh yeah, that. Lets not even talk about the mind games we play with ourselves. Even when I don’t want to run, I want to run. How does that even make sense?Work ran late every day this week and on Thursday I had little to no desire to run. I was looking for a reason not to. I wasn’t injured and my stomach felt average for me these days. I have been in a funk and just felt meh. I just wanted to veg in a chair and catch up on my DVR. I wasn’t even hungry and didn’t want to eat. Which is very, very rare for me. But I changed into my gear anyways. Drove back to town and decided to run the river path. Daylight was fading fast but I had zero desire to run on the treadmill. That is coming soon enough. I just wanted to get it over with, if darkness cut it shorter so be it.

Running has become a chore lately and it’s been awhile since I have had good run. There have been decent miles here and there but all runs were less than stellar. It’s a big reason why I am working on getting back out on the trails. I set out for Thursday’s run not expecting or hoping for much. My warm up was little shorter due to the twilight hour. I started running waiting for the cough that would come or the stomach cramp that joins on all runs these days. My run went something like this-

1/4 mile in – oh jumping Rottweiler please don’t jump that fence and attack me. Are you on a trampoline?! 1/2 mile in- may as well start running. 1 mile in- no huffing and puffing. 1.5 miles in-still no cramp. 2 miles in -breathing still easy, no wheezing and still no cramping. Hmmm, this is nice. The weather is the perfect temp right now, and the sky looks so pretty at dusk. Oh the streetlights are on, that’s kind of cool. Can I run all of mile 3? Haven’t done that in a while, let’s try. Yay, I’m still running and I feel good. Damn this darkness, I want to run more. I feel like I could keep going for miles. Breathing is still easy, sweet. 5K mark, time to cool down, kind of dark now, oh and some interesting looking, umm, kids smoking on that bench. Run is officially over.

And that is why I keep banging my head against a wall. Sometimes the stars align and you experience a glorious run. It wasn’t long and it wasn’t fast but that wasn’t the point. The point was how I felt during and after. It was kind of awesome. Running is work, but the reward is worth it.

Thanks for listening to me ramble.

Who’s with me?

Why do you keep running?

Any quirks you want to add to the list?

Have a great weekend!

Every Other Day

With Monday being a day off for me and my team not making the volleyball playoffs, it was the perfect day for a run. However after running on Saturday and hiking on Sunday, that would be the third day on my feet. I haven’t run back to back days in months. Since cutting back a little I have been trying to run every other day. So I wasn’t too sure how it was going to go.

Get away from the zombies!! You run!! lol — Awe, Pinterest, you rock

It was kind of warm when I headed out but better than last Thursday. Once again I as running from Zombies. Actually I noticed that I have the chase feature disabled in the app so mostly I just listen to the story. Oops! Oh well, I will save that feature for when I feel up to speed work again. Sounds like it would be good for fartleks. My legs were tired and I was a little warm so I kept it to a short 3 miles. I clocked a low 11 mile for mile 2, woo hoo!

I admit that this week’s workout were planned around washing my hair. Is that pathetic? I have an all day work trip tomorrow, and getting up around 4:30 means I want to be ready as soon as possible which means no flat iron. I have to say that running every other day has helped my hair feel a little healthier. 🙂 But that’s not the point. A ~~lazy~~ quicker Thursday morning means no workout on Wednesday. Which in turn meant running on Tuesday. 4 days in a row? That was either going to be the worst run ever or not.

Sometimes the craziness of Tuesdays after a 3 day weekend makes me wish we had worked on Monday. I was late getting out of work and there was chatter of a storm coming in. By the time I got back to town the light was fading rapidly due to clouds and the wind had picked up. The river path runs adjacent to the street, so I figured I would try to squeeze in 3 miles. With my slower pace I wasn’t sure I would have the time and I also thought I might get cold since I hadn’t packed for a temperature drop. But bonus for packing a neon colored shirt! After walking a bit, I started running but still took walk breaks when needed. I thought I was going to have a problem breathing since the humidity was 63% but all was good. Maybe I finally figured out my inhaler? When I turned around and headed back it was pretty dark. I had the aid of a slight downhill section so I booked it. My lungs and stomach held and I ended up clocking a 9:47 in mile 3. Best mile I’ve run since August, woo hoo! I’m not sure if it was the weather or feeling rushed or if it’s because my stomach has been slightly better but I’ll take it. 🙂

Now it’s off to bed for me, I have a long drive in the morning and I do not like long drives. Let alone ones followed by a day long seminar. Any tips for staying awake? I slept through almost every college class, something about enclosed places and no air. I’ve already plotted the locations of McDonald’s along the way. 🙂 Not for the food but for the cheap Diet Soda. Caffeine is a must tomorrow.

