Day 2 of the Hundred Push Ups Challenge completed last night. Holy cow but that can be tough! Tonight I run for 30 minutes, but not until after I return home from a "Tour de France" Cooking Class. I'll have to go light on the vino or I'll fly off the back of the treadmill.

Well, I'm keeping up with my weekly training schedule. It's nothing too ... what's the word I'm looking for? Too ambitious maybe? My goals are reasonable. I'm not trying to break any records ~ good thing, too! I'm simply following the KatyFit plan, and it seems not to be too much of a jump from doing little bits of not much to what I'm doing now.

Nothing is hurting too badly, anyway. Nothing more than my left Achilles' tendon, although I find that icing it after a Saturday run is sufficient to keep it from flaring up too wildly. This getting older business sucks. I suppose it would suck even more if I didn't do anything to try and improve my fitness level.

So, Monday was day 1 of the Hundred Push-Up Challenge for me. O U C H !!! Actually, I did not so great on the initial test, but I was able to complete the full day of pu's without any problems. (I guess that's what happens when you're on the slow/weak person's program!) It's a Mon-Wed-Fri thing, so I look forward to trying this again tomorrow. I could definitely feel a soreness in my chest while I was jogging tonight. That's good, right?

I heard tonight about an alleged hazing incident at a local high school. All I can see is that I don't look forward to my daughter growing up. Too many young girls (not all obviously, but the ones you hear about on the news) have no sense, less class, and a dire need to have their butts whipped. What the hell are they thinking to pee in their undies and put them on someone's head?? Someone you're going to be cheering with all year long. Someone who is likely to be on your shoulders at some point... Someone who could easily have an OOPS! moment in the near future.

Clearly I'm about revenge. It'll be interesting to see how this is managed. The girls are all said to be away at cheer-camp right now, so nothing happens until later. District policy is supposed to specify that anyone participating in "hazing" will be removed from the team and not allowed to participate in other extracurricular activities. hmmmmm I hope that if these girls really did do this that the punishment is applied fairly and not ignored because of *who* they are. (note: I say that without knowing a single thing about who these girls might be.. it's the principle of the thing in my opinion.) I guess we'll see what happens soon enough. Until then, yuck!

I ran 30 minutes on the treadmill last night. Nothing phenomenal about it ~ just getting the minutes in to increase my endurance. I'm working on lengthening my stride on the treadmill so that I'm working harder and hopefully, better mimicking what I'd be doing if I ran outside.

I've scheduled a very early morning run on Saturday with the girls. 5 miles. It'll be nice to get out and run with them while it's still somewhat cool. The group is meeting later for the same distance, but I prefer completing the run earlier this weekend.

Not much else going on here, except that I learned about this neat little Hundred Push-up Challenge I'm thinking of doing. It should be quite difficult, very challenging, and lots of fun.

Work is so crazy right now that I can't even think to blog. My mind is a blank because it's so filled with work stuff. Since I don't blog about that, I'll end this now.

Patricia, if you're reading, I ran again today! 35 minutes, well 34:36, and I did 3 miles. yay me! Last night's run was super slow because I took the doggie out with me. She had fun, but she stopped and sniffed a lot, too. Tonight was quicker because I was in a climate controlled environment with a/c and a fan ~ yes, I ran on the dreadmill.

Gotta love the t/dreadmill; it makes my overall average speed look much less pathetic.

Tomorrow is a night off, but think I'll try to do yoga or pilates or something useful. Hunter also has to film an audition for a Target commercial. Wish her luck!

So I haven't blogged in a while... again. I have been running, minus the business trip to Toronto. It would have been great to run there, and I did take my stuff with a plan to do just that ~ run. Then there were the long hours of work and then the long hours of networking and then the multiple glasses of wine and/or vodka. It just didn't add up to a landscape that said "put on your running shoes & go!"

Actually, it did but I felt obligated [read: weak] to do the social thing with the boss I only see rarely and the team members from other places. The course I attended was great. I can't wait to begin instructing. But I needed to run, and I didn't.

I paid for it on Saturday morning. Trish was unable to join us as she's still in Cali, so Tina asked that I run with the front of the group, while she ensured that we didn't lose any stragglers off the back end. That worked out well as our group is full of different paces and fitness levels. I felt badly because we had one woman who had to get to work fairly quickly and so she needed to run faster than the group was going. If I'd gone with her, the bulk of the group would have been left behind. What I did was keep an eye out for her going on without us and one of the guys ran up with her (safety, and all that). It worked out well. We all finished slowly, but we finished and I felt good in the end.

