Burnout

I was supposed to run 4.5 miles tonight. I didn't go running tonight. I'm not going running tomorrow. I might run the next day after work. Or I might go see Role Models with my kid brother instead. I just don't feel it right now. What I do feel are my shins, which still hurt. What I do feel is sick and tired of the whole process. What I do feel is still gross and out of shape as witnessed in the full-length dressing room mirror at Old F-ing Navy yesterday. I think I need to give myself Thanksgiving week to not try to bend and break every day's schedule around the gym. Maybe this is just a temporary Case of the Mondays sort of thing. I'm not quitting, but I just need to stay home tonight, make a stir-fry, and read What I Saw and How I Lied. We'll see how the rest of the week goes day by day.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Week 6, Run 4

I cannot believe I have made it through the first six weeks of this training schedule. Holla! Today's "long" run called for a 5K race ... I thought I might try to run 6 again but instead I decided just to run a 5K. Having the long run of the week be shorter than the mid-week runs (4 miles) was kind of weird, but I was down with it, largely because my shins still feel like someone's been beating them with a baseball bat.

I headed to the gym this afternoon after a long day of doing schoolwork and settled in for my 3.1-mile run. I discovered a new TV show while doing this. Of course I'd heard of The Real Housewives of Orange County, but I'd never seen it (or any of the Real Housewives derivations) until today on the treadmill. OMG, how I have lived until now? It's so terrible that it's good. I caught what I think was the season finale (a wedding, lots of drunkenness, lots of big blonde hair, big boobs, veneers, and so forth) and a little bit of a reunion show on which it was revealed that said wedding cost between $300,000 and $500,000. Oooooooo-kay. Who are these people? Who watches this show? I don't know. But I think I now watch this show. I swear it made me feel better about myself. That might be sick, but it's true.

Which is just to say that I tried to focus on this show's money and mayhem instead of the horror of my shins and my crazily slow pace and my ridiculously Hot Face. I'm glad it was on. I'm glad week six is over. I hope I'm not permanently maiming myself by continuing to run on these shins. My boyfriend is running 16 miles tomorrow and I should just stop complaining. Best running song of the day, one of my all time favorite songs in life: "The World Spins Madly On" by The Weepies.

Tonight we ate shrimp, pineapple, onion, and bell pepper pizza from the best pizza joint in town and made mint chocolate chip brownies. 10 weeks to go!

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Week 6, Run 3

I've decided not to run outside until my shins feel better. Maybe this is a dumb strategy, but I cannot imagine that pounding the pavement will do anything to help them. So the treadmill it is.

Last night I hit the gym for my third run of the week, a four-miler. I stretched all day long. I stretched my calves in the office bathroom. I pointed my toes and drew the letters of the alphabet in the air while I sat at my desk at work. I slung my leg backwards onto my dining room table, top of my foot pressed down onto the table top. I have done the most bizarre stretches known to man in the attempt to help these damn shins. I also took two Motrins about an hour before going to the gym and hoped for the best.

The run itself wasn't too bad! Sure, there was some soreness, but nothing too heinous. Luckily, I had my beloved Ugly Betty to keep me company. Oh, how I love that show, even in closed captioning. I felt that season two was a bit uneven, but it's really been hitting its stride again this year. It's best when it focuses on the relationships between Betty and her family members and the people at work, and any episode that showcases both Justin and Mark is alright by me. This is such a funny, heartwarming, smart show.

