we made it to yoga last night after some grocery shopping (how happy am i to finally have milk after four days of withdrawal?!).  it was a fast paced routine with a lot of upward/downward dogs that nearly killed my back.  and rocking… what was with the rocking?  anyhow, not even halfway through, i was sweating like mad trying to keep up with some of the crazy moves, a few of which totally showcased my complete lack of balance.  i like yoga so i keep hoping one of these days i’ll get better at it.

as if being home wasn’t great enough… the pool was empty at lunchtime!  it was chilly and super windy but it was so nice to swim again.  i did thirty lengths of the pool; one half mile.  it felt really good.  and tiring.  i hope that it’s empty again tomorrow.  i miss the lunch-swimming.

i didn’t even go to yoga wednesday night because i felt so crummy.  we did go to the bridge run last night though and it seriously kicked my butt.  turned out i was much less up for it than i thought. 

i was in a pretty good mood when i started since i found some animals to watch on the backside of the pond.  and i had a big smile when a strange man was walking toward our group and several of the men-folk stopped and turned to watch me and make sure the man kept on walking past.  it was nice to feel so protected.  and then i felt like i was actually a bit faster on the first leg since i was already heading downhill when i met the first group coming back over the bridge.  that’s never happened before so either i was going faster or they were all going slower (which, unfortunately, is a possibility since most of them are doing the half-iron this weekend so they are tapering down but i prefer to think i was being a speed-demon). 

at the other end of the bridge, it all started to go downhill, so to speak.  i decided to add some distance by veering off through the college and circling back up to the road.  this was a mistake.  it seemed like it took forever to get back to the bridge and i was wary because i was by myself (no worries, cousin, my pepper-spray was tucked safely inside my purse back in the car) and no one knew where i had gone so there would be no men-folk watching protectively if strangers passed.  by the time i finally started climbing over the bridge again, i was done.  i’m talking D-O-N-E.  i wanted so badly to walk.  luckily, my hubby must have seen my struggle and, instead of finishing his second lap over, he turned and slowed drastically to jog with me all the way back to the car.  it was so nice to have company when i was feeling so shot.  he kept telling me i was doing great and i could make it.  he was highly encouraging even though i couldn’t stop gasping out expletives.  and i did make it back to the car without slowing to a walk.  based on the overall time and my assumed pace, i’m guessing i did between 3.7 and 3.8 miles.  i’m not sure if it was feeling crappy or the fact that i didn’t do my tuesday run that made it so much tougher.  i really think that the tuesday run helps on thursdays.

that’s just unnatural.  07:00 should just never be seen on a saturday.  but… it was.  and i got up, laced up my running shoes, and walked out the door.  we actually walked down to the plaza where we arrived just in time to see mello driving off.  he stopped long enough to say hi and say that no one else showed up so he was going to go ahead and open the store.  it was just me and hubby and we just did loops around the trail instead of the actual mall run.  since we walked there and back, i would say that we did right at six miles total.  my guess is that we “ran” 3.5 of it.  don’t tell hubby but i even smiled a little when he said that i was going faster than usual.  go me!

without hubby here to push me, i really had to talk myself into going out for the bridge run tonight.  i’m glad i did because, while jogging, i realized that i now have social outlets when he’s out of town.  sure, they’re exercise related social activities but it really helps break up the lonely. 

the run itself was decent.  it was bloody hot and sunny.  there was a nice breeze but it pushed against me a good bit so it wasn’t a total perk.  don’t get me wrong, i’d rather have to run into the wind than have no wind at all in this heat!  i was really excited when we started out because there was another lady right there with me and i thought i was going to have another slow-poke to jog with.  granted, she was easily twice my age and said she was nursing a knee injury but i was still happy.  after a quarter mile or so, she started slowly pulling ahead of me.  by the time i made it to the bridge, she was at least a hundred yards ahead.  yep, i got smoked by the old injured lady.  oh well. 

i had my music (which i had to keep turning up to hear over the friggin motorcycles) and i was moving forward.  i stayed winded but i kept up my slow jogging pace the entire way.  though i only did the once over the bridge, i did add on some little side loops to increase my distance to somewhere between 3.5 and 4 miles.  my guess would be 3.6 or 3.7.  overall, i felt pretty good about the matter and i had a great time hanging out with everyone afterward.

so even though i’m wallowing in lonelinesswithout hubby, i managed to pull myself away from the couch for yoga night at the store.  go me!  thankfully, the dvd was slower paced and more leg intensive.  i’m sure i’ll still be feeling it tomorrow but last week’s pace on the arms about killed me.  i think tonight’s track was about forty-five minutes.