Only note on aches/pains is that this is the second Saturday in a row that my left Achilles tendon has felt tight and painful (not excruciating, just not good) toward the end of the run. Then it gets worse throughout the day. I avoided much of the "later in the day" pain by first taking the kids and the rottie to the park then returning the rottie to the house and taking the kids to the pool. We hung out there all afternoon and had a blast. I also think the water & stretching worked to relieve some of the pain. Oh yeah, and the ice I put on it. That didn't hurt.

At this point, I'm not worried about it but I am going to keep an eye on how it feels. The goal is to do this stuff without getting hurt. Doing it is not enough ~ it must be that I'm doing it pain-free.

Next event is 8/31/2008 ~ HR10k in Austin ~ woohoo!

Today I woke up early to run before going to work. I knew I'd return home late after the HOA Board meeting and I wanted to be certain I didn't have any excuses to avoid my run. It turned out to be a good thing. My legs didn't feel too tired. They weren't too sore while I was running. I did simple 3/1 repeats and was able to maintain a faster pace due to more frequent walking breaks. I hate doing 3/1's. They feel like failure to me. HUGE, HORRIBLE, CATASTROPHIC FAILURE. (yes, I know I tend to be a bit dramatic at times)

However, compared to overstressing myself and not being able to finish what I start, I'll have to accept that I am not at the level I want to be just yet. That sucks, but it's the truth, and one thing I've learned is that no matter how ugly the truth is, it's still the truth. It doesn't change just because it's not pretty enough.

I head out on a business trip next week. It's to a new place, so I'm excited about that. Also, I have a new camera and I'm anxious to test it. New places are usually good for that sort of thing.

I'm tired now so I'm going to curl up with with chocolate, a good book, and Nicholas and go to sleep. He's already in our bed and asking if he can share my pillow. Between him and Joel, I can't decide who is giving me the biggest puppy dog looks and fussing the most for me to come to bed. It's cute and sweet. I think I'll go now.

Today I received an email from the KatyFit coach with a bunch of info for use in preparing to start training. It's embarrassing to admit how excited I was to get it. Apparently it doesn't take much to get me all worked up these days.

So, off I rushed to download the entire season's training plan and after reviewing it my thoughts were somewhere along the line of, wtf was I thinking? Then I shocked myself by thinking, I should have signed up for the half.. the half would have been easy. Oh yeah, says the woman who turtled through a 5k with an official time of 41:12. Easy-peasy as my colleague would say.

Once I reminded myself that this is not only a challenge, but in fact is also a birthday present to myself (the whole achievement thing), I moved on to my next fear ~ there aren't enough really LONG runs in there. Okay, pardon me but really, what do I know about this other than what I read? I barely know enough to know what's crap and what's good advice. Why on Earth would I question guidance from a national training organization?

Yep, you guessed it. I have already begun lining up excuses for failure. What's remarkable is that I only just realized that fact. I thought I was simply being a know-it-all and difficult, as I'm often prone to be. So tomorrow, when Joel asks why I was up typing after I logged my training data into the system, I'll be able to say I was having a lightbulb moment.

Speaking of those moments when you realize something profound, or less than profound, I'm anticipating another one soon. I've been eating everything that can't run from me and I don't know what the motivation behind that could be. Whatever it is, it isn't fun and it needs to end in a hurry. I've been under stress at work, but that's not anything new and it's good stress. I'm completely wigging out about something else but I can't put my finger on exactly what it is. By putting it out there into the Universe, I hope to release it.

I won't be a slave to that which won't show itself, ya know? That sounds a bit like a taunt, although it's not meant to be. No good reason exists to fret and agonize over something that's vague and lacking in clarity. Enough real horror is present to obsess about, if I choose to do it.

I choose not.

Today I turtled through the Run Wild 5k at Uptown Park Plaza. Seriously, I wonder if I could have been slower if I tried. I wasn't the slowest person out there, not even in the slowest 20 actually. However, my hr was so flippin' high that I was actually scared at the end. I didn't hurt at all, but I'm not stupid and I know when I need to slow down and get my hr under control.

I wonder if it was because I was dehydrated; I didn't take as much care as I should have to properly hydrate this week. Frankly, I had far too many diet cokes this past week. I also got in little exercise. Joel is home this week, my new manager was in town, and I wanted to spend my evenings with the kids. That all combined to result in no workouts during the week. 6 miles on Saturday, 3 miles on Sunday followed by walking all day at SeaWorld, then nothing until this morning.

It's no wonder I felt horrible.

Tomorrow I meet Tina & Trish early to do another 3 or 4 miles. At least it won't be 100 degrees at 5:30!