i found a little local running group on the web this week. last night i told hubby about it and this morning we got up at our normal weekday time and went to our favorite shopping plaza to stalk meet them.
we got there around 07:15 and the website said that they met at 07:30 but didn’t specify where. we stretched and stood around for a while and then i resigned myself to the fact that we had somehow missed them and we started running. we ran an easy one mile loop around the park (no walking) and got back to where we started. we saw some folks over by the parking lot so we started walking over to see if it was them but they got in a car and drove off so we were pretty sure it wasn’t. we started back to the loop to run another mile when we saw a guy that looked like a runner. we stopped him and asked him if he knew of a running group that met there saturday mornings and we were pleased to find that he was one of the leaders. we walked with him back to the parking lot where his partner was talking with a woman who was a beginning runner. introductions went around and it was decided that the partner was going to take the woman around the loop we had just done and the guy we met was going to take us on a three+ mile loop around the whole plaza.
it was a nice course that they had plotted out and it was nice to have someone to talk with. unfortunately, i didn’t time it but i’m pleased to say that i only walked less than five minutes of it so i feel like it was a pretty decent time. it was by far my longest continuous running in i-couldn’t-tell-you-when. i really liked the guy we ran with. he was very nice, about my age – probably just a few years older – and he didn’t make me feel bad about being a slowpoke. he even tried to give me some pointers. toward the beginning of the run he asked me, “how do you breath when you’re running?” my response was, “i gasp,” which he seemed to find humerous. he then tried to teach me better breathing techniques which i will try to work on but the gasping just comes naturally. really, when i’m doing any kind of physical activity, i sound like i’m dying. i can make it just fine, but you will think that i’m getting ready to keel over.
when we were finished with the three mile loop, we were back at the parking lot with the other two. we talked for a few minutes before parting ways. sunday mornings they do a 10k trail run at the local park but i’m not so sure i’ll make that. giving up both sleep-in-mornings seems a little excessive to me. i’ll probably try to rotate one or the other each weekend. hubby will probably do both because he’s much more devoted than me. there is also a thursday run over the bridge. i’m looking forward to those because they do dinner and socializing afterward (and to be perfectly honest the whole reason i brought the group up to hubby is because i desperately want to make friends around here) but the thought of doing laps over the bridge intimidates me quite a bit. us orlandoans don’t take well to inclines. but we’re being social and getting exercise so this is a good thing. who knows, maybe i’ll build up to doing all three runs each week. and there was a reward this morning. after our four miles of running, hubby took me to chick-fil-a for a yummy breakfast biscuit. hmmm, what would the reward be on sundays?
forty minutes of weightlifting in the gym. it was HOT in there. i was reminded of why i prefer my activities to be outdoors in the breeze or in the comfort of my own home. hubby has been trying to talk the board into approving ceiling fans. to me, it’s not about temperature in a gym, it’s about circulating air. maybe that’s just me, though.
i did another 40 minutes on the wii fit this afternoon. i was pleased to have it tell me that i was even fatter than i was yesterday. what can i say, i’m on the upward track. *sigh* so, aside from it being such a wonderful boost to my self esteem, i do find it to be a lot of fun and it really is cool to be more aware of my balance as i’m doing exercises. i can’t say that i’ve ever paid any attention to my balance and stability while exercising. it really makes a difference. it’s going to take me a while to create an organized workout plan for the fit. i wish that it had some sort of automated routine mode. i’d say that’s my biggest complaint, having to choose the exercises one at a time and back out of one to select the next. i’d like it to have the option of selecting some routines that they randomly put together and it just goes from one exercise to the next with minimal wiimote interaction – kind of like it does with the body tests. anyhow, at least i’m getting some activity back into my days.
another thirty+ minutes in the pool. didn’t lose count today, definitely twenty-four laps. tomorrow i’ll have to break down and go to the gym. i know i can’t do that a third day in a row. as it was, i immediately felt yesterday’s swim when i was about halfway through my first lap today. i’m pretty certain swimming wasn’t nearly so tiring twenty years ago.
at least three different old peoples commented, with a chuckle, about how they were all in my way and it must be hard swimming laps with so many old folks (her words) in my way. not one of these commenters bothered to move out of my way. jerks.
