Week 2, Day 15

That’s right. I ran today. I did my 20 minutes aerobic + ab workout this morning and then basically sat around waiting for the rain to let up. I watched the temperature rise on the Weatherbug, but at around 2:15 or so, it dipped from 50 to 49°, so I figured it was now or never. Not that the 40’s are cold, but it was also really windy and I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty out there if I waited any longer. I put on a sweatshirt, a baseball hat and my raincoat and headed out to my car.

Got down to the parking lot and it was pissing rain, so I sat around for a few minutes, made a voice post on my Live Journal, listened to some Golden Earring. When it let up some, I headed out to the track. Because I’m a genius, I wore my old gym shoes and put my running shoes in a plastic grocery bag. I have to walk through a lot of wet, muddy grass to get to the track, and I didn’t want to get my running shoes all icky. I switched shoes and got down to business.

I was cold at first, especially with the wind gusting in from the south, but once I started running, I got pretty sweaty. The first run was good. When I got to the second run, I wanted to quit and go home. I felt the same up until the fifth run when I realized I was almost done and I felt really good. I pushed myself on the sixth run and got going with a feeble but determined jog.

So despite my absences from the track, I think I did pretty well. The only problem is, my lower back hurt a lot. It’s been happening a lot lately, and I’m not sure what’s up. Maybe the cold weather? I hope it’s not arthritis. I was willing to accept it eventually spreading to my hips, but my spine? Unacceptable.

I gave myself a full five minutes to cool down, then I stretched and put my crappy shoes back on. Right before I got to my car, it started pouring again. Perfect timing! I think the rain gods are sick of me being fat, too. “Look, we’ll hold off the rain for forty minutes if you’ll please just get off your ass and DO something.”

I feel really really really really good. The whole time I was running, I was miserable. What kept me going was thinking about running eight miles next August. Christie suggested I look for some five mile runs in my area to try beforehand, so I’ll definitely check into that.

For breakfast I had a smoothie (berries, peaches, soy milk, apple juice, soy yogurt) with a tablespoon of ground flax seed mixed in. Pre-run, I had a handful of peanuts (because I couldn’t find my almonds). For lunch I had leftover Trader Joe’s vegetable and barley soup. (Can I just tell you how much I love barley? I hate rice, but I looooooooove barley. I need to buy some and then make something with it.) For dinner, I’ll probably make a veggie pizza.

I think I’m starting to gain back some of the weight I lost, so that’s one of the reasons why I ran in the wind and rain. I don’t want to be miserable anymore. I’m happy when I run, and I know I was losing weight because of it. So I’m stepping up my workouts and hopefully will start seeing results soon. I refuse to spend another year fat and miserable and feeling sorry for myself.

Oh! More good news: I was able to download my running log from Cool Running and open it in Excel on my own computer. I sent the file in to RunningAHEAD and now I've got all my info on that site! Thanks again to Christie for telling me about that place. Seems like there's a flood of disgruntled Cool Running folks joining up over there.