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Getting Off the Couch

I've been trying to change certain things in my life for a while. One of those things is trying to be healthier. I think for the most part I'm fairly normal and I have ups and downs with making good food choices and making regular exercise part of my life. Last November I joined a gym with one of my friends and had the goal to fit into a dress for a big party. Then a while ago we (really me) started talking about doing the Community Action Food Bank 5K for a work activity. Our boss got on board and paid for our team and thankfully one of my colleagues took over the planning and recruiting. I'm perfectly capable of doing the planning but he's more popular than me so it was much better for it to come from him. 9 weeks ago yesterday I started the Couch Potato to 5K training and little by little have been able to see a difference with my endurance and my ability to not want to throw myself down the stairs at the end of the workout. I would occasionally look ahead in the program but then I'd start to panic about how I could go from week four to week five but the amazing thing is THAT YOU CAN! Somehow someway you can go from running 8 minutes in a row to running 20 minutes (that week I even read the program wrong and ran for 25 minutes). Also during my "training" I was on vacation in NYC and got the opportunity to run in Riverside Park which was a super awesome treat. I also realized it is WAY easier to run at sea level than up in this elevation.

Last Saturday I met 20 colleagues at 7:30 in the morning for our big run and here's me crossing the finish line. My goal was to run the entire thing and I DID IT!


When I'm running the first 10 minutes are pure hell and then somehow I can disconnect my brain from what I'm doing to my body and can get through the rest of the run but on Saturday at the 1.75 mile marker as I was about to fall over and die Jay-Z came on my play list and started singing about my favorite place in all of the world and I was able power through the rest of the run. At the very end I was even singing and dancing to Show me How from the Burlesque soundtrack. It is literally impossible not to shake your ass when you listen to that song. Sure I'm slow as molasses but I did it. I did it. I did it. Yay Me!

Now for the real challenge. I just registered for the Provo Freedom 10K that is in less than five weeks. I've made up my own little training schedule and I'm going to do the best I can to complete this goal as well. I wouldn't say that I love to run. I'm not quite there yet but I have felt something in the last few weeks of training at the end of a run that I've only felt in one other situation that has nothing to do with organized exercise. Those bloody endorphins people talk about are real.

Rain, Rain Go Away

Question of the Day:

How many times can girl hair get rained on and still look 1/2 way presentable?

All anyone does is complain about the weather and so I've mostly tried to keep quiet but I can't take this rain ANYMORE! Unrelenting horrible freezing cold rain.

That's all.

When I Grow Up

When I was a little girl and people would ask me if I would marry a doctor or a lawyer when I grew up my mother would often answer "No, she's going to be one". Which is nice and fine and dandy. What I really wanted to be was President of the United States. Now that I'm a grown up or kind of a grown up I know that is quite possibly the worst job in the world so I'm glad I'm not the leader of the free world. Now as I contemplate what I want to be when I grow up it is a lot less about what I do for a living than what kind of a person I will be in general.

When I grow up:

I want to be kind
I want to be loving
I want to be understanding of the differences in others
I want to think before I speak and type and act
I want to be forgiving
I want to be helpful

Mostly I want to be me but a better, more positive and more successful version of me.

I'm Back!

I actually posted a couple of things yesterday but then Blogger crashed and they went away--probably for the best since I was angry when I made the posts.

Mostly I'm happy. Life is grand and I want to be postive.

Things to Ponder

The other day I was walking down 86th Street in NYC and I saw a mom drop off her teenage son, kiss him on the cheek and watch him walk into school as she shouted "have a great day!". I spent much of the rest of the day wondering what kind of kid he was, if he was a good kid, did it bother him that his mom kissed him in front of all his friends, did she need to watch him walk into school to make sure he went or did she enjoy that as part of her morning ritual. I truly did think a lot about this and then later that day I was at lunch with two friends and heard a story about another teenage boy that warmed my tired, cold, dead heart. This kid, we'll call him Spencer had a girlfriend. He'd gone out on a date or two with her and then one day when his mom asked about her he said they had broken up. His mom asked why and he said, "Because she was mean". Delving deeper into what made her "mean" he told his mom that he and girlfriend were sitting at at table and another girl from their tiny high school came up and asked if she could sit there. She sat. They all talked and then after she left his girlfriend turned to Spencer and said, "Can you believe that? Who does she think she is?" And so he broke up with her. Hallelujah! I wish all of us could be a little more like Spencer and stand up for kindness. My brother Jeff is on a mission to help people be a little less petty, a bit less mean and a lot more Christ-like. While I applaud his efforts and want him to succeed I know from my own personal experience that it is often difficult to undo years and years of what I like to call Mean Girl Syndrome. This doesn't just affect girls even some guys get into this weird thing where they introduce their parents to everyone except for you and have a pie party with everyone on the floor except for you. Meh, I could get my feelings hurt but for the most part it is comical to me and I can just try to be kind and open and not let stupid petty ridiculous things bother me.

Stalker Be Damned

I haven't blogged in a while and it is because I have a stalker. Not a scary follows-me-around kind of a stalker (gosh I hope not) but someone who hates me and for whatever reason seems to enjoy stalking my blog and then blabbing about it. Periodically, this creeps me out enough to stop blogging but not enough to go private. I hate private blogs and so here I am in that "not creeped out" moment!

Be damned!
Be damned!
Be damned!

I'm back!