Back On the Trail

Nine days is too many to go without running. That's how much time I took off from my half marathon (did play bball and soccer in the interim) and it was wayyy too much. I was huffing and puffing out on the trail yesterday, granted I did go out a little faster than I should have. My stomach also felt much flabbier and jiggled more than just nine days ago.

Then about 9 minutes into my run I got the itch--the itch that shows up after I take a hiatus from running. It's like my skin is lashing out at me for making it sweat so much. Yesterday it was only on the sides of my torso, as opposed to my entire torso, thighs, and arms. So that was a plus I suppose.

The other dagger on the run is that only one of my headphones is working. So when I turned around at the halfway point I switched ears to give each one equal time. I think the left one might have stopped working because it got sweat-logged. It sounds gross, I know, but I sweat a lot when I run and it always runs down my temples into my ears. For some reason the left ear seems to get more saturated than the right ear, so I'm wondering if this is connected to the left headphone not working. In any case, a new set of headphones will be purchased this weekend.

Despite the rustiness, itching, and broken headphones I got in a good 37 minute run. A good start to getting rid of the badunkadunk.

First Day, First Failure

So when I said I was starting my training today, what I actually meant was that I would wake up at 6:10am, hear the rain pouring outside my window, consider driving to the gym to run on the treadmill, roll over and fall back to sleep, and finally get up at 7:40am when it was too late to fit in a run.

After I blew off my run and slept in I proceeded to eat a brownie for breakfast (after my Cheerios and banana, but still). My lunch wasn't much better - a bowl of turkey chilli and chips & queso from Cal Tort. I had class tonight so a post-work workout was out of the question.

Although this post may seem useless since I didn't actually do anything today, it has highlighted two of my biggest challenges: motivation and eating decisions. I'm hoping that writing this blog will be motivation enough to start getting out of bed in the morning to run. If not, I'll have to change the theme to be "Sleeping My Ass Off" and that'd just be pathetic.

The Background of my Backside

Like my brown eyes and penchant for Lifetime movies, I got my ass from my mother. Or, more accurately, from her Italian family. All the women in my mom's family have junk in their trunk and what I like to call birthing hips. My younger brother prefers the endearing term thunder thighs. I've read that we're actually fortunate, that we'd be way worse off if we stored the fat around our stomachs, which is more harmful to your heart. But this offers little consolation when I'm shopping for pants.

I grew up an active kid, playing all kinds of sports through my high school years. I continued with field hockey in college, which guaranteed a minimum of two hours of exercise every day in the fall, and a steady schedule of workouts throughout the rest of the year. This lifestyle allowed me to eat liberally, without much concern for weight gain (until I started binge drinking, but that's a subject for a different blog entirely). But now that I hit 25 and spend 9 hours a day in an office, I've found I can't be as liberal as I used to be. Or, rather, my increasingly tighter jeans and growing muffin top have let me know that I can't be as liberal as I used to be.

My solution: I will attempt to run my ass off.

I started running races after I graduated college so I would have a goal to work toward. My first half marathon was great, I finished in just over two hours. But I also trained a lot. I've subsequently run five distance races (ten milers and half marathons), but never with the same success as my first race. I just completed a half marathon on May 17 at the sloth's pace of 2 hours and 18 minutes. In the race photos my thighs look like two gigantor blobs in too-tight spandex pants jiggling along the course, nothing vaguely resembling runner's legs. I'm sure if I asked people who don't know me to guess--based soley on the size of my thighs--my finish time for 13.1 miles, they would pick something closer to 3 hours.

This August I will run either a half marathon or ten miler in Chicago. The race still to be determined, depending on the availability of my hosts in Chicago. Tomorrow I will begin my training for the August race, with the dual hope of getting back to the 2-hour pace and slimming down my haunches and big booty.