Tempo and Turtle Hearts

Oh before I forget Christina has a great giveaway.  And I will say what I always say when I link to giveaways: I don’t really want you to enter so that I have better odds of winning.  Heh.

Seeing as how I am a person that thrives on being busy and staying alert my lackluster-ness I wrote about yesterday annoys me.  I know intellectually that I totally was semi-burnt out by all the mental and physical activity I did over the weekend and my whole psyche needed a day or two to chill the eff out. So…how did I decide to change it up?

By tempo-ing it up.  One bad thing about fall arriving is that the sun rises earlier and earlier.  Now, normally I feel totally fine running in a little bit of dark knowing that the pre-dawn glow is coming and with it sunrise.  This morning I got up knowing that I wasn’t doing core before my run so there was no way to eat up that time.  And I found myself facing at least 40 minutes in pitch-black.

I sucked it up and went to the TM.  Totally mentally berated myself for doing so even though I had totally valid reasons: the dark and the fact that my mind isn’t where it normally is (because of all the stress etc) and I wanted to be able to hit paces without concentrating on going fast.  I think because I’m so independent it’s really hard for me to use something like the TM because it does some of the work (pacing) for you.  Oh well.

Leary of what I could accomplish because my past few runs have sucked hardcore in terms of pace I started to warm up. And my first thought was “No eff-ing way can I do a tempo when this warm up is having me suck wind”.   And my next thought was “Jeez, suck it up man”. Heh.

Slowly but surely I eased up and my lungs decided to actually deliver oxygen to my blood which gave it to my muscles.  I definitely would have liked that process to go faster but oh well.  It happened at least, right? And despite my warm up being horrendously hard, my first mile at tempo pace felt really good and a little on the easy side.  So I turned the tempo into a progressive tempo and increased my speed after each mile.  Here are the splits:

1. 7:30
2. 7:24
3. 7:19
4. 7:08
5. 7:03
6. 6:53

That last mile was a few seconds UNDER my overall 5k pace from a few weeks ago.  Makes me think that I have some untapped speed in me for the Tufts 10k I want to run in a little under two weeks. Note to Lacey, I still haven’t registered but trust me: I will be there.

This was originally a straight up 5 mile tempo.  Clearly I let myself get competitive with myself (and show off for the massive amount of ppl in the gym that early heh) because 5 became 6 and I skipped some .1 increases to make sure I hit a sub-7 mile by the end.  C’est la vie.

But the run felt AWESOME.  Not quite the same thrill as an outdoor tempo (of which I have completed very few) but I felt like I had done a very good workout and redeemed myself in the lack-of-motivation department. Plus all of this was done by 0730.  Great way to kick off the day.

My radio didn’t want to follow suit and I haven’t been able to get a SINGLE station the past few days.  I think it’s because the weather is all over the place – crazy changing and what not. Or it could be that my school is evil and, not only deprives us of cable, but wants all music to cease too. Bah! But my run went well so I’m surprisingly not annoyed.

Another highlight of my day? The lab I just came from.  We studied turtle heart and the beating signals and all that.  We had to dissect ’em and measure the force of the ventricular contractions under different conditions (with various neutrotransmitters, temperatures etc.) and it was SO COOL.  I won’t go into great detail because I don’t know how squeamish any of you are (and I will refrain from posting my camera-phone pics) but I loved it.  And the lab worked the way it was suppose to which is always a bonus.  Another plus? My prof canceled the  formal lab write up that went along with it.  Saaaaa-weeet! Now if I could only make myself edit the last formal lab write up from 2 weeks ago and study for his exam on Friday.  Maybe not so sweet.

But I’m sitting on a great tempo run and a decent day of education. I think that will trump my upcoming stress, right? Heh maybe for now 😉

Lackluster

Not too much to post about today.  Had a tough run this morning, but only because I was NOT feeling it.  I cut it short to 4 and the last 2 miles actually felt so strong that I was tempted to keep going and get a “better distance” in for today.  I had to (out loud) remind myself that I felt like crap the first 2 and I did SO MUCH yesterday.  Don’t push it. For realz yo.

