A No and A Yes

Best Buy did not get a shipment last night. Now I have to decide if I want to order a box set online, wait an undetermined amount of time for it to arrive (on account of it currently being sold out), and also pay for shipping...OR if I should go to Target this afternoon and buy all 14 CDs individually, exclusive box set packaging be damned. I told you my morning was going to be harrowing. I just had no idea the scope of the decisions that I would be forced to make.

But the run was good, though yet again I question the accuracy of Google's pedometer. I'm sure there are many, many steps added for every street crossing or sidewalk hopping that occurs during a run and those are things Google cannot take into consideration...at any rate, what Google said would be just over 6.5 showed up as exactly 6.9 on my pedometer at the end of our run.

I'm going with my number. Essentially seven miles today! Hooray! In 1:20:43. For the first time this year, my feet hurt by the end of the run. That's a sure sign that the mileage is starting to add up. My pedometer also told me that I burned 614 calories before 8:00 am. As such, I feel no guilt whatsoever over the half-bag of Snyder's of Hanover mustard pretzels I ate when I got home.

I do feel guilt, though, for slacking on my cross-training this week. Only once, so far. If I'm still ambulatory a little later this afternoon, I'll try to bump that number up. But right now I need to go lie down and mull over my musical problems...and perhaps ice my knee, just to be on the safe side...

Early morning update.

It appears we're running 6.5 miles today. I don't even know how this is going to go. Though I realize I ran close to 6 miles last weekend, I seem mentally incapable of embracing any distance over 5...

But the marathoners will be doing 11.5 and that puts things in perspective. Eleven-point-five is precisely the kind of number that robs me of any desire to run a full marathon. Eleven-point-five isn't even the halfway point for those sorry sods. This is why I run halfs (halves?).

I'll be back to report on how it goes. But only AFTER I have taken care of this morning's business. I went to Best Buy yesterday to get my stereo remastered Beatles box set and the guy was all, "HA! We sold out of those in the first thirty seconds on Wednesday." Also sold out is Amazon and thebeatles.com...but the guy told me that Best Buy was getting a shipment overnight if I wanted to check back tomorrow (this) morning.

So I have to run 6.5 miles, drive home, take a shower, and drive the half hour it takes to get to Best Buy, all before 10:00 am. WHERE COULD BLOGGING POSSIBLY FIT IN?! Nowhere. It must be delayed, because one must make sacrifices when a morning is set to be as harrowing as mine surely will be.

I'll have an update on all things later today.

The One After 9/09

It's official. This is the least successful blog I have ever started, in my life.

Good thing I entertain myself so! Also good that this random Beatles tweets person came up with my headline because MY GOD THAT IS CLEVER. Single-handedly the best thing I've ever seen from Twitter. Though I'm guessing that no one reading this will get the reference. (See first sentence of this paragraph.)

I am back now from the one-day vacation from exercise that was 09/09/09 (i.e. yesterday). There was so much Beatles excitement, and healthcare excitement, and I had to watch the President, and then I had to watch the Beatles Anthology on VH1, and it's not often that I have so much I have to watch so I had to take the day off, you see!

Also, it rained yesterday, so I couldn't have run anyway.

But I'm back at it now. Albeit still with a bit of caution. What is this illness that's plaguing me? :( I wish it would just blow up into something tangible and have done with it. Either that or go away already. To have it dancing around as it has has not been a pleasant experience. Although I'd label myself as "having improved" since Tuesday, so that's a plus.

Tonight I ran a measly 2 miles, and though I could have swung a third, I was keeping my Saturday mileage in mind and decided to take it easy. Today's time was 22:25 (11:26/10:59) which was faster than I thought...so much so that I'm not quite sure what to make of that. I have no details to record as there was nothing of particular interest about this evening's run. Except perhaps that it's been cloudy all day and I set out earlier than usual and got back earlier than usual and was thoroughly confused when I saw the time on account of thinking it much later. It takes very little to confuse me. Just clouds, apparently.

Summer makes a comeback.

It is humid, comrades. Very. Very. Humid.

It's fairly hot as well, what with this "temperatures over 90" business that's been going on for the past couple of days. I thought we were past all this, but no. September lives to spite me with its early-June-like weather.

There are two things that will kill a run faster than anything else: hills and humidity.

Hills can be conquered; the track where I run is, indeed, fairly hilly. Whip around that sucker a few times a week for three years or so and you'll learn to scoff at hills (not that I have, necessarily, but I can see how runners of the non-mediocre variety might).

Humidity, on the other hand, is a universal killer. It sucks the life out of you. The moisture in the air congeals to form a formidable wall of resistance...it pushes against you with every step...you can't keep going...you know you can do better...but you can't breathe...

OK, it's (maybe) not that bad. I wanted you to feel sorry for me because I'm still kinda sick and it was the first day back at work after a long weekend and I was tired and wah, I really, really, really didn't want to run today.

But I did.

