Mardigras2009’s Weblog

I was supposed to run 4.5 miles tonight. I didn’t go running tonight. I’m not going running tomorrow. I might running 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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

I hae been woefully bad about updating here, mostly owing to a lot going on in my personal life. I just got a new job this week (yay!) and that process took up so much time that sitting down to blog was not a priority.

In fact, I just shut down Lose The Buddha in an effort to start simplifying my life a bit more!

This week my long run cranks up to five miles. I will tell you: I’m worried. My hip continues to give me problems, which I’m sort of blaming on my new-found love of the mega stairclimber at the gym. There is something really satisying about 20 minutes of sweating on that machine that I’ve become addicted to. I cannot explain why.

We bought a foam roller that is one of the best investments ever – Scott and I are both gym rats with a lot of aches and pains – but I’m still waking up with a sore hip. We shall see. It’s made for one-day-on, one-day-off work outs, in order to help heal my hip a bit, and gotten me off my shorter runs. I’m happy to say I haven’t missed a long run yet, which in my head, I guess, feels like the run I have to keep up with. All that said, the shorter runs become longer, and the whole point of training is, well, to do those too.

I started running last week at the gym and … Lawdy. What agony. What torture. I feel like I need to invest in some mittens and a balaclava so I can run outdoors or I will never get through this winter of training. It’s cold here in Chicago, but gym running is awful. Even with an episode of Law & Order to entertain me!

Now to tackle my day. I may take another day of rest, to be on the safe side. I’ve got five miles to get under my belt this weekend and I am not missing it!

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.

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. 

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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.

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.

Today’s best running song was “Who Loves You?” from Jersey Boys. (You can see it here, about 2:30 into the clip.)

And … with the completion of today’s run, training for the half-marathon is officially 25% done! That makes me happy. It’s nice to be done with 4 out of the 16 weeks and feel like I’ve officially gotten into the groove of training.

Oh, I almost forgot! The highlight of today’s run was seeing my older brother pass by me in his car, squinting as if questioning, “Is that my lazy-assed, totally un-athletic sister jogging slowly yet determinedly?” When he realized it was me, as he drove off, he threw his fist up through his sunroof and pumped it in what I interpreted as encouraging, triumphant pride. Brothers are good for that.