How has your week been?

Run any awesome miles lately?

Tell me I’m not the only one who washes their hair every other day?

Seriously, tips for staying awake at a seminar? Oh that’s followed by an exam?

Changing it Up

I hope everyone had a good weekend!

Last year I went on numerous hikes/ trail runs. I would power walk up and run like a crazy person down them. It was fun. 🙂 This year, with so many races and wanting to PR a few, I was leery of trails. Too afraid I would do something stupid and hurt myself. Ego got in the way of fun. 😦 With my recent inability to maintain pace, I have decided to treat it like good thing and get back off-road. With that line of thought, I went and bought myself something pretty-I figured that maybe an actual pair of trail shoes would be a good idea. A little more traction for the times I careen wildly down a hillside. Plus the purchase would help me guilt me into following through when I am feeling like a slacker. 🙂 Trails are the place where I have fun and don’t mentally berate myself for my pace. I took my shoes for 3.5 mile spin around the lake in the dirt on Tuesday. They felt great, so today is was time for a baby trail.

I was looking to start small, so my mom and I headed to the trail from the Firehouse 5K run. It’s around 3 miles, give or take. We headed up the back way, thinking we would hit the switchbacks on the way down. Fine by me, switchbacks suck. My shoes felt great in the loose dirt. The only problem was my huffing and puffing. It wasn’t humid so I thought I could get by without using my inhaler. No luck, but I also hadn’t been stupid enough to leave it behind. Gaining 500 ft in 3/4 of mile didn’t help either, but after using it I was fine. The rest was mostly downhill, ha!

The view from the top* was great as usual. My mom wanted to go down a different path just to see where it went. I think we lost most of that 500 feet in 1/4 mile. I like downhill but this was ridiculous. The sand was so loose, we kept sliding. We slowed to a crawl-like pace but we made it. Thank you shoes. We came across a Y in the trail so we just picked one. It led to another Y and again we just picked one. The mountain’s not that big so we figured we wouldn’t get too turned around. Plus this leaves more trails to explore another day.

A little past 2 miles, we could see the road and figured that we had accidentally cut the hike super short. It was getting pretty hot so we decided that we could deal with that instead of heading back the way we came. Coming down the trail we came across 2 rows of white stone boxes on the right side and a few more on the left. One was open, empty and a little broken. Being the smart asses that we are, we start cracking jokes about the X-Files and vampires.

It looked like we were coming into the back of a park. As we got closer we realized it was a cemetery. Ok, the boxes make a little more sense. But still stone? Bad form for our previous wise cracks. It was very pretty as we walked through to get back to main road. But I was also confused because the headstones seemed really close together. I did Google it later and found that due to flooding over the years, not only have headstones moved but some graves have as well. Some were moved to other cemeteries but the records are not the best.

We came out on a rural highway. We were actually about 1/2 mile away from where we parked but the road had wide shoulders. Walking back put us around 3 miles. It took us about an hour though, so it felt like a good workout. So now it’s on to the next trail. 🙂

*I took a pretty cool panorama but it refuses to load-ugh.

How was your weekend?

Ever get turned around and end somewhere totally random on a run/ hike?

What’s the strangest thing you’ve encountered?

Too Many Lightbulbs

Happy Thursday!!! This post kind of ended up as a brain dump, so join me for a random ride.

Getting Nowhere-

Yesterday was my appointment at USC. I was nervous going in. I was afraid they were going to say there was something really wrong with me. I equally afraid they were going to tell me that it was all in my head. I was concerned they might tell me stop or cut back running. What I wasn’t prepared for was a cranky older doctor with such a thick accent I asked him to repeat himself at times. He implied that my current gastro is not the brightest and disregarded my previous diagnosis and 4-5 years of symptoms and focused only on those of the last 4 months. He is sending a list of tests to my doctor for him to run. One of them is something I have been asking for so I guess that’s a win. Actually everyone there was a cranky pants. They need to work on their bedside manner.

