I Can't Wait

to be able to pull up my knee-high socks without grunting

to sleep on my stomach

to run without people getting mad at me

to run and actually pass someone

to not have to wear plus-sized clothing

for my thighs to no longer touch, again

to be able to eat fruits and vegetables with no consequences

to sit by myself and not have people staring at me

to go on a diet (now THAT'S a statement that has never come out of my mouth before!)

to put on pants without a major balancing act

for my feet not to swell

for people to stop asking me, with a patronizing smile, "how are you doing?"

to have my brain back, such as it is

to run again

It's amazing!

I finally caught up with the NYT crosswords. Of course, I DID skip some. But I am now in February and almost finished with Saturday's!

Hurray!

Now for doing the same with the rest of my life!

It Better Be Soon

I can't run.

Most of the time, I can't really sit up without needing to barf. So the pool and the exercise bike are the only elements of exercise I can really do. When I actually try to do them.

It's true. I've metamophasized into a 1st-class WHINER.


Whine.


Whine.


Whine.

I've been whining so much, I could barely fit in 50 minutes of swimming on Tuesday.

Will I lose all of my fitness? Probably.

Will that be the worst thing in the world?

I have to remember that the answer to this is "no."

Will I be able to eat vegetables again?

Yes. Eventually.

Right now, I'm eating basically an all-white diet. Sugar, ice cream products and white bread. Most other things don't go so well.

Sigh. The diabetes. It looms.

So who knows when I will post again. Maybe when I get less nauseous and more motivated.

And after I finally get my homework done!

I Even Let Her Touch My Feet

And my Toes.

I'm that desperate. And I have no idea what these magical "pressure points" are for encouraging things.

After all, nothing else is helping.

But, seriously, why would ANYONE want her feet touched?

A mystery to me.

Creativity

No running. Sigh. My doctor family would kill me.

Apparently, I am alone in thinking that traveling and running are both great ideas.

Stuck, then, with being semi-creative.

Friday, I walked to Trader Joe's. I'd never been to one with a wine and beer section! Sorry, Story Finder, but I was tempted by the bottles of wine for $3.99.

Saturday and Sunday, I biked. And stacked two woodpiles worth of wood. And cleaned 7 bathrooms. And seeded part of my parents' lawn. And squatted over paint buckets while filling them with sawdust and mulch, the better to dry the old paint out.

Nothing. Humph. Folk remedies are a lot of hooey.

Maybe if I had been able to persuade my father to let me split the wood, too.

Laying around in bed reading didn't work, either. And didn't do much for my studying.

So today was an aqua-jogging day.

Still nothing.

I am trying a massage, later. If that doesn't work, I'm just giving up. Maybe laziness and massive weight gain will help.

You never know.

I'm Glad I Worked Out Alone

My bladder isn't what it used to be.

I had to waddle to the bathroom mid-jumping jacks circuit.

Other observations on doing a work-out tape in this condition:

Doing the modified push-ups, as I've been neglecting my arms and had to downgrade to the wussy version, my stomach hits the ground before my arms bend into the full push-up postion. Awkward.

Burpees? Yeah. Maybe in quadruple-slow-time. And my knees crackle.

Switching back and forth from the floor to running in place: I don't have to do nearly as many of any of it. That's what happens when you have to pull yourself up via the tv stand.

Jumping in general - pretty hilarious.

On the plus side, this silly bootcamp work-out tape - you know, the one that I could do while barely breaking a sweat, before? - currently kicks my rear.

Again, I'm glad I worked out alone.

A Different Person

I was struggling to put on my running shoes. To put them on and, then, (groan) to tie them.

Gripping that black refridgerator handle and leaning like a circus elephant balancing on the top of a 4-square ball, my eyes fell on one of the few running certificates I've saved.

I don't save many. I like the medals: who wouldn't like shiny, jingly, sparkly things? But those pieces of paper usually get recycled.

The rules: my last marathon and my last half marathon get to stay. Boston is up there to remind me why I really shouldn't want to do Boston again - every time I look at it, that imagined 35-mph crosswind makes me shiver.

Oh, and I re-posted the Philadelphia postcard I got from my first marathon. Average pace: 10:16.7

I didn't even post Birmingham. That was the last half that I did. Last year. Last year, this weekend.

But I did keep the NYC half marathon certificate. Though the Speedy Blonde totally smoked me that day, I broke 1:30 (by a mere 15 seconds) for the first time ever.

That was almost 2 years ago.

Looking at that piece of paper, I couldn't imagine what it would be like to run an average 6:51 mile.

It wasn't me who did that. It was a whole different person.

I shook my head, finished off my shoes and went to meet History for a jog up to Columbia Heights.

While running through the Zoo and the Rock Creek Park Trail, a fellow runner turned to us and said, "Wow. We're really booking it. We were running a 9:15 for the past 2 miles and now we are still doing a 9:50!"

A different city. A different mind-frame. Maybe different goals? A whole different person.

About 7 miles. It's better not to know the pace I was keeping!

New Running Shoes?

I have worn a version of these shoes for about 5 years now.


They have come through various iterations but they haven't changed significantly. At least, until now.

And I've changed, too.