i have also discovered a semi-surprising side effect to swimming laps on my lunch break. i’ve gone from ghost-pale to perfectly and evenly tanned. It’s not that being in the sun and getting a tan surprises me, just how darkly i’ve tanned in just two days. and how evenly – i can’t do this on purpose laying out. clearly, if i keep this up, i’m going to have to start wearing sunblock. and since i hate wearing sunblock, i’m thinking i’ll be moving my swimming back to nighttime laps. which will be necessary soon enough anyhow since spring break crowds will start coming in just a few weeks.
i’ve been looking for a wii fit for a few months because my cousin said it was so much fun. i had just about become convinced that it was a mythical creature since i couldn’t find it anywhere. and, frankly, i was getting more and more ticked and was almost to the point that i was going to boycott it on principal. almost; not quite.
this weekend, i was finishing some grocery shopping at walmart and i decided to stop by the electronics equipment, just for kicks. as i rounded the end-cap, i was shocked to encounter TWO of the creatures. i kept my wits about me and snuck up on them. i didn’t want them to get skeered off, never to be seen again. at just the right moment, i pounced and was able to wrangle one of them into submission and bring it home with me. i’ve left it locked up for the last two days so that it could get acclimated to its new surroundings but tonight, i let it loose.
i spent forty-five minutes playing with it but it is going to need a lot more human contact before it gets friendly. actually, i think it got a little crankier tonight since it decided that i was fatter at the end of my forty-five minutes than i was at the beginning. it’ll take some time but i intend to get it tamed in no time!
funny how my first day back off the phones coincides with my first day of renewed lunch activity. can i get a WOOHOOO!? unfortunately, it has been so long that i was intimidated at the thought of going to the gym so i headed to the pool instead. i swam for thirty minutes straight. i did either twenty or twenty-four laps. i was rotating one lap each way of freestyle-ish and one lap each way of backstroke-ish (i don’t actually know how to swim properly so it’s my own version of swimming – i won’t be racing phelps anytime soon but i shouldn’t drown either). i know that i did at least five rotations of each but i sort of lost count and i think i actually did six. either way, thirty minutes of cardio activity made for a hot and tired me.
now for the rant…
it’s winter so there are lots of snowbirds here. i’m generally fine with that (other than the fear of an open spark on the elevator when there are a dozen oxygen tanks in a confined area). the old folks like to gather in the pool with their noodles and stand around in circles talking. hey, no problem. however, to me, common courtesy would dictate that when you see someone start swimming laps, you move to one side of the pool in order to get out of their way. no, not these old people. instead of moving to avoid being in my way, they actually spread out to be MORE in my way! unfreakingbelievable. i started off hugging one side of the pool trying to avoid them and ended up having to zig zag down the middle of the pool carefully navigating between them all. and let me tell you how difficult that is when i’m swimming on my back. frikking rude snowbirds. i should have plowed over a few of them! apparently they didn’t raise kids to have manners a century ago.
*i would apologize for offending any elderly readers that i may have but i really don’t feel like having lived longer excuses people from being courteous. you know as well as i do that they’d be griping up a storm if some whipperschnapper were getting in their way. come to think of it, i’ll bet they were complaining about me because i was rippling the water. bunch of jerks.
would be the total lack of sleep combined with getting out of bed at the crack of the-sun’s-not-up-so-why-am-i to join my cousin for her morning run. i struggled today. she’s gotten much faster than last time we were here when i didn’t have any trouble keeping up with her. today, i got way behind on the walking minutes and had to catch back up on the running minutes but at least i did it. if only i could drag my sorry-butt out of bed that early to run back home. all total, hubby and i did approximately six miles in seventy-eight minutes. not too bad. now i’m tired, headachy, and hungry even after eating.
