Well, that was a bust.

Hi Susie!
The run, you ask? Going NOWHERE. My friend dropped out, then my daughter dropped out, and then I'm afraid my MOJO dropped out.

I'm going to carry on with the training, but due to all the waiting around for schedules to mesh, I am nowhere near ready to run 10K on pavement, and we're only four weeks from the race. I'll just have to give it my best shot and try again next year.

It's Easter Sunday tomorrow. My parents are coming over for dinner, so I have some cleaning to do. I hate cooking a big feasty meal in a messy house.

Last Wednesday my youngest daughter turned 9 years old. What?!?! Sigh. Tomorrow afternoon sometime I should be about eighty, and wondering what the heck happened.

Here's the cake I made her:

I've never worked with fondant before - it was surprisingly simple, and the finished product is disproportionately impressive. Win!

Feel Better Slow

Well, Susie pointed out the other day that if I am feeling better, it is now time to lace up the ol' running shoes again.

I'm a big believer in convalescence. Our culture hasn't really respected it for a long time - in the old days, you'd have been sent to the seaside for six weeks after the flu, and if all you had was a cold you'd at least have been well wrapped up and taken on gentle airings until all danger of relapse was past.

Fast forward to the past fifty or so years. It seems that, for decades, people have been taking just a day or two off, and coughing and sniffling their way through the surrounding weeks of work. They spend those weeks broadcasting their viruses to the rest of the people in the office, or the kids at the school, or whatever. Ads used to focus on drugs you could use to deal with your symptoms so you'd be able to go to work. (Anybody else horrified by that commercial? Imagining yourself on that very same plane, unknowingly breathing in all of her recycled air?)

I think modern medicine is starting to get back on board, though, judging from the number of times in the past few years that I've heard medical professionals talking about the "postviral state". The aforementioned ads, too, have begun to change. Some now suggest that you take the drugs for symptom relief so you can get a better, more healing, sleep. An improvement.

Anyhow, it has been four mornings now that I have woken up without a sore throat or a headache, so I think I'm going to follow Susie's direction and start up the 10K training again. I'm three weeks behind schedule, so I don't know whether I'll be able to finish the entire program - I am in week 4 of 14, but there are only 8 weeks left until the race. My daughter is also recovering from the cold, so she will be out of action for at least a few more days.

Unsurprisingly, I have already gotten out of the habit, and going for a run tonight seems like a total drag.

Second week begins

No, this is not turning into a running blog. It's a funny scroll-down pic day.

Run one of week two today. Girlie opted out - preferred to stay home baking cookies. I said "You go, sugar. Or, I guess, stay."

Lots of exercisey-type people do things like post a picture of the sky during their run. I thought about doing that, but decided it would be more meaningful and a lot funnier if I posted pics of my hair after my run. That way, you can tell a lot of things about the run, such as what the weather was like, how sweaty I might have ended up, and even what kind of a mood I'm in.

Hair today ('scuse the blurry):

(Hat for warmth. Misshapen head? No, just my hair. What hair? THIS HAIR.)

2 and 3

So, we completed Week One. Both day 2 and day 3 were, in their own way, challenging...day 2 was a raging, freezing wind- and rain-storm. I thought my daughter might decide to sit it out, but apparently all those hours on horseback in the freezing cold or pouring rain have inured her to climatic inconvenience...she was stoic. I don't like wet feet too much, but within seconds of stepping outside we were both soaked to the skin, all over.

We persevered, and triumphed. It took me 24 hours just to get warmed up after that, though.

And I was so busy cooking dinner immediately afterwards that I didn't have time to shower or even blowdry my hair. So, wringing wet with rainwater, it dried on its own. It's growing out, at an awkward length, and it's naturally curly. This is what I looked like.



But with an oversized NaNoWriMo sweatshirt, damp yoga capris and misty glasses. And alone. So, not as attractive.

***
Day 3 was yesterday. The challenges for that run were: not enough sleep (for me), not enough water (for both of us) and not enough food (for my daughter). Luckily it was only week 1, so we still only ran a total of 8 minutes. If it had been one of the later weeks, we'd have been exhausted.

She said to me, cautiously, as we rounded the corner of the field about midway through, "I don't feel like I can run 10K."
"Oh, I couldn't run 10K either," I said. "Not right now. Give me two months and we'll see."