1. I have no real evidence for this but I think the shoe has gotten heavier. I don't want a heavier shoe. I liked that my Mizunos were fairly unconstructed/didn't have a lot of crap built into them and that, as a result, they weren't too much heavier than my racing flats.

2. I've been getting some blisters in my latest pair. After getting basically no blisters in my earlier versions, while putting in a lot more miles, I dont' know whether this is the shoes or me but I don't love it.

3. I'm heavier. This might change but what to do while it is true? I might need more support.

So, I'm thinking about getting another shoe. The problem is, some issues point towards getting a more structured shoe, while others point to more unstructured. I'll have to think about this.....

A Different Sort of Challenge

My arms got a workout yesterday. Even though I did a mere 10 minutes of free weights.

It's hard to hold a 3-inch harcover book with 10-point font close enough to read - at least, if you have my myopic eyes.

My forearms will be like Popeye's if I keep this up!

But I hope that I won't have to.

Multi-tasking by biking on a stationary while reading for class isn't ideal.

My handwriting is bad enough, already!

What did I write again on p. 453? I'm sure it was important......
1 hour of biking. Eh.

A Bad Environmentalist

I try. But I turn up my heat too high.

And I don't always eat local.

And I can't help but enjoy smog sometimes.

Especially when it causes magnificent pink and purple and bruise-blue sunrises over the Capitol Building.

Wow.

I almost tripped. But I caught myself.

Jogging through the Mall - does that make me a bad environmentallist? All that carbon dioxide being needlessly emitted into the atmosphere?

I'll just chalk it up to being a bad environmentalist.

About 6 miles around the Mall. Magnificent smoggy sunrises make up for the lack of houses whose interiors I can examine.

Work Week

This is where I'd like to be this week:

Or here:

Or, maybe here:

Where I have been:

Don't worry: after a few more episodes of "Hoarders", I won't have any books left to hide under.

But I'll still have the work!

Will I get out from under this week?

At least I got about a 6-mile run and a conversation about Evil in on Monday morning.

Yes, I intentionally capitalized "Evil." History and I weren't just talking about regular old lower-case evil. It was the big stuff.

And I worked on my scissor kick and my triceps in the pool yesterday. For about 45 minutes.

Someday, I'll have the time to think that a 45-minute workout is really short.

Someday, I'll have written a better brief outline than the awfulness I just turned in.

Someday, I'll magically be..............

Don't have time to think about finishing that sentence now. I've got a run to go on and more reading to do! Ack!

Hains Point

No one was playing golf.

But there were tugboats out. And the water: like beautiful blue buttercream icing.

This is not my photo. But, you get the idea.

History was incredibly nice and slowed down to run with me this morning.

I got to hear about her book prospectus. Books in other disciplines just seem so much more glamorous.

Oh, and we got to run down and around Hains Point. I love that run. If you come to visit me, remind me that we should do this one.

Unless you are Ivy League. If you are him, we'll go on a more urban one.

Anyway, about 8 or 8 1/2 miles. I got a bit crampy at the end. Then again, that might not have been correllated to the run at all.

Sun makes 37 degrees so much more tolerable.

Marking Time

It's best not to look at the clock when swimming laps. At least, not often.

Focusing on the minute hand, the number of marks left between you and the swim's culmination gain in signifiance.

Even more true when aqua jogging. Add aqua weights and an unexpected abs workout and stir.

As if you were in the stir.

The international community condemns life without parole as a form of punishment. The psychological trauma is deemed too scarring.

Because there is nothing to do but count off the marks of your time there - in that case, your life.

Better, then, to forget the clock. Or the calendar.

Better to forget that you are marking off the moments of your life. Or the moments between moments in your life.

I've been trying not to look at the clock. And the calendar.

Because, while you are marking off the moments, your life is sliding by. And you have only one.

Luckily, I don't wear my glasses in the pool.

Restraint

I Cannot Believe That I Exercised Some!

Now, laziness, that I can do. But laziness is not to be confused with restraint.

Laziness is seeing the rain out the window and deciding that bed or NPR is a much better option.

Restraint is getting up, getting motivated, going out in the rain to meet your running group.

Then, when no one else shows up, that's when the hard part of restraint comes in.

Instead of running alone by yourself, or running home and biking for another 45 minutes or so - instead of entertaining plans B and C that are dancing and swirling in your head - you run home.

And that's it.

When I'm all pumped up and readied to go work out, it can be almost impossible to halt that train. But my slightly sore groin/hip flexor will likely thank me.

And, instead, I can focus on doing more work.

Focus needs to be connected to Restraint, like oxen in a yoke.

Let's hope Focus didn't bolt earlier.

2 whole miles. Ack. Really?

Focus

Arms. Arms. Arms. Arms, lap numbers, and Biz Markee. All were looping through my head.

You've got to be impressed with Biz's chutzpah. The man cannot sing and, yet, he sings a song. Pre-AutoTune.

Perfect for me. I sound almost as good as he does, in my head.

My arms - espcially my poor, neglected tricepts - were quite tired after I concentrated on my arms for most of my swim/jog on Tuesday.

I'll have to try this again! I've been neglecting things recently.

Especially those poor tricepts.