I Ran My First 5K Today!
Irsty?
(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)
IRSTY?
Maybe what we need around here is another photo of a few cute girls. What do you think? Isn’t that better than some of yesterday’s photos? Unless you really dig salad, Spanish booze and my stinky old sneakers! To each his own. But I’d rather see cute girls any day.
No, I’m not going to tell you who they are or give any phone numbers out. They’re my girls! Well, at least one of them is.
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In other news…
I managed to run at lunchtime today. Curse the Spanish booze! Ironman and Spanish-brandy-man cannot inhabit the same body. Somebody has to go.
The girl who sits next to me at work ran today! Our goal is to run each day this week. It would be nice to run the whole course we set out without stopping.
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“Hey pig…” Today’s backgound music is Nine Inch Nails. No, I didn’t just call you pig. Don’t take it personally. Pigs have feelings too, you know.
Posted at 4:00 PM (EST)
At Least 50 Words
(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)
A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS…
But I only need to write 50 words to meet my Holidailies commitment! For lack of a good solid topic to write a full journal entry, allow me to give you a little overview of my weekend. I’m sure I will exceed 50 words and everyone will get their money’s worth!
The photo above is the view from the window right next to my bed. Since I occupy the room formerly known as the attic, the ceilings are slanted and the windows are low to the floor. Plus, since I have the single-guy-mattress-on-the-floor bedding arrangement, all you have to do is roll over and peak out from behind the shade to see what kind of a day it is out there. But if “you” were to do so, I suppose there would be some question as to what “you” are doing in my bed in the first place! I know some of “you” personally. And… uh… well I don’t want to think about it! (Talk about an interesting journal entry!) But if “you” happen to be Meg Ryan, or maybe Gwen Stefani, give me a call and I’ll set up a time to give you a view from my window “again.”
All seriousness aside, folks…
This was the view on Saturday around noon. It was snowing hard at that time. We ended up with at least 10 inches here.
There are two things that caught my eye in this picture. The one is a chimney in the foreground which is covered with several inches of snow. Obviously, there is no heat coming through it. It struck me as an odd sight. The other thing that got my attention is that you can see a portion of the diner that my grandparents used to own. It is on the left side of the picture, above the middle, in front of the large dark building, which is the old theater building. The diner has a red border around the top. One day I will have to write of some of the times there. My grandparents build the original diner there long before I was born. They retired and sold the diner right after I graduated from high school. So, the diner and my grandparents were a huge part of my life growing up. Some day I’ll fill you in.
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Incidentally… I just made myself a killer salad before starting to write this. Lettuce, carrots, green peppers, grape tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, broccoli, tuna, croutons, and Ken’s balsamic vinegarette. Mmmm….
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Oh yeah… you can click on any of these pictures to enlarge them. If you want to…
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I thought about running on Saturday even though it was snowing. I ran in the snow on Friday. It’s very cool. But it just didn’t happen on Saturday. First, I slept until noon just to catch up on some much needed rest. Then I had that I-think-I-slept-too-much feeling in my head all day. I took S to work and T to a friend’s house. I went to Wal-Mart and bought a low priced (sounds better than “cheap,” huh?) pair of boots. The old pair of dress shoes from Payless just did not meet the challenge of the blizzard. Then I did a little food shopping. All the while I was hoping to get the motivation to actually run. Around 7 PM I got sucked in by the boob tube and watched, of all the worthless things, some dumb show about Michael Jackson.
However, after that a show about the Iron Man competition came on. “Watching” people swim 2.4 miles, then bike 121 miles, then run a marathon is almost as good as running myself, right? I was exhausted by the end of the show at 9 PM. Besides, that bag of M&Ms just wouldn’t leave me alone! And the Ponche Caballero…
I did run on Sunday afternoon. But I regretted sleeping late again. And I cursed every M&M that ever entered my mouth. And the Ruffles potato chips! And the Ponche Caballero…
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Ah!!! The Ponche Cabarello! Delicious!
A super friend of mine from Virginia introduced me to Ponche Cabarello a while back. Nectar of the gods! Her brother brought it home from Spain. Neither she nor he could find more of it here in the States. She even went to Mexico recently and didn’t find it there either.
Yesterday, I stopped at a liquor store in my town to pick up a bottle of Yellow Tail Chardonney. I was also looking around for a certain Polish vodka that the guitarist in my band was talking about. I can’t remember its name. I turned to look at the shelf on the opposite side of the aisle from the vodka. There… at eye level… there it was… silver bottle… yellow label… Ponche Cabarello! “No F-ing way!” I called my friend in Virginia and told her. Then I bought the three bottles on the shelf.