And it was HUMID. Despite all the hyperbolizing above, it is unequivocally true that humidity is the worst thing that can happen to a run. The. Worst. Actually, now that I think about it, there was very little hyperbolizing going on there. I speak the truth. And the southwest corner of Tennessee can generate a high air-moisture content with the best of them.

It's rarely a good sign when the sky starts spontaneously drooling raindrops, as was the case shortly before I ran.

On account of the weather not being ideal and me really not being into this today, I thought I'd mix it up a bit and try running my two miles super-fast, because people who know about such things say it's good to add in a bit of speed training every now and again.

My first mile went very nicely; I floated through it in 10:14. I felt quite good about that. Unfortunately, one mile was about all I had in me tonight, so the entire second mile was laborious and torturous and lots of other wince-inducing words that end in -ous (superfluous?). Mile 2 came in at 10:52, which is still faster than I usually run, but a more...er...better effort on my part would have had those two times reversed.

And then when it was all over, my legs about gave out on me and I wouldn't have fought a black-out, had one crept up on me. But I wasn't all that out of breath or anything, so I'm guessing that was just my sinus infection.

F-I-N-I-S-H

The finish photo. The moment of personal triumph. The runner crossing the finish line after a hard-run race, captured on camera for all to see.

Remember the elation I felt last Saturday? Was it only a week ago that I coasted through five miles in Overton Park and almost beat local celebrity Joe Birch? Oh, how I've wanted to see my finish photo from that race. 'Surely you will look fantastic!' I thought. 'Surely your accomplishment will be reflected in the graceful athleticism showcased in your finish photo.'

And what does my finish photo actually look like? Like this, my friends. THIS.

Who is this person? Why does she look like she's walking when I have it on good authority she was running? And I know she's getting ready to stop her watch (since she was a few second back from the starting line when the official clock got going and thus wants to know her actual time) but do her arms ALWAYS look like that?!?

Race photos. Nothing can suck the self-esteem right out of you after a good run like seeing what you looked like at the end of it. Dear. Lord.

Did the old leg hold up?

Yes. Quite admirably, too.

I'm not sure how far we ran this morning. The schedule called for 5 miles, and the map of this week's course put us at 5.3...but my pedometer read 5.84 when all was said and done. I also don't know how long we ran because I forgot to start my watch until somewhere around mile 2...whatever the final time, it was over an hour. By the time I walked back into my apartment this morning, I'd clocked 11,195 steps. Not bad for 7:25 a.m. on a Saturday.

It's strange...the first year I ran, when I was sick, I would always stop running. Last year, when I got cyclic vomiting syndrome over Sarah Palin, I adjusted to running through illness. This year, I've been running while sick on purpose in the hopes that it will make me feel better. It makes zero sense. But I've been warding off a sinus infection all week and the days that I run, I feel better than the days I don't. (God, what my shins will endure if I get swine flu...)

The only problem today was that my right knee suddenly blinded me with crippling pain somewhere in the third mile, but I think that was because I was running on the street and the surface was uneven. I moved to the sidewalk and was fine.

Wow, this blog is boring today. But so was the run. But in a GOOD WAY. Although now that the endorphins have worn off, I'm feeling a bit ill again. Man. If it's not one damned thing it's another.

OH. I should cross-train today, too. That'll make it an even three. I will do it. I will, I will. It's as if exercise is the police and I'm Paul's grandfather at the start of THIS CLIP. I'd say that's an accurate summation of both my relationship with cross-training and my current feelings of determination on the matter.

Runner down!

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. All that build up to my second run of the week and I'm laid up. Shin pain. Right leg. Damn.

This always happens to me. I hit a stride, up my mileage one week, and then either my knee(s) or my shin(s) will protest horribly. I'm not in so much pain that I *couldn't* run tonight, but I know from experience that if I *did* run, I would be incapable of running on Saturday. (That whole "run through the pain" thing always backfires.) The half-marathon training course this Saturday is five miles so...hmmm, yes, better to sit out running two miles tonight than to sit out five miles on Saturday.

Man. My stupid shin. It aches in the persistent, dull way that a shin aches when it decides it's tired of running up and down hills. It hurt a little yesterday but when I tested it out with a few barefoot laps around my desk in the office this morning, I knew I was in trouble. I'm disgusted with it. My shin is dead to me right now.

OH THE WOES OF RUNNING.

I'll just be over here with an ice pack and a towel soaked in Epsom salts. :(

P.S. Remind me of this next time I'm all peppy and think, 'yes, I should totally run twice as far as far as I usually do on a weeknight...'

P.P.S. OH GOD I don't have any ice made. Can this get any sadder? The wild peaks and troughs that have been chronicled in this blog this week...stunning. Absolutely stunning.

Peer pressure.

Curls and crunches for the second time this week? CHECK. I "cross-trained" (for real, what I do is so barely within the confines of what could be considered cross-training) this evening primarily because, while responding to a comment from Kathryn, I felt like a slacker for not just going and doing it already. And thus it was done. Kathryn, my triceps will thank you tomorrow.

