Quirky.

Last night I had a spectacular 9 mile run.  Unfortunately, my legs refuse to ever be okay after running anything over 6 but whatever. Lots of heat and ice and elevation for me today. I've got enough problems with IT band on my other leg, so you better get your shit together Achilles tendon...

Anyway, post run, I was soaking in my bathtub (Epsom salts FTW !), eating some yogurt, watching Netflix, and texting Alyssa.  Thankfully this girl just gets me because anyone else would have totally thought doing all of those things concurrently would classify me as certifiable.

On Sunday, B and I watched Good Will Hunting.  After the whole thing was over, he told me that HE'D NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE !  I felt like a moron because I kept making comments about different scenes (again, operating under the assumption that he had seen one of the best movies ever created).  One of my favorite scenes is when Sean talks about his wife.



[Random fact: the camera shakes because the camera operator couldn't hold it still from laughing so hard - Robin improvised that scene]

Why did I tell you about my post run soak and Good Will Hunting ? Because it got me thinking about weird things people do that sometimes seem completely ridiculous to some but totally normal to others. So, I now share with you some weird idiosyncrasies I have which are totally normal to me:

• I can go run for 90 minutes without any music but need to have my phone, food, and a movie playing in order to sit still in a bath for 20 minutes. 
• I won't open a can without tap tapping the top of the can, knowing full well it doesn't do anything. 
• I won't leave my apartment without saying "Be good monsters, Mommy loves you" to the dogs. 
• When I'm at work, if I have Spotify playing in the background, no work gets done but put on a TV show from Netflix on and holy crap you wouldn't believe the amount of work that gets done. 
• I eat Smarties 3 at a time.  For some reason 2 is too little and trying to eat more than 3 at a time just doesn't work.
• When I don't have my rings on, my thumb still goes to each finger and tries to spin them even though they're not there.
• If I run in the morning, I can't have coffee before but fiend for it by the time i'm done; if I run at night, drinking anything other than water after makes me want to kill myself.
• I try to limit the amount of times I check my phone but when I do, I have 4 apps in the bottom corner that if I check one, I'm checking them all.
• If I'm the only one in my car, things have to be in a certain place so I can get them whenever I need to without taking my eyes off the road.  If someone else is in the car, they get a purse on their lap and the phrase "Can you get me my..." happens about every 5 minutes. 
• I can recite pretty much entire movies, TV series, discographies, but ask me something like "Is today Tuesday ?" and I'm all "I dunno".

So there's that. Completely random, useless, not remotely related to anything things that you didn't need to know but things that make me, me !  But I'm super nosy...what are your peccadilloes ? Tell me, tell me, tell me !

Have a good Tuesday friends :)

Running Randomness

At this point in my running career, I've come to terms with the fact that I'm going to hurt.  

I'm currently sitting here, typing this for all of you, trying to ignore my legs. Because we're currently not on speaking terms this morning. They woke up (late, I might add) and were all "We're sore ! We're gonna put this knot in your calf ! Hey, we're throwing some shin soreness in there but don't worry because your IT bands are still going to hurt like always ! Nah nah nah nah nah nah !" and I'm all like

and as soon as I'm done laying some fun random running updates on you, I'm making a date with the stick (That's what she said ! Ah !) and going to town with the RockTape.  Hopefully my legs appreciate the attention because they're going back to work tonight.  I found a 3.1 mile route that didn't murder me and I'd like to try that again tonight.  

I have another 5K on Saturday ! I'm actually more nervous about this one than the last one.  Mostly because everyone I know will be running it.  I keep making jokes about how when they're all done, they can come back and get me.  It's funny but at the same time makes me pretty sad that I'm slow enough that all my friends will finish the race, probably walk around for a little bit and still be able to run back, get me and run probably another mile with me while I finish.  This will be the ultimate test of self confidence for me.  I just have to think about putting one foot in front of the other and finishing the race.  It's going to be hard to ignore how slow I'll feel, but the most important thing is that I finish.  I don't have a time goal or anything, I just want to feel like I did my best.  Or as best I can do with doing 3:1 run/walk anyway.  I could chance running the whole thing but I don't think that's my smartest move right now.

After this 5K it's time to buckle down and focus on preparing for the half marathon.  I need to focus on being consistent with how often I run, increase the mileage and avoid injury.  The biggest challenge for me is going to be my diet.