Getting Slower-

I’m trying to adjust to the fact that 11-12 minute miles are my normal now. And that sometimes even that normal is hard. Today’s run was closer to 13. Then again, it was 95º and I have had less than 9 hours of sleep in the last 48. So I was happy to get it done and still felt good about it at the end. Forward motion right? On the downside, I ran the lake path on Tuesday and saw a sign saying they are closing the path. Effective yesterday. Boo. I though at least another month before I lost it to darkness, now it’s gone so they can clean the lake bed. But I did get one last day in the dirt to break in new toys. Still more on that later. 🙂

Zombies-

Even though I have accepted that I need run slower right now, sometimes seeing it makes me cranky. So I finally downloaded Zombies, Run as a distraction. Yes, I am about a year behind on that. It sounded silly but I thought why not. It’s amusing and I found that listening to spoken words slows me down better than when I was pacing myself. Apparently I need more brain power to process the story, ha! It doesn’t require anything more than running and the story plays out in the background. I also talk to it, oops. So the character just survived a helicopter crash and is running for their lives. But along they way they are supposed to pick up supplies. Like batteries and water and first aid kits, etc. Oh and underwear and sports bras. Did I miss the part where I stole a horse and buggy to carry all this?! The first run picked up 28 items. How would a person carry all that and still out run a mob of hungry zombies? Oh, and 4 of those items were boxes of light bulbs. Maybe the runner wrapped them in the underwear and sports bras? Otherwise how are they not just shards of glass? Ok, maybe I am thinking too much about this. 😛 But like I said, it’s a distraction.

#bakingfail-

I saw a recipe for Halloween Bark over at backatsquarezero.com. Let me preface this by saying I have no talent in the kitchen. None. But this only had 3 ingredients, I thought I could make that. Yeah, umm no. Did you know chocolate could burn? In a microwave? I didn’t. After that I had to scale back the amount I was making. I sort of stumbled through the rest. The end result- not pretty. But damn tasty! I took it to work and we ate all of it. 🙂

So what random thing did you do this week?

Ready for the weekend? Anyone racing?

Ever run with Zombies?

Have any baking tips for dummies?

An Unexpected Walk

Happy Monday!! Does that even make sense?

This weekend didn’t exactly go as I had hoped but it was still a good and mostly relaxing one. Step one was accomplished on Saturday morning, sleeping in! I actually woke around 7 and went back to sleep. My alarm went off at 9 but I have been feeling a little under weather lately (more than usual) so I totally admit to staying in bed for another 45 minutes. It was kind of glorious. I decided then that Saturday would be my full rest day. The plan was to go to lunch with my mom and my brother, do some errands and then clean my car. Best laid plans right?

I ended up getting a call while at lunch that had me flying out to work town for a little snafu. Actually, my mom was driving because I had been with her which was better because I would have been speeding. 🙂 After taking care of the situation we started for home. She asked if I wanted to try walking on the beach. Now I am not really a beach person- sacrilege, because I can see it from work- but she did just drive me, so I said sure. So glad I did.

I gave her directions to a park with beach access and we were off. We’re having a heat wave right now, it was 100 flippin’ degrees in a town that considers 85 hot. The sand was hot on the way down but the water felt amazing. No lie, part of me just wanted to sit in the water but I didn’t have clothes to change into. 😦

We did about 1/2 mile to the beach and around 2 on the beach. That’s the farthest I’ve ever walked barefoot. The water was super clear, and I went about knee high at most. Lower leg workout- score!! Downside to this walk- on the way back, all the beach access points looked alike. We missed ours and came up a ways down on the street. I was reasonably sure I knew where I was and what street I needed to be on. We found it but it dead ended into a mini canyon. What? No lie, I asked Siri for help. We were 1.4 miles from where we parked, oops. But we made it back and just chalked it up to extra exercise. 🙂

Sunday involved a little shopping. I may have spent some money at the Running Warehouse but more on that later. 🙂 I chose not to run that day but according to that stupid heath app on my iPhone, that I don’t know how to use, I walked over 3 miles shopping. Combine that with the almost 4 miles on Saturday and I will call this active rest. 🙂

How was your weekend?

Do you have fall weather yet or summer lingering where you are too? Tomorrow is supposed to be 90+ here. 😦

What’s the best unexpected thing you did lately?