Good, good stuff! It’s an orange liqueur, sort of like a brandy. Smooth. Excellent on the rocks. Excellent while writing. Excellent while listening to…
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Tonight’s weblog soundtrack brought to you courtesy of Aerosmith. Usually, I write with some kind of rock music blasting. Come to think of it… I do most things with some kind of rock music blasting! Lately while writing I’ve been listening through my Aerosmith collection. At this very moment, 9:07 PM, “Toys in the Attic” is on.
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Speaking of toys in the attic… I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of practicing tonight. It was nearly as much as I should practice. Even if it’s only for a short time, it always feels good to play. Listening to Aerosmith right now sure brings back many memories of first learning to play and days of practicing after school for hours and hours. I used to put a stack of records on (especially Aerosmith) and play my brains out. Sometimes I played until my fingers bled. Sometimes I hated myself for not being able to play everything on the records to perfection. That’s the point of practicing though, keep at it until you love yourself again. Then you know you will do a good job at a show and not hate yourself for being a breathing embarrassment.
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The only thing I love more than music is reading. This weekend I finished reading “Bloodclots in the Mainstream” by Rob Santello. He toured with the Bouncing Souls and was their merchandising representative. It was an interesting book, despite the fact that the author’s viewpoint was a little too negative for my liking. So, to balance things out, I started reading “The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster. My kids had to read this book when they were in fifth or sixth grade. I always wanted to read it. Now I have good motivation to do so as it is this month’s book for the TUS book club.
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The weekend culminated with a great dinner of swiss steaks with onions, peppers and crushed tomatoes (nicely seasoned by Mom), along with fresh green beans and mashed potatoes (peeled and cut by T). Mmmm! Mmmm!
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Lastly, I picked up a few movies this weekend. “The Usual Suspects” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The totally cool and the totally geeky! I watched “The Usual Suspects” with Mom last night. I started “Close Encounters” but didn’t have time to finish it. Now, I hear the T has just started watching “The Suspects.” I can’t resist watching. I wrote at least 50 words today, right? Right. Okay, later!
Posted at 10:15 PM (EST)
So Goes the World
(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)
It is said that when you see a ring around the moon at night, it is going to snow the next day. What if you see a rainbow around the sun? Does it mean the same thing? Because it is supposed to snow big time here today and tomorrow, possibly 10 to 14 inches in our area by the end of the day tomorrow.
I am not well “treaded” for this storm. The tires on my car are wearing pretty thin. I have no boots since I destroyed them on THIS ADVENTURE back in August. But all I have to do is make it home from work and I will be fine. It can snow all weekend then.
The photo above was taken while driving to work yesterday morning. I set the camera exposure extra low to make more of a contrast between the rainbow and the tree line, as well as to minimize the glare from the sun. The church in the picture is located in Fairmont, which is near Califon and Oldwick.
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I was going to run again yesterday, even though I was debating if that would be a good thing right at the beginning of getting started again, especially given the fact that I’ve been averaging about four hours sleep per night lately. It’s at times like these, when I push myself a little too much, that I fear the Brain-Sucking-Monster-Migraine will get me. Still, I wanted to run.
However, even though the girl who sits next to me at work remembered to bring her running gear, even though we talked all morning about running at lunchtime, even though it was warmer than the day before, we didn’t go running. This time she changed her mind at the last minute when someone asked her to go out for Thai food for lunch. She didn’t stop there though! She, along with the Thai lunch instigator, stood at my cube and harangued (cool word, huh?) me about being too hard on myself for wanting to run again. What? I only ran once after loafing for how many months? How hard on myself was that? (Pretty damn hard, actually!) Well, they convinced me to go to lunch. Honestly, they didn’t have to harangue too long and I rationalized it all away and soon found myself behind an abundant plateful of mildly hot Thai food.
I am beginning to wonder about the girl who sits next to me at work though. Not only has she not gone running with me, now she has even resorted to haranguement (cool, but is it really a word?) to persuade ME to NOT run!
I will run today though, come hell or high water! Or snow.
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Man, did I crash last night! I think I actually managed to get about seven hours of sleep for a change. I was extremely proud of myself for resisting the temptation to turn the computer on and going to bed instead.
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Speaking of crashing…
On the way to work this morning, the driver in front of me stopped suddenly. I jammed on my breaks so hard that I gave myself a wedgie! I suppose it is better to give yourself a wedgie than to BE a wedgie by slamming into somebody else’s rear end.
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So goes the world. Or at least my little portion of it.
