It’s coming again soon.
Git ready.
Hone those completely random talents & skills you’d heretofore thought useless and unimportant.
Gather your small children, pets, random household items and commence practicing.
It’s right around the proverbial corner.
*Yeah, we used the term (finger quote) blogger (unFQ) loosely to mean one who has read, seem, or ever heard of blogs. No need to be a blogger yourself.
(If you’re new to the Saga, follow it from the beginning.)
Gina’s tear-soaked slumber didn’t last very long. After only a few weeks in her new place she was pretty much used to the middle of the night wake up calls, courtesy of thin walls and those newly weds in Apartment 3C. “That damned Darla and Tom,” Gina mumbled to herself. Those two always chose the midnight-ish hour for either a session of passionate jack-hammering or arguing (or sometimes both at the same time). Not that Gina knew them personally. She was “introduced” to this couple via information they unintentionally shared through those thin walls, of course.
She’d been in and out of sleep for more than 4-hours now. There would have been plenty of time to toss and turn, wallow some more, fall asleep, and wake up to wallow again, but Darla and Tom made that impossible for Gina right now. Tonight, Apartment 3C served up the high decibel sounds of a heated argument with a side of “I’m gonna call the f-cking cops, you bastard!” screamed Darla.
Gina rolled her eyes and squashed an extra pillow on top of her head. Surely it would amplify her bed head in the morning.
…
Darla was high again. After last year’s boot camp back injury (led by a half-assed uncertified instructor for waaay cheaper than those other boot camps), she was compelled to keep poppin’ the Oxycodone after her prescriptions and physical therapy benefits ran dry. Now Darla had a new source; a source named Jerome who accepted cash only and was happy to make midnight deliveries.
“Oh really? You’re gonna call the cops on ME? How stupid is that, Darla?” Tom barked back with sarcasm. “Baby, I love you. You gotta get off this shit.” His sarcasm quickly melted into a heartfelt plea.
“Leave me the hell alone! I need to call Jerome.” Darla slurred her words and took a strong swing into the air that made her lose her balance and knock over the glass lamp that shattered to the floor. It was a wedding gift (well actually, they’d bought the lamp with a Target gift card they got as a wedding gift).
“F-ck!” Tom grabbed his leg and then slowly lifted his hand to uncover the stinging part. It revealed a shard of lamp glass nestled in his calve.
Thud-thud-thud. There was a rude sequence of bangs at the door. Tom did a split second mental survey of who it might be. That can’t be Jerome.
“Well that’s just great. It’s prob’ly the cops. I can’t believe this shit,” said Tom, shaking his head as he scanned the room for something to wipe his bloody leg. Darla offered no help and didn’t give a damn who was at the door. She was across the room, crouched down on her hands and knees in search of “maybe one last pill” that might have accidentally dropped on the floor. But nope. She only scored one lonely Cheerio and a toenail clipping that somehow eluded the vacuum earlier in the day.
The glass shard was bigger than Tom first thought. Thud-thud-thud. He pulled the shard out fast with an annoying scrunched-looked on his face and clinch of the teeth, then he took off his Fruit Of The Loom tee to wrap it around his leg before doing a limp-hop to the thudding door. The blood was already soaking through the tee.
Yep. It’s the cops. Two of ‘em.
Gina was awake again, but this time out of bed and in nosy-neighbor stance with the front door cracked ever so slightly to peek at the commotion. She assumed Tom was the shirtless one in the hallway. Helloooo, Tom. Gina didn’t expect to see him shirtless and, just like Darla, she didn’t seem to notice Tom’s blood-gushing leg.
The officer radioed in, “We need a medic here.”
Gina shut the door, opened up a fresh pint of Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack, and hopped online to play Facebook Scrabble – anything to take her mind off of Tom’s bulging chest muscles. Gina knew married-man chest muscles were off limits (and so was Late Night Snack, but it somehow made it into her freezer anyway). She giggled at the thought of her ex-husband, Michael, with “Married Man Chest Muscles” branded on his chest. Maybe it would have sent any respectable skank lusting after a different, non-married man. Too bad her former best friend, Andrea, didn’t play by Respectable Skank Rule #99: thou shalt not f-ck around with another woman’s husband. This was an ancient Respectable Skank Rule that could be traced back to those biblical Ten Commandments.
