Seriously.

What is with the rain?!?!

I told my mom last night that it had been raining since Sunday and I got a "oh, haha, yeah, whateveryou'recrazy" with no excitement over my new wiper blades.

12 hours later? I get an e-mail with "oh wow, its actually raining a lot!" after she'd seen news reports about NC getting pounded. There was even a super duty truck at work stuck in mud and a downed power line that cut out power to part of campus. Tropical Storm Nicole remnants aren't messing around!

I went to the gym this morning and knocked out 2.3 miles in 26 minutes and felt alright. I can still walk with minimal pain and that keeps my spirits up! The gym at 6:13 felt freezing cold, but when I stepped outside at 6:45, it felt like a frickin' sauna and I mad the trademarked red face ;)

Before I took my shower, Lucy decided she wanted to yell at me about something.

I got my revenge...

Rain Delay

24 hours ago, I thought I'd be working right now, having just done the 2nd workout on the Couch to 5k plan. When I got to the gym, I finally understood what my running friends mean when they complain about "tightness in the hip" and ew. Just getting started was the hugest step, I realized, so I started walking, started zoning out to SportsCenter and the first 10 minutes breezed by. To push myself, I kept amping up the speed on the treadmill and what had been a standard run speed Sunday was close to my fastest walking but it all felt good. The creaky joints wore down around the time ESPN dedicated itself to baseball and bleeeggghhh! It was all in my head, so I had to keep chugging along. The end push was at 11:00 pace.

While watching Monday Night Football (GO BEARS!)I'd told my friends KB and Mr. Clean that I was trying to run, you know, get myself some encouragement, advice, and potential running partners, so KB called yesterday afternoon and asked if I wanted to go running with her for this morning. First of all- what am I supposed to do on the 4 days not on the plan each week? Yoga? Bike? Or is it allowed to keep doing runs of some random pace/length/time those days? Anyway, KB and I were supposed to go running this morning at a county park but its raining soooo raincheck. Literally. Back to my original plan from 24 hours ago, and still feeling good :)

Here's to the next TV timeout!

-Syd

The journey of a thousand miles...

...begins with a single step. Today, I made that step. I've always said I only run if the cops are chasing after me or if my life depended on it, two situations that don't normally come up. My mom- who became a runner late in life- sent me an e-mail this past week, part mocking, but maybe part serious, telling me about an update to a run she'd done the previous year at my alma mater. They were going to have a 5k on Friday night and then a 10k, half-marathon and full marathon on Saturday. Doing the Friday run and a Saturday event gets you a special medal, t-shirt, and happy feeling :) This got me thinking... And then I remembered- I have had to run for my life this past year! As a grad student in ag (trust me, I'll talk about this more), I've spent some time in my life on some seriously weird pieces of machinery, like the one you see me on above. There's a container for coolant on the outside of that machine, and on Memorial Day this year, my boss was driving the machine. It was 5pm, we had 10 plots left to harvest, and he reached back to check the coolant levels. As soon as he did, this white cloud emerged and EXPLODED. I literally turned around and ran, for what I thought was my life. Knocking down the wheat plots in an effort to beat the creepy white cloud, I was sure that my boss had been killed, or at least seriously injured. Half a field away, my fellow grad student thought he was going to be the only one surviving the drive back home that night. Everyone lived and my boss had a nasty burn on his arm, but I realized that yes, I actually have had moments where I thought it necessary to run for my life, so why not actually go collect a cool medal with my mom.

I'll be following the cool running "Couch to 5k" plan since for all intents and purposes, I am a couch bum in the running world! I looked at the plan before I left to go to the gym, but the numbers got a bit messed up. I did the "brisk" 5 minutes at a 3.5mph pace, then did 90 seconds jogging, 60 seconds walking for 20 more minutes. My walking was around a 3.7-4.0mph pace and my running was a 4.7-4.9mph pace, although my last jog I pushed myself to 5.5, just because I knew I still had it in me :D I went 2.5 miles and sweated BULLETS!

I followed it up with 20 minutes on a stationary bike, just kind of ambling as I read my Real Simple magazine.

Here's to the next TV timeout!

-Syd