Run, Forrest, RUN!

Oops.  Lost a day already.  Dang it.

Okay, so I've run out of things to write about.  The children are much worse muses now that they are older.  Today...Michael and Lily's final day of Go Fish camp was rained/thundered out, and they've been basically trashing the house since.  Not too exciting.  No fodder for me to write about.

No one out in the general public has annoyed me.

I have no funny anecdotes...or even not so funny anecdotes.

So when life gets boring, I guess I should just write about something else that is boring.



Running.


I am still running.  Can you believe it?  I've hit a huge milestone (for me) this summer.  I am now measuring my runs in miles instead of minutes.  I was always scared to measure by miles, because I just wasn't running far enough. It's just downright depressing to come in from a 25 minute run, gasping and sweating and cramping and generally feeling like crap, and announce to your husband, "Jeff!  pant...pant... I...gasp...just ran...phew...gasp... 0.16 miles.  ROCK'IN!"  So I chose to herald my minutes.  Who knows if I ran to the next town or just down to the mailbox?  I went out and ran myself exhausted for 20 minutes.  Yay, me.

Well, I started noticing that I was going further and faster than last summer.  When I ran on a paved path with the mileage marked, I realized that I was running a 10 minute mile (not my norm...but I am down to around an 11 minute mile on average).  I started to get really bored running in circles...because I was able to double my tiny neighborhood loop.

So I did the "big" loop from our house.  The one that measures about 3.1 miles (a 5K).  The one Jeff's been doing as his easy run for the whole summer.  I digress.  I ran it 4 minutes faster than my 5K last October.  Woo-hoo!

It doesn't feel too bad to say I am out running 3 miles.  So I've switched from tracking minutes to miles.

I still suck at this.  I still feel like I should have special shoes and a funny shirt on to distract from my running. I hate how boring it is.  I hate that I get random gut cramps and how I lack to fortitude to really push myself to run through it.  I hate that I have been doing this for 15 months and I am just now running 3 miles somewhat reliably.  Who is this terrible at this?

But I love how I feel when I'm all done with a run.  All sweaty and sore and like I've gotten a really really good work-out.  I like that I sometimes now have periods of the run where I am not thinking how much I hate it or how much pain I'm in, and instead watch red-tailed hawks being chased by little song birds and sunrises and feel strong and capable.  I now leave for every run hoping against hope for those brief moments to appear magically in the run.  And when I have a terrible run (like this morning), I let myself walk for a few moments without feeling like a failure...because I know that my next run could be better, or my last run WAS better.

I'm going to kick my 5K's butt in October.  And I'm thinking of trying a 10K next year.  Better get a pair of REALLY magic shoes.