Meanwhile, my favorite running song of the night was "So What" by Pink. I enjoy Pink. The "long" run of the week is supposed to be a 5K race, I guess to provide race practice. I am not doing that, but I might just run a 5K in order to have a little rest. Next week amps up to 7 miles ... which should be interesting on a tummy full of fried turkey.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Week 6, Run 2

And ... the mid-week 2-mile run. Not too fun. At the gym in the afternoon. At least I had Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett on Oprah to keep me company. Although Brad was sporting a weird hairstyle and very unfortunate facial hair. My shins & calves hurt like m-f-ers, I cannot lie. I hope I'm not making them worse. I am stretching and icing, stretching and icing, lather, rinse, repeat. I was a wee bit nauseated while running, but I attribute that to the early Thanksgiving lunch we had at work today and the consumption of two large rice krispie treats for dessert. I don't have much else to say about this 2-miler except I lost an earring in the locker room, went back for it later, and someone had turned it into the front desk. Which was nice. It made me feel a little better about my gym comrades after one of them expelled such foul flatulence in the treadmill region that I had to hold my towel up to my nose to avoid vomiting on the spot. I think that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button looks interesting and pretty good, although I find that movies that make me reflect upon mortality are more unwatchable the older I get. I should probably be in therapy for this reason along with many others.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Week 6, Run 1

This morning, I woke up early to hit the gym for the first run of the week, a four-miler. The gym is such a bizarre place in the morning. I don't feel completely awake enough to truly focus on what I'm doing or hone in on an awareness of my surroundings. It wasn't too bad, I guess. I was able to drown out lingering shin and calf pain by focusing on Good Morning America and my tunes. Today's winning song was definitely "Score Tonight" from Grease 2. Nothing like a little Johnny Nogerelli to motivate a person to keep running.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Week 5, Run 4

I was a wee bit nervous about today's run after the shin splint fiasco of this week's third run when I ended up walking rather than running four miles due to sinking into the hellish vortex of shin pain. I stretched and iced them over the past two days and hoped for the best.

My plan was to run outside, but it was pretty cold (for here), and I couldn't find my little headband thing that covers my ears. That and the feeling that my shins would fare better on the treadmill led me to the gym for today's six-miler. Normally I would hate running such a long distance on the treadmill due to boredom and Hot Face, but today wasn't so bad.

My calves were sore, but my shins were okay. And I watched the last hour of You've Got Mail. Which is a great treadmill movie until the "I'm heartbroken. I feel as though a part of me has died and my mother has died all over again and nothing will ever make it right" part when Meg Ryan looks at her empty store and sees the memory of being twirled around by her mother, when I started crying right there on the treadmill which was a little embarrassing and also made it a little tough to keep up my pace. But I pulled it together and kept going. I continue to like this movie a little more every time I see it, and I've seen it A LOT. I still am not crazy about the last line of the movie, but overall, I pretty much love it. I love when Meg Ryan throws her face into the pillow after admitting she doesn't really know the man she's been falling in love with. I love when Tom Hanks is wondering why she can't forgive him and says, "Oh how I wish you would." GOD, I AM SO GLAD YOU'VE GOT MAIL WAS ON TODAY WHILE I HAD TO RUN SIX MILES. Thank you, you wonderful movie.

After it ended, I hoped against hope for another movie that would help me pass the time but not make me cry and voila! The Bodyguard! Perfect.

So, overall, I feel great about today's six-mile run. It's the farthest distance I've gone so far on this round of training, and it didn't kill me. 5 weeks down ... 11 to go! Today's best running song ... "Bend and Break" by Keane.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Week 5, "Run" 3

Well, that was a bust. This afternoon's run, I mean. I left work a little early in order to have some daylight to run my four-miler in. I strapped on my shoes, walked for 5 minutes to warm up, stopped and stretched my calves and shins, and started running ... and I knew right away something was wrong. My shins started killing me straight away. After several runs of little to no shin/calf pain, this surprised and upset me. I tried to run through it for about a quarter of a mile, thinking maybe it would fade out, but it just got worse. So much worse that tears sprung into my eyes and I felt I had no choice but to stop at a bench, stretch my calves and shins, and compose myself. I did just that and tried to jog again, but the pain was still so severe that I gave up and walked briskly for basically the entire four miles.

