I wanted to run today. I really did. But came down with the flu and it is turning out to be the flu that just won’t let go. That, and we had sleet all day today. I think I’ll give the running a miss for another day or so and if the weather doesn’t improve I’ll take it inside for awhile until I feel well and hale. I plan to run 10K for the first time ever on my 35th birthday and I would like to be running more so that it doesn’t suck too too bad. LOL

I DID do my kettlebell session today. Just the one 8 minute session. I think I hit on something with the 8 minutes. It was enough to get me heated up real good and I was sort of out of breath for about 10 minutes afterwards (does anything other than kettlebells DO that to a person, MAN! it is intense). I just wanted to move the weight around and have fun with it so I didn’t even try to keep track of what I did exactly but there were swings and presses and snatches in there along with some squats while holding the bell out in front of me. At the end of the 8 minutes I set the timer for 1 minute and I tried to hold a plank for that time. No can do my friend. I had to take a “knee” break twice in that time. Okay so I guess I need a little core strength.

Weight was up today a LOT. 176.8 lbs. I went for a run on Saturday (silly because I was still sick) and drank a ton of water yesterday. I don’t care though. The new lows are good to see and I keep making (slow) progress but my main overall focus right now is on building muscle and the most important muscle I’m actually trying to work on is the consistency muscle and short dashes and intense spurts aren’t going to get me where I’m headed. I have a summer of day in day out hard physical work ahead of me and after that it is going to be all about training consistently and really settling to the adventure of seeing what I can do in terms of running and strength in the 7 months before I head out again. But between now and when I leave I really want to prepare for that birthday run of mine that is just a month away.

Got on the scale this morning. 173.4 lbs.  Whoa! Part of me is kinda sorta thinking it is because I haven’t really been exercising as much and so maybe losing some muscle but I’m still not gonna be too sad. Food and me are getting along way way good right now so that could be making the difference as well. Only 3.5 pounds until I break the sound barrier and get to the 160s!! I know that numbers are not a great thing to strive for but if I view it like landmark then this one is like Mount Fuji or the Canadian Rockies or something and there is NOTHING wrong with stopping a minute to take in the view. There has been an invisible barrier between me and anything less that 172 pounds for so so long. I got that low when I lost weight in a dash for my sister’s wedding and then I started gaining as only the post severe dieter can and the rest is history. I honestly don’t remember when I was last below 172 but if I try to trace it back in my mind it had to have been some time in 2000 or maybe 2001. I just don’t and see myself, in terms of numbers at least, as anything less than 172. My mind is stuck there. Maybe that is why I’m stuck there.

But life is more than numbers and even if it will slow my losses, time to find a way to get enduring and very consistent exercise a jump start again. I’ve been really sick with the flu lately and so no running so far this week. I went out running on Monday night and it was really really cold and then I got a chill when it took a long time for the fire to warm the house up and I’ve been down for the count ever since. Running outdoors in this cold snap is either going to have to involve a lot more layers and a plan for staying warm afterward (NZ houses aren’t insulated or centrally heated but we’ve been having near or below zero weather here for the last  week and a half at least, brrrrrr there was ice inside my bedroom the other day! fer real!). Treadmilling for now is an option. We’ll see. I’m recovering pretty well now and it is definitely time to get back to doing something again.

A friend of mine mentioned Shovelgloving the other day during a chat. My first instinct was that he had been up to something dirty but NO, this is a form of exercise and the whole philosophy of it got my attention. Check out the site to get the real scoop and read the story about its inception. That sort of mix of bare bones with consistency with common sense is really the whole ethic I’m aiming at these days. Basically, you get yourself a sledgehammer, yup, a sledgehammer! and you tie a sweater around the metal, heavy part of it so that you don’t scratch up your floors and stuff when you put it down. With this done, you move it around, mimicking functional movements like shoveling (hence the name) or chopping wood or churning butter or lifting sacks. In the sense that you are using your body to accelerate a weight through space this is very similar to kettlebells and I suppose it would be very similar to other kettlebellesque exercise tools like macebells or clubbells but using a hardware store sledgehammer makes it a lot cheaper than either of those items. I don’t have a sledgehammer yet and money is a bit tight so I’m not sure that a sledgehammer is in my immediate future even if I can see me getting one when I get back home again in February but the thing I really really liked about the story about how shovelgloving arose was the “inventor’s” instructions for workouts. He was very specific and instructs exercisers to do just 14 minutes every weekend. No more and no less. He spells out the reasoning on his site but the gist of it is that you want to be, you guessed it, CONSISTENT! Since 14 minutes seems like a small amount it is manageable and a no-excuses time limit but yet doing it every day, day after day will really get you some tangible results over time. Until I try it myself I won’t be able to speak for its effectiveness but it definitely got me thinking about how to approach exercise since I’m wanting to be very carefully not to overwhelm myself. I want to build habits here, no more heartbreak!