i have a lot of respect for what my cousin is doing – training for a marathon and all. i got up this morning and did approximately 4.5 miles on the beach. i’m pretty certain i ran at least half of it. that’s not even close to a marathon and yet i’ve been holding down the couch all afternoon from exhaustion. yes, that is entirely different from holding down the couch due to laziness. i had plans to finally start some cookie baking today but that just isn’t happening. not only am i too tired but i can’t stand long. my feet are pretty tender from having all the skin wore off of them while running in the sand for such a long distance. i guess they need to toughen up. of course, that’s assuming that i can drag my sorry (and huge) butt out there and make a habit of beach running.
we broke out the kayaks yesterday afternoon and braved the cold waters (well, i braved the cold waters; hubby has a wetsuit). the gulf was fairly calm but hubby found an area that had some small waves for him to surf. i wasn’t interested in getting splashed by the cold water any more than necessary so i paddled out past all wave activity. i spent a little time piddling around and then i decided to see if i could make it all the way to the pier and back. i kept a fairly comfortable pace getting to the pier, stopping a couple of times to rest and enjoy the view. floating around out there is truly peaceful. i was very proud when i reached the pier but quickly turned around because the sun was getting pretty low. in an effort to beat the sunset, i paddled HARD all the way back, non-stop. it really took everything i had to keep going. my arms were eager to give up but i was losing light. the sun set about a quarter mile from home. so i dug in even deeper to make it before the residual light was gone. by the time i made it back to the beach, hubby had already taken his ‘yak out and was waiting to help pull me in. which was a very good thing because, after 2.5 miles of paddling (half of it very hard and continuous), i was DONE. i couldn’t even pick up my ‘yak to carry it back to the elevator. my wonderful hubby dragged both ‘yaks to the walkway, carried one to the elevator for me to accompany up and carry the fifteen feet from the elevator to our storage, and then went back and got the other one. he’s so great! and let me tell you, it was all i could do to muster the strength to get it out of the elevator and over to the storage closet. i’ve got to say, i really enjoyed that paddle and i was so proud to make it to the pier. i was even more proud at how hard i paddled all the way back — i was actually creating a wake in the water behind me. while hubby was getting the ‘yaks put up, i headed back down to the pool. i had planned on just getting into the hot tub to thaw out (my feet and legs were frozen after all that time in the cold water and wind) but i decided to get into the nice heated pool first. i’m glad i did because that warm water stung against my frozen skin and i’m certain the hot tub would have just burned. i swam twelve laps in the pool and then soaked in the hot tub for about fifteen minutes. my toes were still cold when i got out but it sure did help. today, i hurt. my shoulders are tired and my hands are sore. that’s a small price to pay though for enjoying some non-gym activity in my fabulous backyard.
my cousin again managed to talk me into getting up at way-too-frikkin-early o’clock this morning. hubby and i ran to meet up with her at the entrance of her neighborhood and then we three made our way through neighborhoods and around the lake. i’m guesstimating that hubby and i did about six miles (well, he did more since he kept running ahead of us and circling back). when i got back home, i would really have liked to climb into bed and go back to sleep for a few hours but there was only enough time for a quick shower before work. who’s idea was it to stay up so late watching a movie last night?
hubby and i decided to go for another walk at lunch time. no jogging at all, just walking. we went around the neighborhood once before he left me to go back to the house. one lap of the neighborhood with all of the cul-de-sacs is 2.17 miles. i continued to go around one more time, skipping only one cul-de-sac so that i would not exceed my lunch hour. i figure there’s no way that the cul-de-sac i skipped is more than .34 of a mile so i did at least four miles in fifty-seven minutes. is it nap time yet?
last night was poker night at my cousin‘s and somehow, she talked me and hubby into getting up at the crack of oh-my-goodness-it’s-early to meet up with her for some of her marathon training. it was dark and far too early to be out of bed. see, i have this theory that i should never be awake before the sun but sometimes it just has to happen. we met up with her just outside my sissy’s neighborhood and she had already been nearly a mile. we turned around and did a convoluted lap around the lake before parting ways with her so that we could come back and start work. hubby and i did just over five miles so she was rigth at six when we separated. she had four more to do this morning. i’m so proud of her training and told her i would totally drag my sorry butt out of bed any morning she wants while i’m here so that we can be miserable together. really, though, i’m just glad that i finally got some activity in. i had been doing so good in my routine and then i’ve done nothing at all for a week and a half now.