Plus I think all the working out, sleeping too little and increase in stress has been taking a toll on my immune system.  I can feel the chills in my spine (not good!) but I’m afraid that all my go-go-going is what’s keeping the cold/bug I’m fending off from knocking me out.  Quite the catch-22: if I stop all my craziness I’ll get sick but if I keep doing what I’m doing I’ll eventually break my immune system.  Boo!

I had jazz today too and it was intense.  We’re putting together a pretty (in my eyes) challenging couple of combinations that take all my brain power to master. At one point today I couldn’t even hear the music because I was concentrating so hard on not faltering.  Lots of kicks, spins and tricky rhythms.  Naturally my friend who is in the class is a dancer (and actually on the Dance Co.) makes me wicked jelly because she makes it look easy.  Not fair.  But she did tell me that if I were to put her on the road to run, I’d be doing the same thing to her.  Heh.

The rest of my day has been blah.  I’ve just been feeling a little aimless.  I don’t have a race I’m training for.  I don’t know what I’m going to be doing a year from now.  And day-to-day I feel like I’ve been bogged down with annoying stuff to do: email/call people, pick up forms.  Nothing too exciting.

I’m desperately hoping that by the end of the week or weekend I’ll have something exciting to report! If life decides to be nice to me I’ll have some very pleasant news re: my life, running etc.  Trust me it’s killing me not to spill everything to y’all but if I don’t tell anyone the deets then if things fall through I can make something up and say it’s exciting heh 🙂

Hopefully this post didn’t come across as all down because I’m not all down. Just…meh.  In any case tmrw is a speedwork day of some type so, whether it goes good or bad, I should be more animated 😉

Although on a really good note: I did one of my loads of laundry (the line dry stuff) so my room smells ah-maz-ing right now!

Working hard…

…or hardly working.  Maybe both but for different reasons.

After so much working over the weekend (and thanks to everyone’s kind words about the stress I was / am under) I seem to have caught a bug.  The procrastination bug.  I did go to all three of my classes this morning (and actually in my French class I really got into the activity we were doing) BUT since being out of class I have had no desire to do anything. And the lethargy-in-life bug started last night after finishing the first draft of my lab when I caught up on: NCIS (best show ever), Numb3rs (Colby = bamf) and Psych (Kenan –maybe I could have picked an updated pic but this is how I will always know him– and the guy that was Urkel guest starred, GENIUS).  Wow some serious linkage there heh.

But I started my day pretty eventfully.  My phone (which I use as my alarm) died on me last night. And no, this isn’t a sob story about how I slept through my workout or something else but rather my phone has a really annoying tone that it uses when it’s about to die.  I even had the feeling last night that it would do this at some point but I’m really anal about letting the phone die 100% before charging it so even though it was on it’s last bar (which 3 bars last four days then it dips to 2 bars which last one day, 1 bar last for 12 hours and 0 bars lasts 3 hours. UGH. Muy stupio.) So naturally the thing started beeping at 0442.  At which point my bladder also informed me that I needed to get up and I actually found someone showering at this time. Really?

Anyway my point is…actually I don’t think I had a point there.  Just a complaint really.

At 0600 I got up, did some core while the pre-dawn lighting arrived and then set out for an 8-er.  Which surprisingly felt good.  My pace was eh.  But I think I’m accepting that 0600 will never be Kenyan fast.  My attitude has been adjusted though so that I’m okay with going a bit slower so that I can keep being a mileage junkie. The quads felt a little sore but that obv is due to all the running I did over the weekend.

I knew that I wanted to get some lifting in today as well, part of my vow to do so actually and it helps when you plan this stuff out in advance.  I’m the type of person that if I get the idea to do something I WILL do it.  Like yesterday when I tacked on some miles to the end of my run.  I kept saying to myself, if you’re feeling good then add.  But I knew damn well those miles were going to happen because they were already in my head.  Am I weird?