Gina giggled again, this time at the tastiness of Late Night Snack, and without the knowledge that at that very same moment, back in New York, Andrea and Michael lay snuggled up together watching True Blood and sipping wine. Those bastards.
—
Read more episodes in the Fitness Romance Saga.
Is Minimalist Running for You?
If you are into running at all, you’d have to be living under a rock to not know that barefoot running is a huge trend right now. For some it’s a scary prospect. For others, it’s the only way to go.
I’m not going to get into the debate, although I will say I’m a believer in the virtues of barefoot running. That said, barefoot running can be a slippery slope if you don’t do it correctly. I should know—I’m currently nursing stress reactions in both feet. But once I’m healed and back to some normal mileage in my shoes, I’ll be letting my skin hit the pavement again.
Because I have a vested interest in this both as a coach and a runner, I’ve done lots of research into how to go about safely using barefoot running to enhance your running. Here’s what I’ve learned:
Go slowly—and by slowly, I mean really slowly. You can’t just ditch your shoes and become a barefoot runner. You need to ease into this experiment because you’ll be using different muscles than you’re used to.Strengthen your feet first—that means simply walking around barefoot as much as possible to get your feet ready. When you can’t be barefoot, try a minimalist shoe, like the Merrell Pace Glove, Kigo, Vibrams, etc.Try completely barefoot—it’s the best way to learn. Your feet send your brain important messages that help you self-correct on form.Start out barefoot, run a short distance, then stick your shoes on. This will train your body for proper form that will carry over to your shod runs.Relax! Don’t over think your form. By simply “going with it,” your body will serve as your guide.If you follow these simple rules, learning to run with better form will be yours. But be prepared for it to take a while—as much as a year. With patience, however, your hard work will pay off!
Amanda Loudin is a runner, writer, running coach, and mom well familiar with the trials of juggling it all. She has been running and competing in triathlons for 14 years now and still considers herself an evolving student of endurance sports. She loves to interact with other fitness fanatics on her blog, MissZippy1.
Tags: barefoot running
My Friend Carrie sent me this quote. It almost brought me to tears…
When my children were young, I ran for my sanity, I ran for myself, I ran to set a good example because they watched me move. Today they move alongside me. We run because we can. – Kristin Armstrong, Author and runner
He was there to cheer me on when I first started running.
He was there the first time I ran 10 miles.
He was there when I ran the marathon.
He truly is my inspiration turned workout partner
Now he has a little brother.
Who started even younger.
And I’m proud of that.
Other news today…
I just completed week 8 of my Half Marathon Training. Just now. Like moments ago!
It’s Monday morning and I was scheduled for an 8 mile run yesterday, but yesterday I just wasn’t feeling it. My legs were still sore from the boot camp class on Saturday, I was tired, and there was no way I could escape both kids long enough to run that distance.
So I set my eyes on today, hoping the baby would cooperate with an early morning feeding and a late morning. He did and I was able to squish the run in before the husband started work. It was my first morning run in a long time and I must say, I miss them. There’s nothing like starting the day with a workout.
Unfortunately, I can’t always do what I want to do. I have other responsibilities, namely 2 kids I have to work around. Instead, I’ve learned to be flexibly consistent–pretty much the opposite of perfect.
For so long not being able to do things perfectly prevented me from doing them at all.
When my diet wasn’t perfect I might as well eat everything in sight.If I wasn’t able to go to the gym every day why go at all?It was crippling.
Now I apply this Flexible Consistency concept to everything.
It’s not what I eat on a date night with hubby (which happened to be 2 margaritas and plateful of enchiladas at Don Pablos on Saturday.) It’s what I eat day in and day out that makes the most impact on the scale.
It’s not that I missed a workout while on vacation. It’s that I continued my training when I got back home.
Being flexibly consistent is a state of mind that has taken me a few years to master. It comes with practice and continual reinforcement that I am able to reach goals in a realistic and imperfect way. I think it started when I realized my diet had to be stateless. There is no on/off mentality anymore, just a string of decisions, all of which own.
