More than cheap footwear

Hey everyone! I hope you all had great weekends and your week has gotten off to a good start.

The funny thing is I was leaning toward Northern California to begin with. I liked Southern California for its beach-iness, and I’ve always wanted to visit the San Diego Zoo. But, there seems to be so much more of the types of things we like to do in Northern California. San Fran seems beautiful, and of course I want to run across the Golden Gate Bridge (if that’s an option – if not I will settle for driving across it!). Alcatraz fascinates me, as does the Wharf, the cool neighborhoods, the FOOD, the twisty roads, etc. And, Yosemite and Napa Valley are close driving distance. I’d love to spend some quiet time at Yosemite soaking up nature and doing some hikes. Some of our best vacation memories are some of the insanely wild hikes we’ve done in parks out West. And we haven’t been to California together yet so this visit will make the 37th state we’ve seen together in our quest to make all 50. My fave so far has been Oregon (although South Dakota is a close 2nd, it’s so beautiful) and Brent’s is Maine so I’m thinking some tough decisions between East and West will be had one day when we retire!

I had the best of intentions of getting up insanely early for the local running club training run Sunday am. It started at 6 am a half mile from our house. It was 14 miles, I only needed 7 and since it was an out and back I figured I would just turn around halfway and at least have some company for a little bit. I will just never be an early morning exerciser. When the alarm went off at 5:30 I just reset it and went running later in the day. We had a cooler weekend (mid-80s for highs) so even though I went later in the day the weather was bearable, MUCH better than last weekend’s run in the mid-90s!
Since I ran urban last weekend I decided to run greenway this weekend. I like to mix it up because too much urban gets irritating with all the lights and traffic, and too much greenway gets dull. The breeze Sunday was amazing. I know at times it was a headwind, but in July I am all for any sort of wind I can get. As I warmed up I gradually picked my pace up, and by mile 3 I was running at a clean 8:30 pace (mile 1 was 9:30, mile 2 was just below 9). I kept that pace all the way until the giant .3 of a mile hill coming out of the park, and I kept that mile at 9:11 which I was really pleased with. Brent tagged along on his bike and rode various parts of the greenway.

All in all I’d say it was a successful run. Once the old legs got warmed up I’m happy with my pace and it was just a gorgeous day for a run. I kept thinking about Cliff out at Ironman Lake Placid, and there was no way I was going to give up. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult an Ironman is. If I didn’t drown attempting to swim 2.4 miles I would probably die on the 112 mile ride before absolutely having a heart attack during the run. As we’re working on swimming and biking I would love to get to the point where I try a small triathlon or two next summer. I think I would be ok on the bike now, but my swimming leaves a lot to be desired and I’m not the adventuresome sort who just jumps in and tries something before I feel comfortable and well trained.

When I was out there running by myself Sunday I was just really thinking about a comment someone left me (not on Blogger, on myspace) and how it irked me. I’d already talked about it with Brent and how it was goofy to be all worked up about it, because a lot of things online can be written one way in your head and read and (mis)interpreted a completely different way in someone else’s head. Anyway, this person is an old college “friend” who found me online and basically we hadn’t talked for 8-9 years. She looks exactly the same as college, plus about 50 pounds. Same hair, same enormous glasses, same total disregard for makeup. The only thing that has changed is a massive obsession with Bunco and a weird flip flop fetish. She got pregnant in college and then had the good old Southern “shotgun wedding”. Basically her whole myspace account and the blog she started make it fairly clear that child #1 is not her favorite and neither is her husband, who never even gets a mention or a picture anywhere on her sites. The gist of her comment to me was ‘Besides work and remodeling is there anything going on there?” but worded a bit more snarky.

Well, yeah, there’s a whole lot of life going on here. Although we do quite literally have the white picket fence and all American dog I don’t think you have to have 2.4 kids by the age of 30 to be successful. And I started to think about why I run, and quite honestly a good portion of it has to do with self confidence. I don’t want to be found 9 years later and have someone say I look exactly the way I did when they last saw me plus about 50 pounds. I don’t want people to come along and think “what happened to her???”. I want to be strong and accomplished and proud of things I can do for myself as an adult. One of the things I love about running is that anyone can compete, and competition breeds a strong sense of self. As an adult there aren’t a lot of things you can do to earn awards. There are no politics or brownnosing in running – you’re either the fastest or you’re not.

And I don’t really know the point of that ramble, but as I was out there running and thinking about this person and their evaluation of me vs my evaluation of them I knew without a doubt that there was a LOT going on here, and that there would always be a lot going on here. Personally, I don’t consider having every former American Idol contest as your myspace friend and a page decorated in $1.99 footwear to be much of a life, but to each their own. My American dream is just a little different, and fabulous in its own way. It makes me sad to think that she’ll undoubtedly never feel that rush when you see Mile 26 of a marathon, the excitement of seeing your #1’s artwork hanging on a wall for others to admire, the contagious excitement of gathering around a laptop watching people finish an Ironman, the feeling of accomplishment you have getting that letter in the mail telling you that you are a CPA after months and months of sacrifice for studying, the pride you have every time you turn your kitchen faucet on knowing that YOU did that. And I just don’t think she is capable of understanding why those things are so amazing, probably in the same way that I don’t understand why 22 Buncos in one night is amazing. I think everyone lives their life their own way, but it seems like too many people just sort of spend it as a vegetable day in and day out heading in and out to work, then home to ride the couch keeping all their dreams in the “one day’ category. At the very least her comment reminded me I should be thankful for everything we have achieved, and keep working hard for all the things we still want to achieve. And it reminds me to periodically change my hairstyle.

Congratulations if you’ve made it this far in what became a very long and rambly post that had very little to do with running! I got to see the movie Brent’s team made last night and it is awesome! The show for cast/crew to view all the movies is in about 2 weeks, it’s going to be so cool to watch it on the big screen at the Belcourt! This Friday night he has another art show. This one’s pretty cool – everything has to glow in the dark. He did a very cool one of traffic from the Brooklyn Bridge when we went to NYC a couple of years ago. We got some glow in the dark paint and painted the traffic streaks and some of the windows in building to make it look like lights on at night. It turned out excellent. If you’re bored Friday night come on out! That’s the only thing on our plan for this weekend and hopefully it can stay that way! We’ve got a ton to do around the house.

Take care!