So I did the same lifting routine I did on Thursday minus the core stuff because I had already done it earlier this morning.  I will mention that my quads are TRASHED after lifting.  Not sure if that’s good or bad. And as I was about to do my warm-down a friend asked me to join on a 2.5 mile run.  Since I was most likely going to get 1-1.5 miles done on my own I said why not? Ummm my quads, that’s why not.  The pace was horrendous for an afternoon run.  I think I’ve said this before but my PM runs are like 90 seconds faster than my AM ones.  Not today that’s for damn sure.  But it’s okay because I was having fun and the pace felt okay.  Despite my clarity and nirvana-esque paragraph above, clearly I am not all accepting of the “slow pacing is good for you” mindset. Ahhh, it’s a work in progress.

Obv if you’ve been following this post you realize that I did a lot more running today than a usual day (barring LR days of course).  This means the appetite is in full swing.  And this means that I can stomach double portions of my favorite foods at one time.  This is especially good when I have just enough HoneyBunchesofOats left for a huge bowl.  Now normally I would bemoan the fact that I’ve run out of a cereal but in this case I’m not bc A) my g’ma bought me like 10 boxes of the stuff recently and B) the last bowl of HBO is always the granola-y small crushed up bits.  Which is pure joy (and FYI: cinnamon clusters are the bestest).

And I want to end the post with two things:

1. My destination marathon is by no means set in stone.  And, judging by my source of the information, there’s a very good chance it will fall apart.  So keep fingers crossed for me and hopefully I will know more by the end of the week.  Even though fall just began, winter is just around the corner and I’d have to start thinking about training plans / starting ’em very soon.
2. I just finished reading The Perfect Mile, and while I’m by no means a miler it got me pumped and inspired to do some hardcore training.  Next up on my list is Born to Run which I’ve been told is also really inspirational. I actually got my copy from a friend who doesn’t run and she said that it made her want to start.  Now she told me she has no intention of actually running but eh, I’m sure that I’ll find it as fuel to train hard.

Hope everyone’s Monday is going smoothly.  And more productively than mine. Despite my long-ass to-do list from the weekend being finito, the next one is already forming. Heh. Such is my life 🙂

Excitement? Maybe?

Definitely not, however, about the weather. We’ve been having such a nice weekend so far here in Southern New England that when I woke up to cloudy (and rainy) skies this morning I was bummed out. A little bit of sprinkling doesn’t scare me and I still got out there for a run.

And I desperately needed this run for stress relief.  As I mentioned in my previous post I think my miles have been so consistently high (at least for NOT being in marathon training) because of all the stress I’ve been under this semester.  Friday = work all day, Saturday = work all day + phone interview + stress of “hosting” someone for the night.  And I take all this stress out on my body via running.

Last night well I guess it really started Monday or Tuesday night when I invited a friend, who graduated last year, for a night this weekend because it looked like my weekend work load would be light.  Wednesday, however, changed that drastically and I tried to dropped major hints that coming would be really inconvenient.  Apparently the message didn’t get through.  My friend definitely got dragged to the library until close and I was majorly grumpy.  We showed up to Oktoberfest after but it was way loud there and I was beyond tired, and rightfully so.  But I felt like I had to do something so I wasn’t a bad host.  Ugh. Especially since I wasn’t going to change my 0800 run.

So I was super stressed out bc of that situation and the fact that I’m still not done with my work. I mean, I definitely have a HUGE dent in my to-do list because I was wicked productive Friday and Saturday but still, this weekend was hell. Maybe it’s fitting that the weather is reflecting my mood (but trust me, the title of the post IS optimistic, I’ll get there)

On to the run.  I complained a little of IT band potential discomfort as well as muscles from the long run (and maybe still from lifting on Thursday) so I planned on doing a little shuffle and what-not for a few miles, preferably 8 (yup total overachiever here).  Well I think the stars were aligned against me today because it was humid (as it wasn’t really raining at all), the actual temp was mild (maybe 60*?), my socks did not want to stay on my feet and my hair did not want to stay in the it’s-really-hot-need-to-prevent-knots braid.  Jeez.

But despite that I managed to finish the run, including 2.2 miles extra for a total of 10.2.  All the complaints I just listed were in the first 3 miles or at least I stopped noticing them at that time and the last 7 were pretty smooth and strong. My pace was much on the slow side (or at least compared to yesterday) but I enjoyed it regardless.  I think the changed outlook happened once my feet were completely soaked.  After that point nothing really matters so why not have a little fun, right? I even had the energy to do some core after 🙂

I guess you could classify my mood as improved.  Which is exactly why I ❤ running.