I eat like crap.  Chocolate is the main staple of my diet.  I survive on Goldfish and M&M's.  I'm lactose intolerant and despise fruit (bananas are okay).  I think it is absolutely okay to eat pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and I learned this weekend that it can also be dessert !) I don't know how to cook and am usually too lazy to go food shopping.  I don't know what food to eat to help with training.  I am THE pickiest eater you will ever meet. Also I'm lazy. If it takes more than 10 minutes to make and I have to use the oven or stove, well it's just not happening.  Cheap, easy, plain jane recipes (especially smoothies) are welcomed and encouraged if anyone has any !

I will leave you with this:  I should be getting my new shoes soon !  

I have been drooling over these babies for over a month now when I first got to try them.  And soon I will own them and it will be awesome and I'm so excited I can't even wait.

Can't wait to get back to Meredith College again tonight to run because last night's run went so well !  So there's your random running updates from me.  There will start to be more of these because, after all, I started blogging so I could share my progress.  As always, thanks for reading you guys !!

It's Wednesday !

Confession:  I'm very much looking forward to spin class tonight...even though I will probably be doing nothing but spinning on low resistance for the entirety of the class in order to not aggravate this aggravating injury.  Mostly because I get to see Meghan but also because I'm hoping that the instructor found a way to get "Sissy That Walk" into the rotation.  That would pretty much make my week. And speaking of confession, it's that time of the week again ! 

I'm pretty sure if this wasn't a short week, I would have figured out a way to MAKE it a short week.  The frequency in which "bad days" at work are increasing to "bad weeks" is just way too much for this girl right now.  My ability to handle stupid and annoying has reached its limit.

I had my performance review at work (I mentioned it yesterday) and while I'm trying to take it with a grain of salt, mostly I'm just throwing my middle fingers up and moving on with life.

(This will be me soon)

I would really love to wake up one day and not hurt.  I would love to be able to go on a run and not go "well, that's gonna hurt later...or now." It would be awesome if I could get over this wall instead of running into it again...and again...and again...

I have no food in my apartments.  I've also run out of M&M's which is actually worse for me than not having real food.

I'm still in relatively good spirits though which is kind of a big deal for me.  Outside of work I get to hang out with awesome people who make the bad stuff not so bad.  Which is kick ass because it makes me not care about stupid people.

So in summation, This:

And this:

One more day people and then BRING ON THE 3 DAY WEEKEND !!  Have anything you need to get out ? I wanna hear it !

Goodies !

First off, my apologies for being MIA on Friday.  Sometimes life happens and you have to unplug for awhile. Second, my apologies again for being so super busy today that you're really not getting much (I know, please don't hate me, I swear I'll make it up to you !) besides a few quick updates.

Update #1: I will be heading home to New Jersey on Thursday to see my little younger brother graduate from high school ! Very excited about that. Not so excited about the 18 hour round trip car ride. Don't worry though...I'll still make a point to have a post everyday :)

Update #2: Who loves getting things in the mail ?

Which is why I was very excited to get my new water bottle, Rock Tape, and my Road ID ! Please excuse the blurry picture, but you get the idea.

The water bottle and rock tape were sent to me from a friend (THANK YOU !) and I splurged ($20 and totally worth it) on the Road ID. All of these things brought to you by my biggest fear while running by myself:

I'm super pumped to get all sorts of fun tan lines because of the Road ID and the Garmin ! I'll go into more detail about everything in a future post (cross your fingers for tomorrow !)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to tape up my leg in the hopes helping my IT band before Hibernian tonight.

Thank you for keeping up with my insanity and thank you for reading !

Wednesday Recap

Good afternoon everyone ! I've been battling writers block all morning trying to figure out what to tell you about yesterday.  I know I don't HAVE to blog everyday (I usually try and take the weekends off for fun !) but I also know that if I start slacking now, I'll soon abandon this and that would just make me sad.  Please bear with me while this post may not be as awesome as some of my others.

Yesterday was spin class and hot tub.  Yesterday I was just perpetually 15 minutes late to everything (so I just stopped caring at that point) including spin class.  My alter-ego, Awkward Girl, made an appearance as the first 2 bikes I got on were broken.  Thankfully Meghan had saved me one that stayed open even after they started.  I modified the workout to only what I could do and stayed around 65-75% resistance so as not to make my legs hate me any more than they already did. I stayed away from the isolations and sprinting which I felt was, overall, a smart move on my part.  I still got a pretty good workout in so that was definitely a win.