So I already have kettlebells and at this point they really do make better door stops than anything else. I have gunned into them by times, usually so damn sore the rest of the week that I was unable to keep to any sort of normal routine. I never built a habit of kettlebell swinging but I know that just a little bit of consistency in this area will really help by adding the intense work outs that will burn some fat. What to do? Well here is what I’m thinking. I tried to think of a unit that was truly “no-excuses”. I started think about two short sessions a day and since I want one of them to be in the morning and mornings are often rushed I decided that 14 minutes would be too hard so I settled on 10. Then I went further and dropped it to 8. With eight, there really isn’t an excuse to not do it. I have a timer and I will set the timer for 8 minutes and I will swing. Of course, anyone that has swung a kettlebell knows that eight minutes of swinging is way too much no-stop swinging so I’m not going to do non-stop. This is going to be high intensity but I’ll take breaks as needed and for the time being I don’t care what I do, snatches, TGUs, presses, swings, burpees. It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it BY FEEL.  Some days I’ll probably get more done than others and that is OKAY. What about the 2 sessions per day?  Well that is also negotiable. I will aim for 2 sessions when possible but make only ONE of those sessions non-negotiable. I’ll take the weekends off and do other things on those days depending on how I feel. I’m leaving town in about a month and so I’m really curious to find out what swinging for just 16 minutes a day for a month can do. If I do decide to take the bells with me I will get to see what 6 months of 16 minutes a day can do! When I’m tired and sore I’ll take a break. This is about building a habit so regularity is key, torture is not part of the plan. I have eight minutes. I want this in my life. I feel good about this. There is no try, no perfect, no scoring, no better, no push just eight simple minutes every single day!

For some reason, I broke into the ugly cry by the end of this video clip. It got me that much. Wonderful!

NOT that I have Iron dreams or anything I mean I don’t own a bike and can’t really swim apart from a dog paddle but… I think anyone that has physically pushed themselves past the brink, past crying, past bargaining, past everything in your being, except your heart, begging you to give up, anyone that has done that and seen how the mental toughness that grows out of that can change everything, will get this to some extent.

So here I what I cooked up for myself this eve. I can’t remember the last time I actually used a recipe for cooking so I’ll just tell you what I did.

sliced green beans steamed and served with a vinagrette of brown grainy mustard mixed with S&P and a little balsamic vinegar (no oil needed here, the beans don’t need it)

Sliced chicken breast that I marinated in minced fresh garlic, dried oregano, red wine, lemon juice and S&P with a dash of olive oil just to keep it moist in cooking. When I pan/stir-fried this I added fresh yellow capsicum, sliced and an onion, sliced.

A small serving of gluten free pasta (can’t get this “whole grain” but oh well, I like pasta from time to time even if it isn’t the good stuff a gluten-free girl’s gotta do… ETA I haven’t had pasta in maybe months because I sort of labeled it a BAD food since it is carbs and sort of refined, but I LIKE IT and once and a while in small amounts will not kill me. It feels so freeing to eat a little pasta again.) that I tossed after cooking in some of the homemade sauce I had in the freezer which was made with fresh tomatoes and red capsicum that I cut up and roasted in the oven this summer with a little olive oil and S&P and then whizzed up in the blender with some herbs. This is a great base sauce and the roasting brings out the flavour like you wouldn’t believe.

I was really hungry tonight so the serving of green beans was pretty big and the veggies in with the chicken were there to bulk it up a bit too.

A while after eating this I was still hungry and feeling sort of empty. I started dreaming about chocolate and obsessing about it so I made some chocolate custard. Just low-fat milk and a couple eggs. Add a good amount of cocoa powder and your sweetener of choice. I was going to add splenda but ran out and so used a small amount of sugar (I don’t need things with chocolate too sweet). I also added a dash of vanilla and a really short shot of decaf espresso. I baked this in the oven in a water bath and called it pot de chocolat… it would be great done with a bit of cinnamon and chili for a mexican chocolate pot de creme. It was amazing and apart from the sugar which was certainly not more than a tbsp per large serving (I was hungry yo!) it was just low fat milk and an egg. No healthy eating plan was ever destroyed by milk and an egg. Chocolate craving… gonza! I had mine with a dollop of plain unsweetened yogurt on top and ate it while the custard was still warm… heaven. The sour yogurt and warm chocolatey pudding were to die for in combination.