So much so that I believe I may be running a marathon in the winter.  I don’t want to say too much about it (can you tell I’m paranoid about jinxing stuff? Heh) but it would be a destination run and I don’t want to get too excited but then have my plans fall through about how to get there, $$ etc.  But I’m pretty pumped and it would put all these miles to good use.  Hopefully I know more in the next week or so.  But I fell sooooo in love with this idea over dinner last night. Fingers crossed!

Hope you guys have as productive of a Sunday as I want to have.  Still need to finish up this Physio lab report but once I do that I think I’ll take the opportunity to catch up on some T.V. I missed this past week.  Oh the simple pleasures in life.

Weekly Recap: September 21 – 27 2009

Miles: 58.8 miles

Time: 9 hours 5 minutes 15 seconds

Strength: One full body lifting

Core: 5x

XT: zero

Guess all those innocuous add-ons I’ve been doing really have been adding up! Extremely high mileage for me.  I suppose I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it will be one very cold day in hell when I get a true cut back week in.  Or at least my work load decreases.  As ironic as it sounds but the busier my life gets the more I “need” to run.  The time indicates a slightly slower pace than the past few week but it’s well within the range of what I want/expect an overall pace to be; as well as my body feeling that it’s not breaking down other than usual soreness with adding lifting an a longer-than-usual-long-run this week. I’m also very happy because I made it into the weight room this week! Going to try for twice this week heh.

Will the work ever end?

The movie last night was good, but looooooooooooong.  I had seen a documentary on the crime wave of the 30s over the summer on The History Channel (nerd alert 1!) so the movie was a little on the boring side because there were no surprises.  I’m guessing that lots of the people knew the basic plot but I knew the details.  Eh. Christian Bale is hot though soooo it was worth it. I think I knew how long it was (2 hours 15 minutes) going in but I guess I didn’t consider that it meant I would be going to be kind of late.  Extra late if you consider that I was up at 0600. So by the time the movie got out at 2315? Yes I had been up for 17 hours and 15 minutes.

So while my intention of getting up and getting the long run done early was noble it was postponed until late morning as I slept really late: 0830! Which gave me the chance of going to the leadership conference.  Wahoo. NOT.  My school requires leaders from every club on campus to attend.  If you don’t then your funding and assets get frozen.  I stayed just long enough to secure finding for the physics club (nerd alert 2!) and then hit the studying / working hardcore.

I took my running break around 1100 and set out on a 12.7 mile route.  Since being back at school I hadn’t yet run this route yet so I was excited although I always have butterflies in my stomach of “Oh *expletive* can I do this?” I mean, I always can but I still get nervous.

The weather (and you’re going to hate me Southerners) was WONDERFUL.  I left when it was 55* and it only rose to 60* for the entire run.  Plus it was very sunny and bright, and the route was shady so I was able to not bake and roast.

I knew I was going to be semi-pressed for time as my phone interview was at 1440 (more on that in a bit) but 12.7 miles shouldn’t (and didn’t) take me that long.  I mean it was a long run but as my runs get longer, my pace gets faster.  So weird but my overall pace for a 5 miler will be much slower than my overall pace for a 20 miler.  So despite knowing that I would have just enough time to eat and shower and prep for the interview I decided to tack on an extra 1.5-ish to the run bringing the distance to 14.3 (roughly).

It felt amazing! Well that’s a half-truth, my IT band (I think?) stiffened up and felt streeeeeeeeeeeeetched around mile 6 and my hips/glutes are feeling tight right now but I still feel good.  I think the mental goodness that I feel is totally trumping the bit of discomfort I’m feeling heh.

And just as a note about the interview: I’m still going to be cagey about what it’s for but I think it went well. I tried not to stutter and say “Ummmm” and “like” and I hope I came across as well-spoken.  The way that the application process is going to work for this job is: submit online app (done), if they like that: phone interview & submit references (done to the phone interview, need to confirm my references that they are going to do it), if they like that: in-person, day-long interview conference, if they like that: job offer. I find out if I make it to the next round in early October so keep your fingers crossed for me!