Posted at 9:45 AM (EST)
NO MATTER WHAT… COME IN RUNNING
(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)
I STARTED running again.
Go ahead. Get all the Forrest Gump jokes out of your system right now.
I’ll wait…
This is the hundredth-millionth time I’ve started running. I run for a period of time and then quit, for one reason or another. Maybe the reason has been lack of time. Maybe it has been an injury. Once I hurt both of my knees so badly that I could hardly walk for almost two weeks. Another time I got sharp shooting pains up the back of my head every time I ran. I know. They are not very good reasons for not continuing to run, or at least continuing to exercise in one manner or another. They are excuses. I have no great expectations of Olympic style success this time either. What I do have is a desire to enjoy running and lose some weight in the process.
WEIGHT LOSS is definitely a necessity at this point. Right now I tip the scale at a gargantuan 220 pounds. “Tip” the scale? It’s more like “buckle” the poor thing. I look fat. I feel fat. (“Do these jeans make my butt look big?”) Some physical activities are getting rather strenuous. Such as climbing a few flights of stairs from the parking garage to my cubicle at work. I went to speak to someone as soon as I got into the office this morning and she asked, “Are you okay? Why are you so out of breath?” Because I’m a big greasy lard-belly.
In some manner of fairness to myself, the truth is that I do not look tremendously bad. Being over six feet tall, there is more area for the lard to cover, giving the impression that I cannot possibly weigh 220 pounds. But the scale does not lie! (It doesn’t do anything after I got on it two days ago.)
BESIDES, the main issue is that I want to feel better. Better about my appearance and better about my physical stamina and abilities. I want to be able to get to my cube in the morning and be breathing at a level that allows me to say, “Hi,” to someone without it sounding like a wheeze. I want to regain the physical endurance that I had before, especially now that I am playing drums in a band again. (I know, I haven’t written about that yet. It may be news to some readers.) What does the average drummer look like? Skinny and tattooed, right? Sure, I’d like to feel comfortable enough about my looks to play with my shirt off and not have people wonder if that is the Michelin Man on drums. More importantly, I would like to build up the strength to play and play and play. This applies to other physical activities that I enjoy.
SO, why did I choose one of the coldest days of the year, below freezing, to start running again?
I’m glad you asked.
The girl who sits next to me at work runs nearly every day at lunchtime. She has often encouraged me to start running again. I always used one of my “reasons” why I couldn’t. After enough guilt from seeing her run consistently, and enough disgust at my own apathy in the matter, I told her I was going to start again. She recently had foot surgery. So, I told her that when her doctor tells her she can run again, I will start then. On Tuesday she said, “That’s it! Tomorrow is the day!”
I was ready. I even bought new sweatpants for the occasion. I was psyched!
She didn’t run. “Oh, I forgot my running clothes at home.”
Uh-huh.
I ran anyway.
RUNNING is 99% psychological and only 1% physical. It is a battle for mastery over your own mind and will. Both positive and negative thoughts enter your mind while you are running.
While I was running, my thoughts were all over. At first I felt so motivated to be running again. I was ready to conquer the world. A half mile down the road and I hated myself and wished a truck would come by and run me over. I imagined people saying things like, “Excuse me. What is that swooshie looking logo on your pullover jacket just above your jiggly belly? Is that a tusk icon for your clan, The Royal Order of the Pale Walrus?” Or someone else muttering, “Gee… Now I know where the inspiration came from for those song lyrics, ‘I feel the earth move under my feet.’”
My goal was to run two miles: one mile to the end of the road by the old grist mill and one mile back. In spite of the nonsense going on in my head, I made it to the mill and felt great at that point. On the return mile I was faced with some uphill sections. I was doing my best to play the psychological game with myself to keep going. About halfway back, for some mysterious reason, I stopped running and walked all of a sudden. My brain was saying, “You can do it! You can make it!” My legs were saying, “Stick it in your ear!” I walked about 20 yards and started running again. I was within a few hundred yards of our office building when I stopped again, walked another 20 yards.
At that point, my brain said to my legs, “Look… At least come in running. Don’t walk us in plain view of the building, especially on this side where all those people in the cafeteria will see us. Please don’t make us look like a chubby old quitter now. No matter what… come in running.”
I ran the rest of the way like a champ! Down the road and into the parking garage right beneath the big cafeteria windows. (Is that the theme song from “Rocky” playing in the background?) I did it! In the last section of the run, my focus was on the words, “come in running.” I said it to myself with each step. It worked. I won a small victory in the psychological game. The first run was complete. I was satisfied because I came in running. That is what runners do.