I don't know what happened, I honestly don't. I've been icing my shins after every run for the past several weeks and stretching them and my calves, but I guess I haven't been stretching enough. Maybe hitting the pavement for the fourth consecutive run rather than breaking up the routine with a treadmill run here and there just proved too much for my sad, sorry shins.

I'm very bummed to be hurting and to have missed out on four miles of running, but I also don't think it's smart to keep running when the pain is so bad. While walking, it lessened to a dull, constant ache, which I felt had to be better for my overall health and training than the shooting, piercing, excruciating pain of a even a very slow jog.

Walking gave me lots of time to think. When "Roxie" from Chicago came on, I thought about how Jan Levinson is about to play the role on Broadway. I still remember her from Little House. Anyway. I enjoyed watching all the ducks and egrets and other birds slowing down and settling in for the evening, and I thought about The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, which is a FANTASTIC book. The thing about being out at dusk is that lights go on in houses with curtains open, allowing little peeks inside windows. I like seeing people's wallpaper and cats staring out behind the glass. One of the best things about outdoor exercise is that it reminds you that despite the sometimes shitty aspects of life, there are people out there making an effort to have fun -- playing frisbee in a field, frolicking in the dog park, running, walking, biking, pushing kids in strollers. All of these sights make me happy.

I plan to rest the shins for two days, stretching and icing in the meantime, and then hit the road again for the six-miler at week's end. I'm not sure what else to do.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Catching up

I guess it's time for an update on what has been going on ... I like to keep track of these things so I don't forget.

On Friday evening, I went running and then B. and I relaxed with Thai food and some of last week's shows. I laughed a lot when Pam said, "That's what she said, that's what she said, that's what she said." I continue to be amazed to think I once assessed the U.S. version of The Office as not very good. I must have been in a dark place in my life at the time because now I love it so much that I cannot imagine life without it.

On Saturday, the morning is ... a bit of a blur. I think I went to the library. Around lunch time, B. and I began our trek to the game, stopping for iced coffee on the way there. We decided it would be faster to walk to the stadium than to attempt going in car, and I think it was a great plan, especially since it was a gorgeous day. Walking past a long line of cars in dead standstill traffic is sort of satisfying; on the one hand, you feel for them, but on the other hand, you think, "Suckers!" We stopped at a few tailgating gatherings and headed into the stadium for what turned out to be a hella exciting game. I thought of Al L-H throughout and just reveled in the excitement of the experience -- record attendance, two very enthusiastic marching bands (theirs actually plays "Confrontation" from Les Mis, which is awesome), and insanely fired up fans on both sides. It was of course wonderful to hear the announcer proclaim that it was now Saturday night in a voice that boomed down as if from heaven and see the entire stadium explode in what was basically ecstasy times more than 90,000. Aside from bruising my finger with the giant ring of the man who repeatedly wanted to high-five me, I suffered no injuries from the crush of the crowd. B. and I were actually lining up with hundreds of others near an exit to head out as the other team started their field goal formation and I actually said, "But they could miss their field goal!" Not likely. But look what happened! It was so exciting. Dads were throwing little boys in the air, strangers were embracing, the whole beautiful thing. Of course we lost in the end, but it was still really fun and spectacular in a way to be in the stadium on such an evening.

On Sunday, I ran five miles and went to the library and checked out some more National Book Award finalists. I posted about Chains over at Kidliterate. The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp was a decent read, but I found the protagonist fundamentally unlikeable, so it was hard for me to get into the book as a whole. I'm glad I read it, for the most part, but honestly it gave me some unpleasant high school flashbacks of liking the wrong boys, acting like an idiot as a result, throwing up at parties, and overall teenage foolishness. I can definitely imagine teens getting into the book because it's very realistic to both a hilarious and mortifying degree. I'm about 100 pages into The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and I'm undecided as to how I feel about it right now. There is something about boarding school books that rubs me the wrong way, and I blame it entirely on my deep and abiding hatred of The Secret History (I know it's not a boarding school book, but that whole rich kids at school doing wicked things aura just makes me surly). Although, as a kid, I sure did love me some Canby Hall! As long as the kids in Disreputable History don't start doing truly vile things, I might end up really liking it.