Tonight = Oktoberfest though and there will be a keg provided by SGA (student government association).  Free beer and German food? Yes please!

I just need to get through another billion hours of homework.  There may or may not be a light at the end of the tunnel though.  I was able to get a HUGE dent done yesterday (courtesy of my 6 hour hw love fest)  and this morning before the run and interview.  Hopefully I can keep my nose to the grindstone and push out another paper.  I wrote 2 last night and a poem (in French) as well as an analysis of it this morning.  Ummm, I’m a physics major? What is all this paper stuff?

Well if free beer isn’t an impetus to get this stuff done I don’t know what is.  I don’t even like beer.  But it’s free. 😛

Old Lady

Ok well I might not feel 100% like an old lady but the muscles are definitely feeling my lifting from yesterday! Sucks because it means that I really did neglect it but awesome because I love the sore feeling.

When my alarm went off this morning I thought about pushing my run to this afternoon.  But I knew that I was going to slammed with work and didn’t want to feel any stress over A) getting a run in and B) getting all my work done.  Now, as some of my friends have pointed out, I could have just skipped the run.  But, dear friends, you know that is not a solution!

The other rationale for pushing off the run was that I was on my feet for lots of hours last night at the hospital and because of me being there I wasn’t able to eat as much as I wanted / usually do so I wasn’t sure how fueled my muscles were going to be. Although the hospital food was actually really decent and I got a good amount of food with the $5 voucher I was given.

Side note: The ER was okay.  A little on the boring side but I was able to observe cases that directly related to my physio class which made writing the paper so much easier.  I think the doctor was a little bored too, or maybe he was just tired after a long day.  Either way the lack of traumatic stuff kind of made the night feel a little flat.  Some cool stuff buttttt I wish there had been something HUGE (okay well maybe not because that would mean that ppl would have had to get hurt but I wanted it to be like ER, and preferably with a doctor I was shadowing looking like George Clooney)

Back to this morning. The humidity dropped off overnight and made the run nice and cool.  My hands were actually cold and I didn’t really sweat at all.  Compare that to the other day when I was drenched within the first mile.  And despite my worries about my legs being too sore, not fueled etc my pace was about 30 sec per mile faster today than on Tuesday.  Maybe a little slower than an “ideal” easy run but still a confidence booster because it showed me that the weather plays such a huge role in how I run. And luckily the weather is suppose to cool down over night to low 40s? That would be wonderful (and trust me, if I could share I would!)

I got around 9 miles, maybe 9.05 – 9.10 (and yes I actually do track the hundredths of a mile even though in my log I only go to the tenths haha).  And I got to see the sunrise.  Always a plus.

The rest of my day has been: classes, grocery shopping, paper writing.  I have so much to do this weekend that’s it’s almost comical.  I’ve been working for the past 4 hours straight and will continue to work until 2100 (after finishing this and grabbing a quick bite to eat).  I’m going to the on-campus movie: Public Enemies with a friend.  I actually watched a documentary on John Dillinger this summer so it will be interesting to compare real vs Hollywood. Part of me wants to blow it off and continue to work but I know that I need to do something not school related so my head doesn’t explode. I have the feeling that tmrw and Sunday will be very similar to today.

I do have a job interview in the afternoon tmrw that I need to start prepping for, which I’ll do over dinner.  I don’t want to sound like an idiot over the phone! Sucks majorly though that I have to have a working supper. But hey, you do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do.  Right?

Hope you guys have a better Friday night planned than me! 😉

Time to get in gear and hit the weights

No running today.  Katerina asked yesterday when my last rest day was, and I think it was last Monday. As in 10 days ago.  Normally I take rest days when I can “fit” them in because usually my body doesn’t give me the tired signals (or I’m just really bad at reading them).  But I think some of the lethargy I’m feeling is due to fatigue.  Maybe not all but definitely some. And thanks for all the don’t-worry-about-it comments.  In my head I know that but it’s still hard for my heart to comprehend. So a rest day it is.