In other news, I regretfully inform you that I ate my Dove delicious morsels today after all, even though I had such high hopes for waiting until tomorrow. If my run tomorrow is terrible, this is why.

Are you going to eat your tots?

I did, indeed, cross-train last night. A few stomach crunches, a few arm curls...next thing you know, I have been trained. So one session down for the week, two more to go. I've never actually done a full three days of cross-training any week...

...until now?! MAYBE! Keep your fingers crossed for a dedicated week of laying on the floor followed by lifting my arms in a repetitive fashion. I just might make it happen.

But not tonight.

Tonight was my first run after the race on Saturday and, on a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it, oh, maybe an ELEVEN BECAUSE I RAN FOUR MILES. Where did that even come from? It's unseasonably cool for September 1st here in Memphis (about 78 when I set out), with low humidity, and as I was walking to the path where I run, I thought, 'Hmmm...maybe I could do three miles tonight instead of my usual two.' And then I further thought, 'Hmmm...maybe I should listen to Revolver because WHY NOT?' And what do you know, a mile and a half in, "She Said, She Said" came on and I knew right then that I could run 4 miles. Easily.

Except "easily" left me in the final mile. I got a side stitch, my knees started to hurt a little, and my right shoulder cramped up (that's the arm I wear my iPod on). But I got through it, and my final time? 44:14! That puts me at just over an 11:03 pace, which is huge because my "official" (as in calculated by race officials) pace for the race on Saturday was 11:24. No only was I under my race pace, I ran the last mile in 10:41 (!!!!).

I have no idea how I did this. But occasionally, in rare, rare instances, I have good running days. Today was one of them.

It came as a total surprise, too. My boss is having this party thingy at our office after hours this evening, so before we left today, the office manager went out and bought a bunch of candy and distributed it at pivotal places throughout the office. I resisted admirably until she came over and dumped a handful of Dove milk-chocolate-with-almonds DELICIOUS MORSELS on my desk and I ate one, and then another, and then another, and then there were only three left, so I had one more, and even as I ate it, my stomach ached, as if to scold me: 'Four?! One really would have been sufficient, jackass.'

This is why I usually don't have candy just lying about. Or donuts. Jesus effing CHEE-RIST what I will do if I see a donut sitting somewhere. I will eat it. And I will want to vomit. And I won't even care. I will eat anything sweet if it's in front of me.

So I thought I might have terrible run because of all the chocolate (which I followed up with a huge Manwich sandwich and tots when I got home...my eating habits make no sense).

I eat like this guy.

Anyway, I put the two remaining chocolate morsels in my desk for consumption tomorrow, but now I'm thinking I should save them to eat before my run on Thursday (for luck). My stomach kinda still hurts, but I'd say that's minor in comparison to the major physical feat that was accomplished today.

Run done. Blog done. And I even have time to get a shower in before 18 Kids and Counting. I am awesome today.

Cross-Training: A Discussion

You're supposed to cross-train when you're working up to a big race.

It's like...this thing.

For some people, cross-training means going to the gym on the days they don't run and lifting weights or taking aerobics classes or something. Anything to work out other muscle groups and help you get stronger.

In the past, for me, it's mainly meant doing the Abs of Steel 2000 VHS video workout. I did not buy this, mind you, but rather my mother found it in a dusty box on the side of the road when she was out walking one morning. That's about the effort I put into my cross-training: doing a decade-old workout video that was in someone's trash.

This is my actual tape.

But recently, even Abs of Steel 2000 just isn't working for me. For one, it's, like, 25 minutes long. That's for-ever when you're lying on the floor doing stomach crunches while trying to keep an eye on the television.

Two, it's not a very well-done tape, in that there are times when Tamilee and the two other women leading the exercises skip reps or forget to do the right side after the left side... All in all, it's just not up the standards one would expect from a volume in the "of Steel" collection.

And three, I never really feel like I've gotten a great workout. I also don't have abs of steel, so either I harbor unnaturally durable stomach muscles, or it's just a shitty tape.

The original Abs of Steel (current retail value: $0.74) was also in the dusty box in the side of the road, so I tried that once. It was even worse, but for the opposite reasons. Ninety percent of the workout on that video involves being in a push-up position. I valiantly held on for about 5 minutes or so, and then I collapsed onto the floor and spent the next two days unable to lift my arms above shoulder-level. NOT HELPFUL.

So where does that leave the current status of my cross-training?

Sometimes I do crunches on my own. And then, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll do a quick arm-strengthening regimen that I found on YouTube, using 5 pound weights. I think I'm supposed to be doing this, um, 3 times a week (maybe?). I don't really know. I haven't put a lot of effort into my cross-training (it's a theme with me an exercise).

But since I'm taking today off from running as I allow my legs to recover from Saturday's race, I should probably cross-train tonight...

I'll let you know how that goes.