hold the whine, please

Pity, Pity Princess

So I had a little pity party for myself after the Get Lucky 7k because I wasn't happy with my pace, felt too good at the end, coulda/shoulda/woulda been faster if only.......

Blech.

Sort of forgot the fact that, HELLO, that was my fastest race ever!!  I have shown some real improvement in the last few months!!  My knee is on the mend!!  I'm starting to develop muscles in my abs!!!!  So many things to be happy about and proud of....

Not only that, but, ahem, let's look at what's going on elsewhere in the world and let's think about how lucky I am to be healthy enough to get out there and run a 7k.

Eventually I got over myself and pulled the plug on the pity party.

serenity now, dammit!

I'm starting to ratchet up the mileage now - this week I'm slated to do 24 miles total, including a 10 mile run on Saturday.  The weather continues to be rotten so I'm choosing to spend time on the treadmill, which I dislike.  Strongly.  Sooooo boring!!! BUT - yesterday's 5 miler, after a very rocky start, turned out to be a really nice run.

Anywhoo, so yesterday I was finally able to run at the end of my workday.  Changed into some running clothes, found my shoes, fought with what was left of the shoe laces after the cat chewed through them AGAIN.......

I so need this shirt

I was not in the mood to run so I thought I'd have a GU chomp to stoke the fire.  Walked through the kitchen to head to the workout room when I saw my laptop....  Ooo!! Shiny Object!!  I sat down in front of the computer, stalked dailymile.com and posted comments on other DM'ers workouts.  Finally saw the irony in that and headed to the treadmill.  Any benefit I may have gained from the single GU chomp was long gone by this point.....

Gotta tell ya, I was just not.feeling.it.at.ALL when I walked into the workout room.

Started the treadmill.....turned on the TV.....Hey, closed captioning isn't working, where's the remote that has CC on it?.....Crap, batteries aren't working on the damn remote.....screwed around with the remote, got off the TM and looked to see if I could manually turn CC on directly on the TV....finally in frustration, threw the remote down ("FINE!  I won't read the TV today!") making the batteries fall out.  Put it back together and Voila!  It's working!  I'm able to turn the CC on... (Ummmm yeah, shiny object girl likes to have the TV on mute and listen to her iPod while she runs, but she also MUST know what the people on TV are saying.)

Back on the treadmill..... Oops! Forgot to turn the fan on!  Off the TM again to turn fan on....
Back on the treadmill..... Dang!  Fans not oscillating!  Off the TM again to fix fan....
Back on the treadmill.... Screwing around with the iPod...damn, no pockets and no arm band!  Tied iPod to treadmill directly in front of me....

Soooooo, remember my run evaluation?  Another thing I do wrong while running is swing my arms so that they cross in front of my body.  That can pose a problem when I'm wearing ear buds connected to long wires that are connected to said iPod which is tied to treadmill directly in front of me......my wildly swinging arms ripped the buds out of my ears three times (each time quickly followed by an effenheimer outburst) before I decided I would just carry the damn thing.

Restart on the treadmill after untying iPod.... Crap! Forgot my metronome!  (Again, remember my run evaluation??  I need that to help me stay focused on shortening my stride, especially towards the end of my run when I get tired and start to get sloppy.) Off the TM again to get the metronome....

Are you tired yet?  I was at approximately the 0.3 mile mark here and just about ready to quit. But, brave soldier that I am, I pushed on.....

So here's the point of this really long (sorry about that) story: once I finally got moving and found my rhythm, I seemed to enter an almost trance-like state.... the iPod partnered with the metronome and knew just which songs to play..... I totally ignored the TV and instead just stared at the wall, felt the music and RAN....  Before I knew it, my five miles were done and I was in cool-down phase. Ahhhhh, serenity. One of my best runs ever.

Don't you just love it when that happens?