That’s not to say I’m not going to do anything today.  I got to “sleep in” before my AM class (a rare treat) and I hit up the weights afterward.  I’ve been seriously neglecting strength, specifically lifting, for a very long time.  The last time I was on a regular lifting schedule was during the first half of my marathon training. MONTHS ago.  I did a little bit of circuit work over the summer but nothing serious.  I was just being a mileage junkie and using the hour or so of lifting time to get in extra miles.

I did my normal weights routine:

Legs:

• Lunges          3 X 15 (each leg) with 10 lbs using a BOSU ball
• Calf Raisers 3 X 30
• Squats           3 X 15

Arms (all 3 X 15):

• Tricep Kickbacks 17.5lbs
• Shoulder Press     17.5 lbs
• Bicep Curl               20 lbs
• Dumbbell Row      20 lbs
• Bench Press            25 lbs

Abs (3 X :45 on :15 off) and Back (3 X 15)

• Planks
• Row
• Bicycle

With a 10 minute jogging warm up and down the whole thing took me just about an hour.  And I attacked this stuff with a vengance.  I really don’t think I’ve been in the weight room in about 5 or so weeks. Ouch for tmrw maybe?

Hopefully getting there today means that I can get into a routine where I’m hitting up the gym at least 2 times a week.  It’s interesting because if you had asked me last fall about lifting and such I would have told you that I couldn’t see how runners didn’t get to the gym a few times a week to lift.  And here I am lately practically running the opposite direction of the gym.

On the work front, I was able to get a ton of it done last night. I did 4 straight hours of work.  Granted I haven’t even started anything due early next week / making a dent in long term stuff but I’m happy with my level of productivity.  I just put my head down and put my nose on the grindstone I guess.  Doubt I’ll get anywhere near that amount of work done tonight as I have my shift at the ER tonight for my internship. Since it’ll be Thursday night I’m hoping for some action.  I mean, I DON’T want ppl to be hurt or anything but I want my time there to be worthwhile (esp since I’m missing AppleFest heh) so I want interesting stuff that makes good learning points – and good material for my paper I have to write.

Oh EW. So in my dorm the window screens are too big for the windows so they bow out a bit.  I’ve already killed 3 huge ass flies this semester and there are two more now just stareing at me and flying around and being annoying.  Gross, I pay how much for this school and they can’t give me protection from flies?! Geez!

Oh that note, I’m going to be late for a lunch date and then I’m off to the hospital.  Happy Thursday and it’s almost Friday. And Lacey has informed me that the humidity is supposed to break soon. YAY 🙂

Molasses

I think the humidity needs to go away. Again.  It’s fall and we have summer weather.  I guess I was spoiled too much last week with the cool, crisp, dry weather.  Muggy and humid is back with a vengeance.

So I’m not quite sure if that’s the reason my run kind of sucked this morning or if my legs really are just exhausted.  On one hand I know that humid weather is like running through water and definitely slows down pace hardcore.  On the other hand I’ve been running a lot and intensely.  I haven’t given myself much rest since my half marathon 17 days ago and my 5k 3 days ago.  And both of those races were fast (at least for me).

Today in physiology lab we had to dissect a frog to expose the sciatic nerve and stimulate the nerve ’til the muscle couldn’t contract anymore.  Somehow something fired in my brain and I wonder if I’m doing something similar (I know the analogy doesn’t hold 100%) to my legs.  Guess I’ll have to pay attention to my body a little more for the rest of the week.

So clearly if you haven’t figured it out yet, this morning was a sloooooooooooooooooow run.  I pushed through 8 although I really don’t know how.  I’ll be honest though, it wasn’t a painful run or one where my body felt it had to stop.  It was just that my body couldn’t really go faster without feeling like the previous sentence.  So I resigned myself to the fact and completed the run just fine.  A little slow but fine.  Total miles for the day was 8.3.  And I ran it about 4 minutes slower than last week which translates to 30 sec per mile slower? Guess that doesn’t sound too bad but it was really odd feeling to be like my body was limiting me because my motivation was just fine. So, to me, that indicates weather?

