Really? Today is January 15th. I only realized that because I got paid today (woohoo!). Without the pay day excitement I’m not sure I would have noticed that we are more than 2 weeks into the month/year.
Nothing too terribly exciting to report from my life. I’m still plugging away at my training schedule and PRAYING that I improve enough by April 11th. The ultimate consequence for not being in shape enough to run the Cherry Blossom in a 14 minute/mile pace is that you get picked up by the paddywagon and returned to the start line. No joke, I have nightmares about this happening to me. Nightmares. I can literally see myself running just a few feet in front of the wagon-of-doom begging it not to pick me up. Hopefully that’s enough motivation to keep my butt in gear and running as fast as I can (which still really isn’t that fast). The other day at the gym I was thoroughly annoyed at the guy next to me running at a like a 7.5 pace like it was NOTHING. Show off.
OH! Speaking of the gym….are we done with new years resolutioners yet? Because I’d really like to get back to a normal routine at the gym. The gym has been PACKED lately (as to be expected) and packed with the really annoying kind of gym-goers. The girl that does her hair AND makeup before a work out. The person on their cell phone while on the elliptical (really?). The person who has no concept of treadmill etiquette and will run next to me even though there are at least a dozen other treadmills not being used (I go at off hours for the month of January). Yeah, you know who you are…. Get out of my gym already. All the classes are packed. The parking lot is packed. The stretch area is now a social area and don’t even get me started on the locker room. February is about half this stressful and by March, oh March how I love you, by March things are back to normal.
I know what you’re thinking… “why don’t you just run outside?” Well, I thought of that too. I went to Under Armor and bought a whole bunch of cold weather gear to compliment all my super fun indoor gear. I was all set to go. Last weekend my training called for a 4 mile run on Saturday. It was cold but the sun was shining and as a double bonus it hadn’t snowed in a while so I thought surely the W&OD trail would be good to go. I got in my car (kind of ironic that I drive to go run) and I drove to Reston so I could run the 2 miles from Reston to Herndon and then back to Reston again for 4 total miles on the trail. I’m smart. Scratch that…not so smart. There was no one else on the trail. Not a soul which made running under the over passes and through the woods by myself not so much fun. A little scary in fact. Throw in that it was in fact FREEZING and the trail was still covered in snow/ice made for not an enjoyable run. I kept thinking “wow, when I fall and break my ankle it’s going to suck crawling the 2 miles back to my car.” It was then I remembered that Ashley had given me the gift of Road ID and I’d yet to order it. That way when I fall/die on the trail they will know who to call to claim my body. I should probably get that thing ordered already. OR I suppose I could just start running with a friend, indoors, at the gym. Sigh. Running is supposed to help you de-stress not make you more stressed.
Luckily for me my first ever sinus infection decided to kick my ass during a “step back” week in my training. Every third week the program I’m on steps you back to a shorter run that is meant to be easy and a nice break. This week my “long” run was only scheduled to be 2 miles. So since I couldn’t really work out for a few days at least I don’t feel like I missed a big week of my training. Not to mention I can totally bang out 2 miles at the gym no problem. I haven’t tried more than 3 miles on a treadmill but I’m fairly certain that my ADD would kick-in in full force after 4 miles on a treadmill. Basically from here on out my long run are outside. Dear Weather, please cooperate. Thanks.
AND in keeping with the running theme I should also mention that I just signed up for the Monument 10K in Richmond. I’m super duper excited about this race for a number of reasons but mostly because I’ll be running it with the fabulous Krista. I’m calling this my pre-race race to help me get out the race jitters before the Cherry Blossom. It’ll be my first BIG race (I think there are like more than 30,000 runners) so that will definitely be an experience. It sucks that the race is the morning after one of my biggest conferences of the year but luckily that conference is in DC. I’ll just head down to Richmond late the night before and crash with Krista. I’m pretty sure the last time Krista and I ran together we were pulling a prank senior year in high school (saran wrap anyone’s car lately?). Ahhhh, the good old days…. Either way I’m pretty excited that Krista invited me to run this race with her. Hopefully I don’t slow her down too much!!!
A little depressing that my entire update is about running. I promise to have some seriously exciting tales of the single life at my next post. Even if I have to make them up ;)
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