I'm sorry if you've fallen asleep already.  It wasn't nearly as interesting as last week's post about spin class.  I will say that I'll be heading back to the hot tub tonight though because after a half hour last night, my legs are feeling exponentially better. Spending some quality time with the stick today as well is also helping. Since I have my trainer tomorrow, today is going to be a rest day (or as I call them "off days").  For tomorrow, I was thinking of putting together a post about my use of music while I run, including my playlist.

I only came up with the idea because I was inspired by Meghan's post.  Everyone should go check it out. She links to this pretty cool website (that I will be spending way more time on that I should) that helps match songs to cadence.  Her blog is pretty cool in general so you should go over and say hi.

Is there anything you guys want to read about ? As much as I'm keeping this for me as a record of what (and more importantly how) I'm doing, I'm always open to suggestions ! Honestly this blog wouldn't really be what it is without Alyssa's help so please feel free to share ideas :)

Thanks for reading !

The Injury Report

Well friends, if you haven't guessed from the title of this post, last night didn't go so well. I mentioned that my IT bands were throwing some sass my way and I should have listened.  I woke up in some serious pain this morning.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we ?

My IT band on my left leg is what put me out of commission for a little over a month back at the end of Feb. I've been keeping track and I've been running again for 8 weeks. Since I decided to start from scratch, we can safely say that out of my 26 (almost 27) years of living, I've only been running for 8 weeks.  On Sunday, I noticed that my IT bands on both legs were sore, but after the run on Monday night, I was feeling okay.  That was the thought process I had going into the track last night. I figured once my legs loosened up a little, I would be great.

I was a ball of nerves to begin with because I don't do well in new situations as it is, but also I was seriously intimidated since everyone there is freaking amazing (I'm not even exaggerating a little).  Thankfully K (a girl I know through friends and have hung out with occasionally) was there and it was only her 2nd visit to the track.  We knew we were both slower, so we figured we'd stick together. She was awesome in helping me keep my spirits up, especially once we got lapped during the mile run.  Honestly, it reminded me of why I refused to run in gym class in high school.

Before we started, Brian gave me a quick pep talk on what to focus on and how to approach it.  Much to my surprise I did the mile in 8:21 ! Which was super awesome for me considering it felt like it was about 97 degrees outside and I thought I was running a 12 min mile.  My legs hadn't loosened up yet, but I figured it would be fine since the next set was only 3 laps.  After some water and a little rest, K and I started on the 1200m (3 laps).  I got about halfway through the first lap when my left leg decided it wanted to have shooting pain from my knee to my hip.

I wanted to at least finish the lap, but 3/4 of the way through and putting too much weight on my right leg, caused that to have shooting pain as well.  I got to where my water bottle was and just tried to keep walking so my legs didn't tighten up on me.  Walking hurt, standing hurt, and I knew there was no way that I would get up if I sat down. Ugh.  Sean asked what was up and I told him it was my IT bands.  He told me to walk around, stretch, but don't even think about running.  

Guys, I was mad. Uncontrollable tears. Thankfully I had sunglasses on and it was ridiculously hot so the sweat was pouring off me regardless. I just kept walking in circles, stretching a little, but mostly just trying to calm down and not to beat myself up.

The rest of the night consisted of a hot shower to help my muscles, some relaxation at the coffee shop to take my mind off everything and then some serious work on my legs with the stick.  If it wasn't for Brian's help last night, I probably wouldn't even be able to walk today. He's also the best human being on the planet and is going to help me get a plan together so I can hopefully avoid this pain in the future.

So currently I'm trying to just stay positive.  I really wanted to give everything up yesterday.  Being hurt like this twice in less than 6 months is really disheartening and makes it difficult for me to see how I'll ever get to the point of running a half marathon.  Yet this also makes me want to to do it more than ever just to prove that I can. This time isn't as bad as it was 3 months ago, so that's encouraging and the part I'm trying to stay focused on.

I'm still going to spin class tonight.  I might not do all the exercises to the fullest extent, but I find that the circular motion on the bike helps.  And then after that it's straight into the hot tub.  Until then, I will be taking full advantage of the couch in my office.  I anxiously look forward to when I have everything sorted out and these posts get more upbeat and positive.  I have to take the good with the bad and just keep pushing.  I just have to keep telling myself that all of this will pay off in the end.

Thanks for reading !