Meanwhile, I've decided I really want to see Australia. I think it will be so bad that it's good, you know? I really hope it's the movie that shows the world just how awesome Hugh Jackman really is. If only it were a musical!

Week 5, Runs 1 & 2

Happy belated Veterans Day! I celebrated my freedom yesterday by sleeping in and hitting the road for my first run of the week, a four-miler. I was deluded into thinking it was a nice, breezy morning, but it was a bit mugtastic. I felt like an oaf lumbering through a soupy fog for most of the run, but AT LEAST MY SHINS DID NOT HURT! I consider this a tremendous victory. But still ... it felt like it just took forever.

This morning I set my alarm clock and hurled myself out of bed at sun-up for an early morning run. It was 64 degrees outside, cloudy, and windy when I hit the streets for my two-miler of the week. I have to say that it was sort of awesome to be out there with the wind whipping and the clouds gathering and darkening overhead as they readied themselves for the rainstormy day ahead. My favorite running song of the morning was "That Thing You Do." That's right. I'm not ashamed. During my cool-down walk as I headed home, I happily listened to the finale song from Moulin Rouge.

Overall, weather permitting, I'd like to try and run more in the mornings before work. It's great having it behind me for the day. It allows me to think think all day long that if I do nothing else productive or worthwhile today, at least I went running.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

The Underneath

My friend Melissa and I have long shared our obsessive love for children's and YA lit, and I'm a big fan of Kidliterate, her site on such. When I wrote to her gushing about my love for a book I finished yesterday, I was excited to get the chance to post my thoughts there. I'm not a reviewer so it's not a review per se, it's just my reaction a few hours after finishing the book. I'm cross-posting it here, so here it is. I hope to post more at Kidliterate in the future because it's about one of my favorite subjects and run by one of my favorite people!

:::

In light of how much I adored past National Book Award winners True Believer and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian — they rank among the top YA novels I’ve ever read in my life — I decided to take immediate note of this year’s finalists and read all of them.

First up was The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, simply because it was the first one that arrived via interlibrary loan. I started reading it in bed last night and had to force myself to close the book and set it aside, because forty pages in (it’s an extremely fast read), I knew that if I went much farther I wouldn’t be able to stop until reaching the end, and I am a woman who needs her sleep!

On this lovely Sunday morning, I woke up, made coffee, crawled under a blanket, and lay on the couch in my pajamas for several hours finishing this book. And let me just say that it was wonderful. I was moved throughout and cried actual tears on several occasions.

It’s hard to explain what a treasure this book is without giving too much away. I could say that it’s about a dog, some cats, a snake, an alligator, trees, and birds, because it is about all of those things, but it is so much more. I guess if I had to pick one thing this book is about, I would have to say that it is about family. It is how the unlikeliest of creatures can form a family, it is about how families are torn apart, it is about how families betray each other, die for each other, leave each other, lose each other, and find each other.

Even though these ideas are brought to life primarily by animals and other life forms in a swampy forest, they are ultimately ideas about all of us — human beings, certainly, but also the earth we live on and the living things with which we share it.

I am having a really hard time explaining how beautiful this book is. I feel like even the slightest bit about the plot will spoil it too much. I guess I can say that I think you will love this book if you have ever loved a dog or a cat, ever walked through a forest, ever swum in a creek, ever been scared of the meanness of life and the certainty of death, ever lost someone you loved, or ever believed in magic.

