The Last Straw

Well, this evening is the informational meeting for the 5k training thingie. Oh. My. Gosh.  I guess I am going to go. I am so friggin noncommittal, so as mild and not-intimidating as it may seem…I am still in a panic. What if I don’t like the people, what if nobody talks to me, what if I wear the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing? What if this sucks and I don’t want to do it AFTER I paid my $75?

Have you ever googled someone’s name and race results and times come up? It happens. So my nightmare is that I will be all whack hormonal and totally suck and then my name will be out there for everyone to see.  8-O  But my fantasy is that I run and actually get a decent time and people who knew me a long time ago google my name and my race time comes up and they are all “wow I didn’t know she was a runner, her life must be really cool and exciting” and all. Then I remember that none of them would know my married name.  :roll:  But I guess that takes care of scenario A at least.

Breakfast and lunch, normal. Fruit of the day: mango, porcupined (this is the coolest way to cut a mango and probably part of the reason that I am so addicted to them, because, well…I am a child). Dinner was fish tacos with some 99% fat free refried black beans and some hominy. Bought the hominy from the international foods aisle and I am really thinking it is FAR less salty. Yeah!

Calories came in at probably 1,600 if I am being realistic. It was dreary and rainy and cool and the PERFECT day to cook a little extra. I used a cooking light recipe for Pumpkin Streusel Bread.  I figured that it would be as healthy as like a nutri-grain bar or something similar in the kids’ lunches, so this is my healthier lunches experiment for Thursday and Friday’s lunches. Although it does have sugar and all, so maybe not. I don’t know. At least the house smells yummy, which nutrigrains don’t do obviously. I made a couple little changes to the recipe: less ground cloves, 1/4 brown sugar instead of 1/2 cup of honey because I didn’t have that much honey and my children had consumed all of our raisins, so I used  dried cherries instead. I used a peanut/pecan mix for the topping. It was yummy. Loved the cherries. Loved the peanuts in the topping. May tweek this recipe a bit next time by trying some whole wheat flour or maybe adding some wheat germ or something to give it a little nutritional boost.

***Edited to add: What the heck? Are smilies on strike today or what?  What, unfair working conditions? Child labor? Unpaid overtime? What is it, smilies?

And I am back. I was so nervous on the way down there. Until I started visualizing all of my 3FC peeps in the van with me. Couldn’t help but smile at the thought of that! I imagined tiny2b to be telling me that if she can do boot camp, I can suck it up and run. And Eryn telling me that if she can workout in the gym at some ungodly hour while I am still cozy in bed, I can do this. And after I got about 5 miles down the road I was thinking about how a couple of chickies on here RUN THAT FAR! Then I thought about Stayin’ Alive and grabthebull’s comment about Gibb chest hair and bigprof doin’ the hustle on the treadmill. And before I knew it, I was there. So I walked into the  meeting and pretended to be all cool about stuff.   Probably about 50 people there. 49 women and one old man.  We will be dividing into three groups: those who plan to walk, those who want beginning running intervals (like the first week of C25k) and those who want to run. There were a couple of fru fru women, but mainly it was a great group and I was surprised to find that it really had the same feeling that 3FC blogs have. I guess because we were all there because we all really want to lead a more active life.  I met one person who has been using C25k. We chatted a bit about that and Robert Ullrey’s techno podcasts and stuff like that. I think she will be in the running group.

So anyway, sometimes on Wednesday nights we will have “seminars” about nutrition and avoiding injury and I have totally already said this, haven’t I? Back when I first mentioned this thing. I am my mother’s daughter.   Are smilies still on strike? Let’s see.  :roll:  We will meet on Saturday mornings for our runs, starting in September. During the week we are on our own with a schedule of what we should be doing and a log for our runs and cross training days.

Wow. I am not sure this is very coherant. I feel really spacy and sort of weird because oh my gosh I just signed myself up to run every week for three months with a bunch of strangers AND paid 75 bucks to do so. So for bigprof’s old me/new me thing…this would totally be it. The old me would have rather shot my big toe off than do this. The new me is feeling like this is actually pretty exciting.