Keep on Running

Every day I come to this website and every day I notice that Maui countdown gets smaller and smaller. I am alarmed by this but also I guess that’s good too.  I clearly have mixed emotions about it. I’m excited to go to Maui and achieve my goals, but then I’ll be sad when it’s over to. I’m sure that is typical for someone working towards a goal and then they meet their goal. It’s an interesting thing. Not entirely sure how I feel about it, but for now I still have 74 days it’s says, so I can collect my thoughts more later I guess.

Last night I made my way to the gym where I accomplished EXACTLY what I intended to accomplish so that was great.  I got there, did a 1 mile warm up run on the treadmill, sprinted really and then headed into class.  It is called cardio something I don’t even know, but essentially it’s a HITT style workout which is like burn out upper fast, elevate your heart rate and honestly I thought I was going to die.  The mirror indicated that in the half hour class the goal was to get thru 7 rounds of these activities:

70 jumping jacks
7 burpies
7 sprints outside
7 v-ups
7 kick jumps
7 lateral jumps (each side)
7 spider planks (each side)

Umm. This is sincerely harder than it even reads on paper.  Honestly the sprints outside were the worst in the intense heat and while I adore Amanda to death sometimes she just makes stuff up and didn’t realize say that if we run a sprint one way and then have to turn around and run it back that you will never accomplish an odd number, so 8 sprints it really was!  HA HA.  So yeah, that was brutal.  It all was brutal honestly.  And of course by the time 15 minutes had passed and we were barely on round 3 I was like, 7 rounds, that isn’t going to happen.  Of course Amanda won’t let me slack.  This was a work at your own speed kind of workout. Get thru as many rounds as possible in the 30 minutes, but those rules don’t ever seem to apply to me.  I pretty much am required to keep up with Amanda and of course we are required to complete all 7 rounds.  We did.  We were the only 2 in the class that did. Most people got like 5 rounds maybe and a lot of people skipped those outside sprints.  We didn’t.  We did it all.  My heart rate was entirely jacked the whole time and I honestly didn’t know if I could keep going I was working so hard, so fast to try and finish the 7 rounds. It was intense. Which I guess means it was a great workout.

And of course after class was over I had to run another 2 miles to get my 3 miles for the day. I of course ended up running another 2.5 miles.  So 3.5 total and THEN for good measure I did about 30 minutes of shoulder exercises that pretty much fried me out. The entire night was pretty wicked. I burned like 700 calories which is pretty good for me for a random evening. 

So after that I decided to call it and came home and Chris and I gave the dogs a walk at the school by our house. We had some dinner, watched some Ninja Warrior and of course set out all our clothes for today.  And by that I mean, I have decided that Tuesday mornings are my only real time to accomplish my long-ish runs during the week.  So I set out clothes to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to run before work.  I always question my logic in doing this but given this is my 2^nd week I am starting to get more used to it.

Actually I am typically determined on Monday night.  Tuesday at 5:30 AM, not as determined. I have that moment lying in bed where I am like, what the hell am I doing? Would it really matter all that much if I skip this? And then my heart goes, yes, it would matter to you.  You are better than that. So I get up. I make some coffee. I try and allow myself to wake up.

And I try my hardest to convince myself this is the best idea possible and that after I finish I am going to feel on top of the world.  Chris decided to wake up this morning and do it with me. Reluctantly.  He isn’t as mentally sound as I am.  He takes me convincing. Not that I was trying to convince him, totally his choice.  Just I have a dead fast strong mental capacity that few possess. I get that.  He kept saying he didn’t want to.  I said, I’m doing it.  So off I went.

Somewhere in the first 1-2 miles, as always, it seems awful and like I have zero idea how on earth I will accomplish 6.5 miles of this.  But at some point in there in transitions into a feeling of happiness and feeling alive and perfectly in tune with the world.  In a nutshell it feels euphoric as running often does. If I’m lucky every run would feel magical and euphoric. They don’t always. But running in the morning is actually pretty awesome because the temperature is beautiful.  There is a nice breeze going.  And there is something so perfect about being out and running before most people are even up.  A double edged, this is awesome, I feel great, I am accomplishing my shit. 

There was nothing terribly fancy about my run.  I don’t ever actually go out as fast or hard I can on a training run. I know I have so many more miles I have to accomplish that I don’t try and really go that intense.  I mean, I push myself to my capabilities of what I think I can endure for 6.5 miles but I am not running at 10k race speeds.  Nonetheless, Chris stayed with me the whole time. He actually runs faster than me, longer legs, testosterone you know.  But he slowed it down and we ran together and it was nice.

We finished up right around the house, ran a little extra loop to get to the 6.5 miles and then I was done, euphorically runners high and happy and felt proud that I managed another early wake-up and run.  Chris felt good. We both felt like we did something kind of cool all before 7:45 AM in the morning.

 And then I quickly got ready for work, got my food together and got dressed and did my hair/makeup and arrived to work pretty much on time shockingly.  And I feel that wonderful after-glow from running. That wonderful good happy feeling of contentment in my heart. And I get to cross off another run of my training log and that is exactly what I was after.  I have this unknown force that drives me to accomplish things to an exact T.  Last night on our walk I was telling Chris that I HAVE to, like seriously HAVE to finish every single run on my training plan. And he was like, what if you don’t? And then he paused and said, you will won’t you.  You will do every single one.  I said YUP.  I simply don’t know how not to.  It’s who I am. So that’s it in a nutshell.  I will do it. That simple. I will do whatever it takes to maneuver my life to make it happen. Always have been this driven, always will be. Don’t know where it comes from.

It’s nice to be at work and have already ran your long run for the day. Makes going to the gym tonight seem so much more manageable.  Like I’ve already put out an awesome effort for the day so anything even a little tiny bit that I accomplish tonight will be like icing on the cake or the cherry on the top of an already awesome day.  There is a 5:30 ab/core class.  Not my favorite and typically doesn’t burn a lot of calories at all. I might try and do 10 minutes of cardio before class to warm up if possible.  I will do the class and then I should probably actually do a good strength workout. That would be the plan. Actually work up an entire plan to stick to and follow. I could probably handle that. But for now I am going to take my happy runner’s high and for the love of God try not to devour ALL food in my sight.