I guess another variable would be sleep.  I’m only getting 6 hours (if I’m lucky) and my body functions best on 9.  So even with my sleep binges of 8.5 on the weekends, I’m still not treating my body to the rest it needs and deserves.  The one thing I think I have going for me is fuel.  I’ve been making sure I’m eating enough even when I don’t think I’m hungry.  This semester has been weird because a lot of people I know (including myself) have been feeling more full with less food at the dining halls.  Weird because this is NOT the case.  Usually everyone is always foraging for food after meals.

And speaking of food, I’m sad because I’m missing AppleFest tmrw in the dining hall 😦  I have to go to the hospital for my third (and final!) rotation for my service learning component of my physio class.  Applefest is where the dining ppl base all the meals around apples, have apple cider (both hot and cold), apple crisp & pie as well as TONS of locally picked apples.  Like at least 10 different varieties.  So I’m a little sad.  Plus I don’t think I’m going to get to go apple picking this year.  The timing of my schedule with other ppls doesn’t jive.  Bummer.

Another bummer is the amount of work I need to do today – slash the rest of the week through weekend.  I originally wrote out how much I have on my plate right now for y’all to see but then I realized that EVERYONE who reads this (or at least those who comment and I feel I “know”) are wicked busy.  And I hate it when others complain about how busy they are.  So I deleted it — but not before I wrote it all out on paper for me to see. And as monstrous as the list looks, I doubt it will be that bad.  I’m so type-A (as I’m sure I remind you all the time haha) that I’ll get a rush out of it.  Kind of sick, right? I think it’s the feeling of conquering it 🙂

So I best be gettin’ crackin’ ! Adios, au revoir and have a great Wednesday night!

Fall? Really?

Happy fall everyone.  Today at 1718 EST (518 pm for all you non-24 hour clock fans) it will officially be fall. Interestingly enough it was much warmer this morning when I got up this morning compared to yesterday.  Yesterday = low of 39*. Last night = 53*.  Seriously? WTF? And yes I do know that I’m lucky with this weather as some of you are still in high-summer temps.  But the cooling down reminds me that winter is right around the corner.  I want to see how some of you southerns would take to running in sub-zero weather.  Because yes, last winter I did. 😛

The warm weather this morning lead to incredibly dense fog! It was all misty and mysterious. Like a tropical rain forest, except not as warm haha.  It made me feel very LOST-y, which made me sad that this upcoming season is it’s last and it doesn’t start until January. The fog also made me feel really clammy and soaked me through by the end of the run.

Lately I’ve been feeling a little meh and a slight cloud of blah has settled over me and I’ve been using my runs to think and sometimes even get away from my thoughts.  So I didn’t even notice that I ran 9.1 miles.  Well I kind of did but I didn’t notice that 9 miles takes longer than 7, so I was running wicked late for my 0830 Tuesday Spanish lab.  I finished my run with only 20 minutes to spare! Just enough time to grab a bagel from the dining hall; luckily I wasn’t smelly at all.

And no, that’s not me just being all “I don’t ever smell” and stuck-up (because I do have a friend who refuses to wear deodorant because “my b.o. smells like roses”.  I’m all like noooooooo it doesn’t man) but because I asked ppl (including my advisor!) and they all told me that they couldn’t tell.  Sweet deal. I think it was because the dew from the fog gave me a natural shower haha.

And yes that Spanish class is the one with the freshman who was “making eyes at me” (heh great expression that I haven’t heard in a while LARunner).  Hopefully I didn’t crush how I’m viewed by showing up all gross, although since he’s 18 and I’m almost 23 it feels almost creepy to care in that way haha.

But back to running. I think I need to start paying more attention to how my body is feeling during runs though.  I read somewhere about “associated” and “dissociated” running, and while there’s a time and place for both, I want to start reading my body signals and be able to feel things like certain paces, how my quads react etc.  I’m a very cerebral person so I think this will be very challenging. Like most things of an overhaul nature this will take time and I think I’m prepared to start small.

Jazz dance is definitely helping with this as dancing is a lot of feeling.  Today my professor even told us to stop thinking.  So this is prolly going to be a good segue into translating that mind-body connection to my running.

Enough philosophizing.  Time to go save the world, one physics tutee at a time! AKA hoping that no one shows up so I can do my own work heh.