I’m not shy about the fact that I’m a decent cook. I just don’t take the time to do as much of it as I would like and I really DO have time. Making this meal didn’t really take very long. Even the custard was only about 5 minutes to throw together and most of that time was boiling the water for the water bath and heating the milk for the custard base. The rest of the meal was very quick especially with a freezer full of sauce that needs using anyway.

Tomorrow my mission is to make another big pot of veggie soup. I did this earlier in the week. Just veggies, carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms, celery, cabbage, lots of cabbage and a ton of garlic and ginger with some curry powder (I was too lazy to do paste and for the soup it doesn’t make much difference). There are lots of other veggies you could put in. I didn’t even use stock since with as much ginger and garlic as I used you don’t really need it I simmered the lot for a long time on top of my wood stove (which was on anyway because it is freeeeeeezing here) and it is delicious.

I have to admit that as much as I like veggies, I don’t like most salads. I’m just not that into raw leafy things very often. Wilted is okay or heavily dressed and occasionally I’ll really crave a good caesar or spinach salad (I make an insane maple dressing with warm bacon, that, on fresh baby spinach tossed with toasted walnuts a little goat cheese and some dried cranberries, black pepper and sea salt and you’ve died and gone to heaven baby!) but those salads and the amount/type of dressing they come with are more “sometimes” foods than everyday veggie staples. I like my carrot and cuke sticks now and again to nibble but by and large it needs to be cooked and seasoned for me to really really dig it (I think I’m a way, way undertaster LOL - favourite curry has always been Vindaloo served as hot and usually hotter than most Indian restaurants around here are willing to go). Long story short, a veggie only soup that I can eat with wild abandon to accompany anything at all is a great way to make sure I consistently get enough veggies which is a risk for me. I’ve decided that life will be easier if I try to mostly have this around and at hand at all times and keeping some in the freezer for emergencies is a good idea too.

The title of this post is what I’ve been thinking about the last few days since my recent meltdown. I believe in both of these things, not in sense that I know they are out there but I mean I think that moderation and consistency are powerful powerful tools. For the perfectionist, however, both of these things can be really really elusive. Do you remember that nursery rhyme about the little girl with the curl? Well my hair is stick straight but I am exactly like her!

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I’m great at being really great, for short sprints, like a cheetah. I’m also stupefyingly awesome at being really really bad to myself, as in when I eat cake, I eat it like I’ll never ever have the weakness of spirit to ever eat it again. In other words, I binge and I eat it like it is going out of style. I also find it hard to even imagine starting any form of exercise unless I’m certain I can do it over the top intensely.

I know there are a lot of people like this. It isn’t unique, my dad is like this and the way I was raised, in part, enforced this. I don’t know if there is a genetic tendency but I suspect there is and I suspect it is routed in brain chemicals. I’ve never felt particularly blessed about my brain chemicals. Most of the time, if I reflect on it, my brain chemicals would remind me of a bucking bronco. It is NOT cool to have a bucking bronco living in your head. But I want better. I want smoother. I want more than clenching my teeth all the time and I’ve learned enough about myself to know that some things work and some don’t. I want more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

It is a lot easier said than done for me but I see that the times I’ve accomplished some really great things in terms of my own health and wellness and fitness it HAS been through consistency. Bootcamp mentality is fine and training for a specific even would be fine but in the long haul I know that if I don’t lay down the foundation and then treat the short dashes as short dashes that I choose for short terms then I’m not going to have the results I’m after. If a 100m runner tried a marathon at that pace she wouldn’t make it. Not that my marathon pace can’t get faster and faster as the base gets bigger and bigger but the base needs to BE there (running can be a metaphor for anything baby!).