So we had a little talk about the whole idea of training - you can't do X at the beginning, but you will be able to by the end - and I assured her again that she is in complete control of whether or not she participates in the race, and whether or not she continues the training schedule with me. She was so relieved - it tells me she has felt considerable anxiety about it. Not about the race, but about how excited I am about training with her. She worries that she can't drop out or she'll hurt my feelings. She is such a nice kid. "Heck," I told her, "on the day of the race you can decide you don't want to run it, and you'd rather go get an ice cream with Dad and cheer for us as we stagger over the finish line."

But, so far, all is in train and chugging along. Next time, we'll pay more attention to food and water in the preceding 24 hours, and it'll be better.

Week 1, Day 1

Just came in from my first training "run"...I'm using the quotations because it was really more of a walk with teeny bits of acceleration.

I have an interesting (well, I say "interesting") thought process going on, consisting of being embarrassed that I can't just RUN 10 KILOMETERS. The embarrassment only applies to YOU people - the blog readers.

I find myself not wanting to tell you that I am starting the Couch to 10K - I'd rather wait until May, and tell you that I HAVE DONE the 10K.

Very strange.

Must be that fear of failing I mentioned the other day.

***
Overall, it felt good. Here are my impressions.

- I felt like I could have run a lot more, which is a good sign that the program may not be as entirely too much for me as I had feared. I need all 13 weeks, though, just to make sure I don't get shin splints.

- The running segments felt better in the last half than in the first half.

- It was so great to be in the outdoors again...I hadn't realized how house-bound I have been feeling.

- My daughter did well: did I tell you that Charlotte is doing the 10K with me? She is 11 - the one who recently broke her collarbone.

Thanks for all your comments on the "Should I or shouldn't I?" post. I really appreciate your cheering me on!

Fear itself?

My friend asked me if I wanted to sign up for the Times Colonist 10K with her, in preparation for another event I'm planning for next year.

Thing is, the other event is a walk - I'm not insane enough to try running 64K. BUT, my friend wants to RUN this 10K, not walk it.

I don't know whether I can do it. And by that I mean, I don't know whether I have the grit and bloodymindedness that it will take to get out there three times a week for the next 13 weeks, to teach myself to run 10K. I'm afraid to try.

Weird.

I wish I had a partner...a nice, sedentary partner who is starting from nil, just like me, and who will encourage me to get out and move my lazy arse despite the miserable winter weather. (The friend I'm doing the 10K with doesn't live in my town, so she's out.)

Should I try it? Or, should I lie down on the couch with another cinnamon bun until the urge passes?

Drop and give me 20

Thanks to Juno, my armpits hurt but I feel a little better about myself.

I can do twenty pushups - proper ones, that is. I did the initial test on the One Hundred Push-ups challenge, and was moderately pleased with the results, provided I don't compare them to how many I USED to be able to do, back in my rowing days.

Anyway, I am curious as to whether I could, indeed, be doing 100 pushups in five weeks, so I think I'll give it a go. Also, belly dance starts up tonight, and I am in woefully poor shape after this very indolent summer. Not to mention I have to find something to replace biking, since I can't replace my bike.

So how many can you do? C'mon, you know you don't want to let me win.

I'll think about that while I do some crunches.

Last week at knit night I rode over to Kate's, as usual, but misjudged the amount of daylight left and ended up having to leave the bike there and get a ride home. It took me five days to get around to it, but today I ran over to her place, got the bike, and rode home. (In case you feel like patting me on my sweaty back, the walk warm-up was 10 minutes, the run was about 20 minutes AND NO I DID NOT STOP, and the ride was 10 or 15.) *

I've been doing this a lot lately (riding, running, whatever). I realized with a vague kind of jolt, a few months ago, that I'm not getting any younger. This shocking revelation prompted a long hard look at my fitness level and led to an uncomfortable truth: "later" doesn't ever get here...the only choice I have is Now, or Not.

After two years of belly dancing I can confidently say my fitness level has improved, but at the age of 33 I really should be doing more and harder exercise. The belly dance is great for internal fitness, a bit of sculpting, and skeletal muscle health, but it falls down in some areas...especially bone density.

Blah blah blah weight loss, blah blah blah heart disease, blah blah blah diabetes, blah blah blah osteoporosis, blah.

On the other hand: logically, my heart only has so many beats in it, right? And should I really be using up my allotted beats this quickly, or should I conserve them for my old age?


* Edit: Mapquest tells me it was 2.2 miles. TWO POINT TWO MILES PEOPLE. How embarrassed am I that it took me that long to run 2.2 miles? However, how proud am I that I ran 2.2 miles without stopping?