since we will have family in town tomorrow afternoon, we won’t be able to do the bridge run.  to get our weekly social exercise in, we decided to try out the wednesday night yoga that they do at the store.  it was a small group – us and three others – so it wasn’t too uncomfortable as far as feeling like the clueless one.  they basically just pop in a tape from one of those cable tv yoga guys.  granted, it’s been like two months since i’ve done any fiiting, but i was feeling pretty comfortable with yoga based on it.  tonight, there were some poses that just kicked my rear.  i mean some seriously crazy stuff that some sadist concocted just to make me go “ugh!”.  it was a lot of the upper body poses which kill my wrists.  and i had no balance.  and i poured sweat the whole time (why do i never remember until i walk in the store that they keep it ridiculously hot in there?).  it was really a “who’s idea was this?!” kind of thing.  will we go back?  i’m sure we will.  because i really do like yoga even though i thoroughly suck at it and it totally kicks my rear.  i just need to remember to bring a small towel to wring the sweat off me.

last night was supposed to be my jog around the park but when we headed out, it looked very much like rain.  instead of just coming back home, we stopped at the gym where i got on the recumbent bike, per mello’s suggestion that it would be good for my lower legs.  first, i don’t understand how.  second, after thirty minutes and 7.1 miles, my left knee was throbbing.  today, i’ve got it wrapped with an ace bandage.  this worries me about my chances of doing the triathlon next month.

last night was the bridge run.  i’m not sure what i was doing differently but my right big toe was numb almost the whole time and my left knee and ankle were hurting.  it was also more physically tiring than last week, even though i maintained the same, super-slow jogging pace the entire way.  the good thing was that it was nice and cool and breezy.  more importantly, it was a side breeze so there was no running into the wind.  i would have liked some clouds to shield me from the sun more but i won’t complain too much since it was at least cool.

… keep your friggin mouth shut!

so we went to our plaza to jog some laps around the loop trail last night.  there were three guys there setting up a stage at the amphitheatre so we went around them and did our first lap.  on our second lap, they were sitting around talking when we jogged by.  one of them felt the need to holler “whoa!  slow down there speed demons!” as we passed.  talk about going from zero to fuming. 

just so we’re all on the same page… i know i’m slow.  i freely disclose that to anyone and everyone.  i lament it in all of my running posts.  but you know what?  i’m doing the best i can.  i’m pushing my body to stretch its limits.  and i certainly don’t need some fricknut sitting around on his @$$ discouraging me. 

i altered my route the next two laps to add some distance and avoid passing the $(&%)# again.  when it was all said and done, i jogged 3.5 miles.  it was slow but i jogged the whole way.

after about a month, i finally got back to the bridge run last night.  it was super-slow but i did jog the entire gig.  of course, i only did once over so three miles.  i considered going halfway back up again but decided that i should take it easy since it’s been so long.  i felt much better about it than the last time i bridged so that’s a good thing.  yes, it was still frustrating to see people passing me on their way back to the parking lot before i was even off the bridge.  for those playing along at home that means that they were more than two miles ahead of me even though we all started together.  but i tried not to beat myself up about it and concentrated on my music and my heart-rate.  i kept my pace slow enough the whole time that i did not feel like i was going to die at any point, which i think improved my outlook.  mello pep-talked me some more back in the parking lot so that helped too.  i also *knock on wood* don’t have any pain in my legs after my month-long sabbatical.  maybe if i play by the rules this time i’ll see some improvement one of these days.

for the first time in nearly a month, i got some exercise today.  we went to the loop trail beside the mall and did four laps around.  i jogged, very slowly, the entire 3.6 miles.  though i didn’t break any speed records, i at least got some activity again.  hopefully this will be the start of a renewed routine.  we’ll see.  if nothing else, the thursday run shouldn’t be a total and complete shock to my system after this long sabbatical.

i tell ya, give the girl the flu and she just stops ranting altogether!  what can i say?  last week was totally miserable.  i’ve never in my life been hit that hard by the flu.  i’ve never run a fever for five days straight and i wanted to die a bit.  i am thankful that it was just the flu and strep throat because if i had had a stomach bug on top of that… i may have had to swan dive off the balcony.  so, though i had no energy to post here, i did have stuff to say.  snippets of posts that never were:

• we followed up our wildy young work-night with a friday night at our favorite hangout to see a band we hadn’t seen there before.  they were craptastic.  i won’t even call them a cover band as they were purely karaoke – no original sound whatsoever.  the lead “singer” hurt my soul when he started doing the axl rose mic-stand-dance during sweet child o mine and i was appalled when gives you hell came on and i remarked at how much they sounded like all american rejects just to realize that none of them were singing.  not even lip-syncing.  they were just playing their instruments in the background while the cd played.  we only stayed until midnight, two sets was all we could take of music mockery. 
• the next morning, i set my alarm (on a saturday!) and got up early to go to the mall group run.  i remarked to hubby how i felt strangely flu-like because my neck and shoulders were stiff and i hadn’t swum laps in days.  i brushed it off figuring that i had just slept wrong.   the group run was just me and mello (hubby had a board meeting at our condo) and he was having sciatic pain so we mostly walked.  i’m glad that i went because he’s a trainer and it gave me the opportunity to have some one-on-one time with him to get some pointers on my running.  i felt much better about things after talking with him for that hour.  by the time i got back home, i was shivering cold and wrapped myself in two blankets on the couch.  a few hours later i realized that i was running a heck of a fever and hubby was packing up to go to bama for his mom’s birthday.  my flu was to be a lonely journey.
• i totally expected to be better after a couple days.  we had already planned on taking last tuesday afternoon off for the all american rejects concert and i was really looking forward to it.  instead of having fun at a concert, i found myself breaking down and going to the dr tuesday afternoon.  it was day four of not being able to get my temp below 101°.  it sucked laying in the back of the car right across the street from where the concert was taking place while hubby was in filling my prescriptions.  stupid friggin flu.
• steroids rock – my throat and ears felt so much better that night after just one dose.
• when my sissy relayed to BIL that i was waiting in the car while hubby was in the pharmacy he assumed i was pregnant.  i don’t follow the logic there but sorry to disappoint.
• i’m amazed that i had a one-day work week last week and it was the longest week of my life.
• after being cooped up all week, i finally felt up to a walk to our mall sunday.  we walked down there, had a yummy dinner (solid food, no more soup!!!), walked around the plaza a bit, and walked back home.  it was fabulous to get out and get some fresh air finally but i was exhausted by the time we made it back home.  energy replenishment promises to take a while.
• the cough and sinus congestion refuse to let up as well.
• it was a gorgeous, cool, open-window weekend.  perfect for airing the germy stuffiness out of the house.
• hubby abandoned me again monday.  he’ll be back friday and i miss him like crazy.
• prayers are needed all over including:
  • my dad’s wife totaled her car monday.  thankfully, she’s okay other than seat-belt bruises but she’s sore and shook up.
  • my friend katie’s 7yo son is recovering from yet another brain surgery yesterday.  it was unplanned but, fortunately, “minor” (can brain surgery be minor?!) and he came through with flying colors.  he’s such a trooper!
  • my 8yo niece’s friend is battling cancer.  that’s just wrong on every level.  no, the kids don’t know.
  • the wife of the youth pastor at my sissy’s church is fighting lower-body-paralysis (hopefully temporary) after childbirth. 

it’s official… i am past the “wow, i’m doing this!” and back to “exercising depresses the #($& out of me.”  excellent. 

i walked a lot more than i have been.  i did one full lap of the bridge plus about another quarter back up until i met back up with hubby.  my thought was that i’d meet up with him and then he’d slow down and go back to the parking lot with me so i turned around as he passed, looked up, and he was just about out of sight.  *deep sigh*  a lot of the men were great about offering up words of encouragement to me as they passed by but it just didn’t help.  i walked most of the way back to the parking lot (i have NEVER walked that stretch because it’s exposed and i don’t like to be alone on it any longer than i have to) because it was taking every bit of energy that i had left in me not to burst into tears.  i wanted to cry so badly.  still do.  WTF am i thinking that i’m going to sign up for a half-marathon in october.  there’s no chance. 

so my whole way back i was trying really hard to cheer myself up so that i wouldn’t cry.  i said, self, you’ve been sick all week…you were puking all day tuesday…you’ve had no activity since last friday… it’s inexplicably sunny for the run now… you have no music to keep your energy up (mental note: charge shuffle)…  

and then i wanted to cry even more because it’s all just excuses.  seems like every week i’ve got a list of excuses for why i suck so badly.  it’s really quite exhausting. 

i’m not quitting.  i really like the community that the group offers and, unfortunately, the thursday run is the most popular event.  not to mention that somewhere very deep within me i still hold onto hope that, one day, i’ll actually be able to do two full laps of the bridge.  i’m just praying that next week is a better week though because i don’t know how long i’ll be able to hold up if my attitude remains this way.  really, i just wanted to throw myself into traffic and be done with it tonight.