When Melissa told me this book is being aimed at children in the 8-12 age range, I was very surprised for multiple reasons. This book is very scary. There are villains, both human and not, that positively exude evil in a very realistic and un-cartoonish way that would have given me nightmares as a child. This book is also very sad. Extremely traumatic events occur that I found almost unbearable to read. For these reasons, I’d like to see this book marketed toward an age group that’s a little older. It can obviously be enjoyed by adults, to which Melissa and I can attest, and I think high schoolers would be more emotionally and mentally equipped to grapple with not only the frightening and heartbreaking aspects but the overall ideas of the book, which are quite profound. Let me make clear that I usually veer in the completely opposite direction of wanting to take books out of children’s hands because they are scary or sad or hard to understand. But I do think that certain books are more appropriate for older readers than younger readers, and this is definitely one of them.

As noted above, in addition to being sometimes terrifying and often quite sad, this book is also very deep. The title refers to the area underneath a house’s porch, but certainly it can be taken a step beyond that — it also signifies a jar hidden underneath a tree and an alligator hidden underneath the currents of a bayou. Perhaps most of all, though, it signifies the depth of life that glimmers beyond our knowing consciousness, the ancient mysteries of the earth that still resonate beneath the surface, and stories hidden underneath the passage of time. How the author pulled all of this off with a tale about a hound dog and some cats is a testament to her obviously great (and previously unknown to me) talent.

After suffering severe reading burnout this fall, which has never really happened to me before but which I attribute to having read 60 graphic novels over the summer, which almost made my brain fall out, this is the first book I have picked up and gotten all the way through in several months. I am so glad this is the book that has brought me back to books and to reading. It utterly captured both my imagination and my heart. I hope you will also find a place for it in yours.

Week 4, Run 4

Today's outdoor 5-miler was pretty pleasant. It was a beautiful day, and I enjoyed the gorgeousness around me and my tunes. It's great that it's still warm enough here during the day to run in shorts and a sleeveless shirt with no cold weather gear necessary. I tried working on the stride I attempted on the treadmill Friday night, and it seemed to work pretty well. So well that I somehow shaved six minutes off of my 5-mile time from a week ago. Which seems pretty impossible and I still don't really believe it, but there you go. As usual, I iced my shins upon returning home and tried to stretch out the old calves as much as possible. Then I ate two chocolate mint chocolate chip cookies.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Week 4, Run 3

Friday night at the gym = super fun times! It actually wasn't so bad, as I knew that Thai take-out, The Daily Show, The Office, and a replay of Obama's victory speech were waiting for me when I got home and I saw an old friend there.

It was a 3.5-miler, and I actually tried to alter my stride somewhat. I tried to really concentrate on what I could do to make the run less heinous, and I said to myself, "Self, are your feet hitting the treadmill more than they need to at this speed? Can you lengthen your stride a little bit and see what happens?" So I tried to be a little less bouncy and short-strided (made that up) and a little smoother. It felt sort of foreign but sort of good (or, if not good, less bad). I think I will try it again, though I'm not sure how I will pull it off when I'm on the road and not the treadmill. We'll see.

What I dislike most about the gym, I think, is how it gives me a severe case of hot face. My face turns tomato red and feels like it's in flames. This does not happen outside. Tomorrow is a five-miler outside, and I might try to carve out a new route so there's some new scenery along the way. That's it for now ... coffee time.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Week 4, Run 2

Sometimes I wonder why running is so hard no matter how far I'm running. Two miles last night felt no easier than 3.5 miles on Election Day. It's very weird. I'd like it to be less hard. I kept telling myself that it's just about putting the miles in and it doesn't have to be fun. Maybe the fun comes from feeling better mentally and physically and being healthier as a result of running, not from the act of running itself.

Last night's run was my first night running at the gym in a while ... I've tried to do it in the morning because the gym at night is sort of a depressing place to be. It's also when the men who run the farthest and and most ferociously run on the treadmills, and their sweat flies fast and furious. I'm not trying to be sexist, but as a whole, their sweat is somehow more airborne and mobile than the women's, and when it literally hits a person in the face, it's a little daunting.