Thanks for listening to me ramble. My mind wanders on these runs. :)
Kayla sent me this note a few weeks ago…
Being a binge eater and constantly fighting this eating and losing weight battle, I thought you would like this quote. “One bad morning does not make for a bad day, One bad day does not make for a bad week, one bad week does not make for a bad month, one bad month does not make for a bad year. You decide where the chain stops.”
We really do decide, don’t we? Sometimes I take the ownership of it all for granted.
This reminded me of a Weekend Quote from last year. Click here to read How Many Eggs Have You Thrown Away?
This has been a summer of change for me, and like a cicada nymph, I’ve emerged from an exoskeletal shell and am learning to use the wings I’ve grown in all the summer’s transitions. I wrote a blog a few months ago about how a friend told me back in March that until I learned to live within the space of my new life with the same strength and determination with which I lost weight, I would be forever grasping for and holding on to bogus and temporary securities. He said I had to let the loneliness maul me, to feel it to my core and to not run away. In time, he said, it wouldn’t hurt as much and I would be stronger.
I took that challenge and allowed the loneliness to wash over me. I was in the middle of the mauling when my brother Marty had his seizure at the end of June. When he was released from the hospital a few weeks later, I went to Minneapolis to help in whatever way I could. I cried when I was dropped off at the Pittsburgh airport July 18. I cried for my brother and I cried for me. I wanted to go, but I didn’t want to go. I was afraid. I had no idea what to expect or if I was up to what waited for me there.
I worked on shedding that fear on the plane while drinking a first-class glass of wine (Literally, it was the wine they serve first-class passengers, since they’d run out of the cheap stuff they serve coach. And for my “inconvenience,” they gave it to me for free. *smile*) So while sipping said wine, I thought about my strengths: A) I am a mother; B) I used to be the secretary for the senior vice-president of a large general contractor (think airports and sports stadiums, many you’ve probably been to); and C) I’m a practicing Buddhist (I always forget that one). I possess super-human organizational skills and a little more patience than I once had, so whatever was waiting for me in Minneapolis was up against a somewhat powerful force. At least, that’s what I told myself. It and the wine helped.
Long story short, I hit the ground running. The mauling continued, but it loaned me (or “borrowed” me, if you’re from Minnesota) some strength and determination. For facing my fear, I was rewarded with a closer relationship with my brothers. Although I’d prefer the three of us hadn’t gained this closeness because of a brain injury, I’m glad for the trust it has created between us and the trust that I developed in myself. I continue to advocate on behalf of my brother and to keep his schedule from 1,000 miles away, and will go back to Minneapolis in a week. Only this time I won’t cry at the airport.
Some of you might remember that last year I was going to go back to school to become a dietary technician. The divorce, the move and the mauling made that impossible. So, too, did a worsening of the osteoarthritis in my knees, wrists and shoulders. I’m sure you’ve noticed that I don’t blog as much as I used to. The main reason is because 1) sitting for and 2) typing longer than an hour is difficult. Dietary tech classes are mostly online and require several hours a day of writing and computer reading, so I gave up on going to school and, while I was at it, blogging, too.
But feeling sorry for myself is not a favorite pastime and it was making my family nuts. It was hard to accept that I needed help, but it was harder to stay locked in self-sympathy. Hmmm…where had I felt that before? Ah, yes, back in 2004, when I understood that losing weight would be a long and life-changing process, but that it would be even harder to stay 300 pounds. I’d shed my skin then, I could shed it again now.
So in May, I called the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation and began working with a woman named Sara, who helped me think through what I wanted to be when I grew up. After evaluating my physical “issues,” she hooked me up with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Institute for Rehabilitation and Research and its Center for Assistive Technology. Last week I met John, a rehabilitation engineer, who took on my “issues” as a challenge to find the most adaptive computer equipment possible. Among other things, he recommended I use this:
My friend assured me the mauling would eventually become a scratch and then a gentle touch and in time I’d come out on the other side stronger. In this shedding of my nymph shell, I find myself somewhere between a scratch and a gentle touch, definitely stronger and definitely happier. Sort of like the happiness Florence and the Machine sing about.
Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her, stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with her drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run