So what am I doing? Well a few things but not too much right out of the gate. On the food front, realizing that counting every last Calorie is useful but annoying and not for me in the long term, I’m going with something that I can reasonably do in my head and “learn” to use intuitively. I’ve got a list of standard issue “servings” from the mayo clinic. It pisses me off that they don’t even include whole milk cheese or yogurt on the list but I’ll save that rant for another day. All this is to me is a basic guideline. I look at the list if I need reminding that a 1/2 cup of yogurt is a serving and it counts in the “protein/dairy” category. I’ve also got some recommended numbers of servings but I’m treating them with a grain of salt. My goal here is to observe what I’m eating rather than police it. For one, I think that 3 servings of protein is retarded given the size of servings and at the same time I don’t need four servings of grains. So I magically changed some carbs into proteins and made my own little “food guide”. Ultimately when I want some extra food at the end of the day I’m using it to see what I’m missing. Still hungry, well I only had two servings of veggies… if I still want some protein instead so be it. I’ll eat the protein, it’s okay. I’m just trying to use it as a tool to guide me and so far it is helping me to eat more balanced meal and I also feel less like there are all sorts of “bad” foods. The only things I’m staying well away from are caffeine and gluten because I have to to be healthy but even sugar, I’m letting it in occasionally if I need to but only in servings of sweet things are less than 200 Cal. Ice cream sure! But instead of a binge, I will aim for 100 Cal worth or 200 max if I must. I’ll tell myself, that if, for a while I feel I “need” to eat ice cream everyday then that is OKAY. I’ll have another 200 Cal worth tomorrow until the urges go away. I’m hoping this will both stop the million thousand Calorie binges and take away the idea that I must eat a ridiculous, sickness inducing quantity of junk because I’ll never ever ever be allowed to eat it again. If I start craving something too much I’ll do what they do in some eating disorder clinics for bulimics and intentionally eat a small amount of ice cream daily until the allure is minimized. This week I’m trying to stay relatively low on the sugar front because I always have crazy sugar crashes when I’m coming off a binge and so far, so good. The only thing I’m really wanting is some chocolate and homemade with splenda does the trick for me with that. I’m also trying to enjoy cooking more and trying to let myself take the TIME to enjoy it so that it feels like less of a chore. I LOVE to cook but too often I rush rush rush during the week and it becomes this horrible thing that I HAVE to do so I eat unsatisfying food and then binge on take away at the end of the week. I don’t want or need that in my life anymore.

I’ll update more on the exercise front but for now… off to cook my tea.

I’m still feeling overwhelmed and a little blue and I’m still having little tiny moments of anxiety a couple times a day but the feeling of hopelessness is clearing and I think I’m gaining some perspective. So MUCH better folks.

The first thing I need to do is thank some people by name. You guys with your comments, you just rock and the support you sent my way was so genuine that it was like you landed just behind my shoulder for a minute to give me a real world hug, and I really needed a real world hug. This little blog of mine doesn’t get a lot of readers but MAN, you folks that stop by here and take the time to comment are real true GEMS. Seriously. Your blogs rock and you are just straight up, good people. Love it!

One of the cool things that happened today was that I was nominated by the wonderful ChristieO from Baby Tea Leaves for a blog award.

ChristieO is the awesome host of the Winter of Me challenge I participated in earlier in the year (it was the summer of me for everyone else but how cool is she that she made a logo with winter in it!).  She hosts a mean challenge with really cool prizes and I think she is brewing up another one for some time soon so if you are looking for a way to challenge yourself I would highly recommend popping over there. Her blogging about her own fitness mission is pretty darn inspiring too!!

The shout out that I want to give is to the rest of the folks that commented on my last blog post. You all knew just what to say and I think you, along with ChristieO, are all brave, cool bloggers for the way that you blog the real stuff from the heart. Thanks for being out there and doing your stuff.

BikiniMe - What can I say about you girl! Truly, I think you and I have got such a similar mind on some stuff and it is stuff that isn’t always easy to deal with. Keep on blogging, you inspire me, keep on keeping on, you’ll get there… you ARE getting there.

AndrewE - Another blogger in NZ to inspire me to run! Too cool. Your progress with your own mission to get fit is so so amazing. That, and you keep coming back even after I post things about girlie stuff LOL You’re a gem.

Mizfit - Oh my dear sweet Mizfit! Some day I want to meet you IRL cause you are just too amazing for words. How many people’s lives do you inspire, how many people do you give that little boost too? It must be thousands and thousands. Your blog rocks and you are the perfect blend of acceptance (you seem to really appreciate all people for who they are AND their struggles and not a lot of people can do that honestly) with the stern little “come on now” that we all need by times to remind us to do what we need to do.

Charlotte - at The Great Fitness Experiment. Again, an honest, real blogging woman that struggles with her own stuff and isn’t afraid to share it, along with a healthy dose of witty and on the mark commentary. Charlotte, you have one hell of a way with words girl! Love reading and feel pretty honoured that you stop by here from time to time.

Kikimonster - another academic woman blogging her fitness journey, Kiki has been there, done the PhD that I am so struggling with right now and some times it is just nice to know that others have done this and survived.