I was also hit in the face last night by Lou Dobbs, whose show I never watch and will probably never watch again. I found him highly annoying.

Last night's best running song was "Our Love" by Rhett Miller. What a fantastic running song! I tried to embed it here, but it would not work. So I hunted it down in a "fan vid" for The Office and in one for Johnny Depp. Take your pick.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

While we breathe, we hope.

Memories from Election Day 2008 ...

I woke up early and excited and headed to the polls around 8 a.m. I only waited about 5 minutes, and I stood there with actual butterflies fluttering in my stomach. I cast my vote proudly and with a catch in my throat. I headed to the gym, where I ran 3.5 miles and watched election coverage on MSNBC, hearing Dan Rather talk about having covered the Civil Rights Movement and never thinking he would live long enough to see this happen, saying how honored and proud he was to be a part of this day. This was only 9 a.m., and there was already a sense of knowing how the night would end. At some point yesterday morning I chatted online with AB Chao and we discussed being blue dots in our red state and possibly needing to be medicated before the day was over. My cat sat in the window and pondered it all.

It was a beautiful sunny day. I went to the library and to Starbucks for my free Thanksgiving blend coffee, thought about how proud I was of my sister for her Election Day activities in VA, and I met B. for lunch. We split a bowl of shrimp & corn soup; he had a salad and I had a turkey burger. We talked election, election, election. It is hard to believe that we first met just after Bush won reelection in 2004.

I thought about some of my feelings before his reelection and since that time. How the weekend after that election I convened with friends to lie around our pajamas and eat our way through our bitter disappointment. And how that disappointment never really waned. How in April of last year I was starting to freak about yesterday's election in a big way. And how intensely I believed in Obama once it became clear to me that he was the guy. And how moved I was by his speech on race. And that day when those men were hateful about my Obama shirt in the coffee shop. All of these thoughts and memories were converging in my head and heart yesterday and I thought about how very sad I was when Bush was reelected and how that sadness would be magnified by about ten billion if Obama should lose.

I reluctantly headed to my evening class, during which I hid my cell phone behind my purse and hit refresh on news sites for the entire class period. I heard not one word the professor uttered. I got texts from Elizabeth and my future brother-in-law that Obama won Pennsylvania and I could hardly sit still in my seat. I scrawled that message in ecstatic letters on the notebook of my classmate sitting in the seat beside me. She smiled. It was so hard to sit there and not start freaking out.

I ran out of class upon dismissal as fast as my legs could carry me and headed home to watch returns with my laptop, chatting on Facebook with Amy and others and marveling at CNN's weird hologram graphics and creating an entire conspiracy theory about Chris Matthews hating Keith Olbermann but honestly I was in some sort of spaced out dissociative zone by this point because before I knew it Obama had won Ohio and I started to believe this was really going to happen and I don't remember much but eating cheese grits & an apple smeared with peanut butter and how Marley was lying on the couch cushion behind my head with her feet entangled in my hair. I found it strangely comforting. B. showed up from his classmate's election party and we sat there and watched it unfold until the minutes approached when the West Coast polls would close. "45 seconds," I said, watching the countdown, and the next thing I knew he was on his feet leaping in the air about to take down the ceiling fan because it was being called and then I was on mine and there was laughing and embracing and crying. I talked briefly to a co-worker who called during McCain's concession speech to say while laughing somewhat hysterically, "I KNOW they did not just boo the new president!" and then I sat there with my jaw dropped watching Roland Martin crying and Jesse Jackson crying and Oprah crying and the Spelman student who had fallen to her knees and the crowds euphorically cheering, waiting for Obama to finally come out.

And then he did, and I cried some more, loudly and proudly, and I was struck deep in my heart by the beauty of that man and his family and his words, and I will never forget for the rest of my life what last night felt like as he spoke and as I saw him kiss his daughters and his wife. "I will never forget this," I thought over and over, "I will never forget this, I will never forget this, I will never forget this."

