Today's Run

3 miles in 36:48! After barbell squats, dead lifts, and rows!

What the hell is hashish anyway?

I'm out of town tonight. I took a cab from my charity to the hotel, and I think my cab driver tried to sell me drugs. Or, he was just talking about how much he liked drugs. He mentioned twice how much he could go for some hashish. Seriously?!? I don't look at myself as someone who screams 'hashish lover here!!'. I don't even really understand what hashish is. And yet, this is the second time in my life a cab driver has chatted about how awesome hash is while I was in his cab. The other one, years and years ago, rambled on quite a bit about this oil he had. I didn't really understand what he was talking about (and still don't) but I nodded politely and kept making idle conversation. After we got out of the cab my boyfriend at the time was all like 'seriously, he was trying to sell you drugs'. And I realised that my life has probably been much less influenced by peer pressure due to the fact that I often don't understand what cool new thing someone is talking about with their fancy words and slang. But I'm way too shy to ask people to clarify, so I don't know what I'm being tempted with. Handy!

Anyway, I ran another 3 miles tonight because my lovely husband said 'do it!' when I called him. Probably because I'd told him about the cab driver and he wanted to make sure I didn't compromise and dive in to the minibar.

But huzzah! 3 miles in 38:45!

2 Miles!

2 miles in 27:30. And all before work. Which was a lovely idea until I got into the shower and realised I'd forgotten my shampoo. Went through the day with slightly shiny hair. Really hoped that no-one noticed. #firstworldproblems.

Still somewhat sore

And not yet moving much.

A little stiff today

and sore.

But I did buy myself a lovely present. A heart rate monitor! I've actually wanted a watch for a while. Trying to time planks by watching a very high clock is not the best for form. So huzzah. The lovely thing is that I tried to donate this money to charity last week, and they told me that they didn't need it for that project, but welcomed me to click on a link to donate to something else. I was stunned that they thought that was an appropriate response to me filling out a 20 question online form outlining how I'd like to donate 300+ dollars. Seriously people, pick up a phone. I'm still seriously considering calling the charity in question.

But whatevs! I have a watch/GPS/heart rate monitor!

The first run

So I checked out a training program, and it seems that I have decided to do this half just in the nick of time. 12 weeks is the standard lead up time, and I figure with the holidays, those don't really count. So starting now, I should be able to get this all sorted out before the May 5th deadline of the BMO Half.

By the way, have I mentioned that you can sponsor me? That's right, for only $25 dollars (or, like, $5), you can have a place on my honour wall and help fund cancer research, prevention, and support to people fighting the disease.

So back to the training. My friends at fitocracy thought that Hal Higdon had some handy tips. And I think I'm the perfect candidate for his novice 1 training. Well, to be honest, I wish there was a sub-novice category, but I think at that point I get warned against doing this. And I know that I can do it, I'm just curious about how much pain it will cause me. But I am. Oh yes. I am. Here I go. I checked out his training schedule and said, huzzah, tonight I will do my first long run. I skipped right to the weekend long run. I'm not sure why. I look back now and I don't think that I really needed to. Yeah. I don't think that was right. But whatever, it was super hardcore. I ran 4 miles tonight! Yeah! That's almost 6.5 km! I kinda freaked out when I realised the distance, but now that I've done it, I'm feeling pretty good. Final time? 49:55. I really wanted to beat 50 minutes... and I did.

Now I need to go have a bath.

I need some sneakers.

I did a silly thing today. I impulse committed. An email came out from a co-worker that we were going to put together a team for the half-marathon in May, and WOULDN'T IT BE SO AWESOME TO BE PART OF THAT TEAM. I don't actually think that she used cap locks, but to my bandwagon brain, there was no doubt. Ten minutes later my mastercard had enabled my online registration, and somehow, I kind of became the team captain as well.

This all sounds normal for a seasoned long distance runner. But alas, that isn't me. I like brief affairs with running. Weekends away. Maybe even a weekly one-night arrangement that fizzles out after a month or two. But a brief scan of training programs has me considering that a half-marathon may need more than my usual 'I'm signed up for a 10k next week, perhaps I should go and buy some sneakers' commitment.

This may take more work.