So there you go folks! I nominate all of you for the Brilliante award and ample amounts of linky love. Here are the guidelines that I got from Baby Tea Leave’s site.

Here are the rules for the award:
-Put the logo on your blog
-Link to the person you received your award from
-Nominate at least 7 other blogs
-Put links to those blogs on your site
-Leave messages on the blogs you’ve nominated

There didn’t seem to be any fancy code to copy the award badge so I just put it up there the old fashioned way.

I’ll be back later with some updates of how and what I’ve been up to but suffice it to say I’m a bit better. I’ve also got a few ideas about what sent me for the spin in the first place.

So lately I’ve been thinking big, pushing bigger and now I’m sitting here after a total grad student burn-out inducing week and I know that something needs to give. This totally isn’t going how I want it to and by IT I kind of mean my whole life. It just isn’t sustainable this way. I’ve got at least 2, maybe 2.5 years left on this PhD and continuing as I am means I’m going to fall apart and self-destruct rather than learn how to be a better scientist which is what I’m supposed to be doing, and becoming a more self-confident, happy version of me, which is what I WANT to be doing. I have a great husband, a great extended family (though they are really frickin far away from me right now - sniff), the coolest dog in the world, some great friends (many of them also far away - sniff), and when I scrape off the surface angst about my PhD I really do get to do some of the cool shit that most people only dream about or get to watch on TV (it seems WAAAAY more glamorous on TV, I ASSURE you!). So my life is really pretty good but if I’m being honest, I’m miserable. Clearly something is going wrong somewhere and if I stop and think with compassion and empathy about myself (surprisingly hard to do) I realise I need to stop, give myself a big hug and find a better way to live that WORKS. I’ve been holding my breath through jags of “success”, sadly one of which was an extended dance with eating disorders that saw me thin but unhealthy for most of highschool and early uni. Since then (almost 15 years), I’ve bounced around unhappy with shortened jags of “success” when I’ve mostly felt like I was holding my breath, short jags of really honestly good times when I WAS living a healthy life (recently when I was running and eating better I was close to this but some other aspects of my academic life were slipping so balance was still a way off), and much longer jags when I was busy binge eating and abusing my general health and feeling like an overall failure, embarrassed to really look at the situation and quite happy to use the numbness of food to damp down my desire to scream at the top of my lungs that I hated myself and my life, too terrified to look in the mirror at the terrible truth of what I was tossing away, day after day of what could be a happy, fulfilling life wasted to self-loathing and shame.

WOW I’m not sure I knew that was in there. Feels pretty good to let it out. That was a really long paragraph… I’ll just leave it that way, the way it came rushing out. That’s how it felt, one long exhalation of sorts.

What am I going to do about this? It has to be something simple, honest and real. Let me give you an example, I know that there is all sort of debate out there about what and how to eat. Primal, low-carb, low-fat, raw, I could go on and on. I could tweak my diet till the cows come home and I could spend days analyzing and finding the perfect balance but I KNOW the truth. These are all sort of disordered for me. Disordered in the sense that I’m looking for a perfect way to eat that is a little extreme, out of the norm and promises some sort of alchemical magic that will make me happy if I follow all the perfect rules and prove something to myself involving my worth. Can I follow the rules? Do I deserve to lose weight, i.e. get a reward, i.e. was I a “good girl”? The origins of that go way way back to a pretty dark time in my childhood and involve shit I don’t want to get that far into on this blog. This is dark stuff and it is woven deeply into the fabric of me and I’m not sure what that means for my future as a happy woman. What I do know is that I’ve tried covering it up, burying it and wearing it like a flag (can anyone say goth/punk phase in the late teens). Nothing really works very well but as I approach 35, I know that for brief moments I’ve tasted sanity when I was living a healthy life, coexisting well with my daemons and making peace with the fabric of my soul. When I have the strength to play by MY rules and listen to MY drum, then I can tell the weird skeletons in the closet to fuck off for a while and it is good. But habits die hard and, sadly, for most of my adult life I’ve been abusing myself in some way to try relive what feels most natural and deserved. I give myself what the fabric of my spirit thinks I’ve earned. It’s really quite simple until you see that the fabric is fucked up, the weave is all wrong and the beautiful woman I am doesn’t really need to wear that shit anymore. Tell her that. I wish it were that simple. Sigh.