I still feel it today, watching slideshows of reactions of joyful people around the country and world. I bonded with the cashier, grocery bagger, and a fellow shopper at the grocery store on the way to work where I was buying celebratory cookies and she was buying celebratory cakes. I passed an Obama/Biden sign in a yard with a handwritten sign beside it that said "Thank you America, I love you" that made me cry some more and I hung out of my car window to take a picture.

This morning I loved hearing the beautiful, radiant Toni Morrison saying that it's not just that he is a black man -- though that fact in and of itself has an enormity and a weight and a significance that I know means something to black people that I will never pretend to understand as a white person -- it is that, but it is also that he is THIS black man -- and I loved seeing, when Diane Sawyer told her that he said one of the highlights of his campaign was meeting Toni Morrison and seeing that she was just as he expected her to be, Toni Morrison's face break wide open with light and love and joy before she said, "He's another writer," as in, see, he is a writer and so much more, he is like me in that way, and he is like all of us.

I know he is not a magician or a god or a savior. I know that it's not going to be smooth-sailing bliss and perfection in this country from now on. (As my heart soars, it is also broken due to yesterday's passages of anti-gay marriage and anti-gay adoption laws; I keep trying to tell myself that the fight is not over in this regard but it still baffles me, angers me, and hurts me deep in my soul.) I just think he's a brilliant, good man who wants to serve his country well, make his wife and daughters proud, and make us all proud of ourselves and our country again. Maybe that's naive and simpleminded; today I just do not care. Today I celebrate and give thanks with all of my heart.

Week 4, Run 1 ~ Election Day

I spent the morning of Election Day voting and hitting the gym for a 3.5-mile run. The run felt eternal, but it was okay because I was glued to MSNBC and running for hope, change, victory, and all that jazz. I honestly will miss the election coverage when all is said and done. What will I watch on the gym TV if not the pundits?

Speaking of pundits, I was sort of dismayed to see Dan Rather among the random MSNBC pundits this morning. I mean, he is Dan Rather. I don't really know or care what happened to cause his fall from grace, and I wonder if he sits there thinking, "What the hell am I doing with this bunch of clowns?" He spoke eloquently and with great dignity about covering the Civil Rights Movement and how he never thought this would happen in his lifetime and how pleased and honored he is to be witnessing this and to be a part of this day of all days. Somehow my calves stopped hurting and I felt light and free as I thought about that and thought about what we are going to be celebrating (I hope) tonight.

I guess I could come up with some metaphor about this election -- this race -- and the race for which I am training, but that would be too cheesy even for me.

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)

Week 3, Runs 2 & 3

So I only did three of this week's scheduled four runs. And I'm okay with it. I think pushing myself to the limit might have permanently wrecked my shins.

I skipped one of the 3.5-mile runs, but today I did the long run of the week, the 5-miler, and I'm thrilled to have made it out alive. More on that in a minute.

Yesterday morning I went to the gym for my second run of the week, a 3.5-miler on the treadmill. It seemed to take forever and I always sweat so much more inside, so that wasn't too pleasant, but I enjoyed watching election coverage on CNN and dedicate the successful completion of the run to the Killers and the cast of Mamma Mia.

After waking up and starting the day a little off-center due to the time change, I headed out at about 10 a.m. to hit the road for my outdoor five-mile run. My shins ached a bit, but that pain was muted by the heinous hip pain! I swear I look like I am both hobbling and limping along at my slow jogger's pace, but what can I do? Quit? No. I did not quit. I might as well fess up just how slowly I run ... it took me an hour and 6 minutes to finish 5 miles. That's right. Maybe someday I will get faster; maybe I won't. I'm just proud of myself for finishing no matter how long it took. It was an incredibly gorgeous day and I really enjoyed passing by the dogs scampering, ducks paddling, and egrets sunning.

3 weeks down ... only 13 to go!

(This entry was moved over from a separate running blog.)