Where am I going with this? I don’t know. I only know that this is probably one of the first times in my life that I’ve really OWNED the idea that my issues with food stem from something so much deeper and that I REALLY need reprogramming on a very fundamental level. I watch TV. I read books. I’ve been watching this shit on Oprah for over a decade. But I’ve always truly believed that was a pile of overly complex bullshit that applied to someone OTHER than me. I just LIKE chips and ice cream and eating until I puke, nothing to do with anything deeper than that. Buck up and deal chickie boo, you’ve had a happy life, get over it. If I could just be better at things I would be happy.

Do I need therapy again? I had some earlier when my parents decided that finding a couple weeks worth of hidden lunches in the back of their 86 pound teenage daughter’s closet meant that something might be wrong. It helped, in the sense that I gained weight and mostly exchanged straight up binge eating followed by self-loathing, for my earlier habit of binge-purging and feeling victorious. That sounds pretty fucked up doesn’t it? hmmmm I’m not sure I was expecting it to come out that way. Writing here helps me see. I like that about the blog. I need that about the blog. It feels weird to put this down this way. I’m embarrassed because I know that there are people that read this blog that think I’m doing well. I worry that “well” has to mean happy and “on-track”. I worry that the expectation is that I’m just here losing weight and that is clean and simple and straight forward. The truth is that I need to deal with all the aspects of this and being honest about the shit going on in my head helps me. I think there are some people that read that will “get” that and I know there are some that will still read and encourage me and that is good. Thank you. Don’t think I’m depressed or that anything scary is going on. I’m okay in the sense that I really think I’m on the verge of some new understanding here and this recent backslide/binge/lack of success what ever you want to call it, in contrast to how great I really was feeling a little while ago, is showing me all sorts of things about myself and the root of all this. The truth is also, that if I weren’t blogging this or writing it down and thinking about it so much (especially because a few others read it sometimes) I don’t think I would have noticed some of this. I’ve probably repeated this pattern a million times. Doing “well” and then crashing back down. I don’t always learn much and that is something to be thankful for.

I’ve just let this flow out. I don’t care that the writing is sort of crap and I apologize for the typos but I just needed to pour it out and right now the exercise isn’t about reading it over too much or editing it. I just want it here as an entry way into what ever comes next.

What comes next? I don’t know yet exactly but it is going to be simple, loving, easy and based on embracing life with patterns that can comfort, nurture and sustain me. The jags and slumps and runs toward and away from something need to stop I need to come home to something consistent and comfortable and when it feels good, I need the strength to realize that I deserve the EFFORT and WORK it takes to protect it. I don’t need to be punished for anything anymore. I’ve paid my dues and anyway, it never, EVER, was my fault in the first place.

Seems a little strange to have a memoir for my running life since I have only been running since the end of April and lately there has been much to little running in my life. That said, I’ve been all out of sorts lately and one of the biggest trends I’ve noticed is that when I was running consistently I was feeling the best I have in a long time. Consistency Folks!!! It works! That and just the act of running sooths me, calms me and makes me feel good about myself. I need to get that going again so I’m actively digging deeper and trying to immerse myself in more running inspiration. I haven’t got a lot of time for Interwebbing these days but two places I know that I can go for a little dose of running inspiration are Running Ahead (where I read the forums and store my exercise log) and the Runner’s Lounge (where I just enjoy finding other runners and reading about them). Over at Runner’s Lounge they have something called “Take it and Run Thursday” and I’ve decided to start participating. This week I’m a bit late but the topic was to post a running memoir in 6 words. I’m putting up almost the first thing that came into my head because I’ve been trying to find something better or snappier and it isn’t working. I think that means this is IT for me right now.

When I run, I am ALIVE!

I thought about it for awhile and I was going to write I feel alive but that isn’t quite right. It is better than a feeling it CONNECTS me to something essential about my life something that is more than feeling, it is BEING. I don’t know if that makes any sense the way I’m articulating it (or failing to as the case may be) but those are my words and that is the best I can do folks and it is time to get my arse reconnected with life.

I tried to stay up to watch the olympics opening ceremony. I really did but I just can’t… time for sleep. I wish there wasn’t such a time difference this whole bed time thing makes me feel old.

I’m happy to report that so far, today is going a little better. I got more sleep and just got back from a nice walk with my dog. The sun is shining and as soon as I eat some breakfast I’m heading out the door to walk to work. I’m still feeling bad about not running enough and I think that is affecting my emotional state (both the lack of actual running and probably the feeling bad about it too). Thank you all for your comments and encouragement. I love that, this time I’m actually learning about myself and what makes me tick.