Hey girlfriends! :-)

Yesterday, April and I went to see Kristin Armstrong speak at First Baptist Church about taking time for your heart. Kristin is a writer for Runner’s World magazine and blogs on the magazine’s Web site. She’s also well-known as being the ex-wife of Lance Armstrong. But in her own right, she has quite an amazing talent as a (super hottie) motivational speaker!

Decked out in her red dress, Kristin spoke about how important it is for women to nourish and use their heart, both emotionally and physically. It’s a difficult balance sometimes to juggle everything that’s going on in my life that I struggle to find “me” time. Get up at 6 am, workworkwork, maybe take a lunch (or maybe do the grab-and-go), mid-afternoon meetings, head home before it gets too dark outside … and then collapse into bed and start all over again.

I don’t want to sound like a martyr though. I do have a pretty sweet life – take one look at it and you will see how amazingly blessed I am. It’s just that I tend to forget all of that when I’m rushed into the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

I think that’s why I’ve begun to slowly enjoy my weekend runs as time I’m taking for myself. I enjoy the beginning of my run when I’m fresh and naïve to the torture I’m about to inflict on myself. I enjoy the independence I have in deciding, “Where will my adventure take me today?” I enjoy the first song I select as the soundtrack to the day’s run. And I certainly enjoy the moment I finish the run, when I can pat myself on the back and find that self-pride deep down.

We’re incredible women for getting up in the morning and doing what we do every day (and doing it well!). I’m really glad that Kristin Armstrong was able to help me reflect on that.

Ladies, the Women’s Heart & Sole Five Miler is ten weeks away (Saturday, May 17th). We can do this!

Does this make me a real runner?

I got my first running-related injury last week. Since it was raining outside Thursday evening, I decided to throw my excuses in the garbage and run on the treadmill at my apartment’s fitness center. I ran a solid three miles (awesome!) at a turtle’s 11-min/mile pace (boo). But, hey, a girl’s got to start somewhere! Well, it had been a while since I had run on a treadmill. I had really gotten used to running on the neighborhood roads and sidewalks. I had read that pavement and concrete were the kindest to your body, but it certainly seems to help pass the time away when you’ve got something new and fresh to look at each step of the way.

So, Thursday, I ran on the treadmill. The conditions were perfect. I had the music from my iPod in my ears (Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl really pumps me up!) and that classic episode of Friends on the TV (you know, the one wear Ross and Rachel take a “break”). I stretched afterwards by doing a few yoga moves in the fitness center. Luckily, no one else was there to witness my version of downward dog.

I went to bed that night, patted myself on the back for being a good exercising girl, and woke up the next morning unable to move. The calf muscles in both of my legs were rock-hard (and not in the good way). I attempted to hobble to my freezer to grab some frozen bags of peas and quickly made the smart decision that I would NOT be able to go to work and walk the 0.7 mile uphill trek from the Coliseum parking lot to the health center. Ugh. Pretty painful!

I iced my calves all morning and then soaked them in hot water. By mid-afternoon, they were feeling better and I think I was making a good, solid recovery. On Sunday it was really really cold outside, so I gave the treadmill another stab. This time I stretched for a much longer period of time, and I woke up this morning feeling like a million bucks.

I have got to get a watch...

...Because I'm thinking that maybe I want to start timing myself. I decided yesterday since it was a tad nippy outside (for South Carolina that is), I would go to the Leisure Center track and run instead. When I got there, there were not that many people on the track so I decided to push it a little more than usual for a mile. Now, this in itself is impressive for me because I can remember having to run the mile in high school for softball conditioning. I absolutely HATED it! Like hate seems like a nice word to describe how I felt back then about running it, and anything that would get me out of it, I would try. So just the sheer fact that I now not only will voluntarily run a mile, but I will run more than a mile, still leaves me in disbelief over myself. I guess I'm really not the same person I was back then.

Anyway, now a mile doesn't seem so bad, so I decided to give it a run, literally. While I did not have a watch, I suspect I ran it in 9 minutes or a little less. I determined this by the songs I was listening to on my mp3 player. I can make the mile within "Same in Any Language" by INine, "Want To" by Sugarland and about half of "Cigarettes" by the Wreckers. So roughly translated, I'm around 9 minutes. While that may not seem incredibly impressive for real runners, for me I'm pretty darn impressed. That's back to what I was back in high school when I worked out and played sports all the time (and weighed less). And if you think back from where we started, I was struggling for the 11 minute mile and cursing each day I went to run. So yeah, give me a cookie.

Oh and speaking of not being a "real runner," Lauren, Joeli and I had a conversation about that last night. We decided that we're not real runners yet because we don't get upset when we don't get to run. We don't go for miles and miles on a Saturday morning. We don't wear spandex (ok, so I just made that one up...I dont' wear spandex anyway...though perhaps that will be a goal of mine: get to the point of looking hot in spandex. Hard thing to do; we'll see). We may not be hard core and we may never be hard core, but we are getting better and we're getting healthier and we're having fun. That's what it's all about :-)

-April

New Best!

So last Thursday, I ran from the New Orleans Restaurant side of the Riverwalk all the way to the end of the new part past the long bridge that's past Pointe West! I thought I was going to stop before that, but I kept feeling like running. It kind of surprised me. I feel bad today though because I missed my workouts yesterday and it doesn't look like I'll be getting around to working out today. My mind and imagination have just been in sort of this abyss to where I really need to feed the creative monster, but I feel like my work space needs to be conducive of that. So I've been doing some rearranging and evaluating. I want to start putting together a scrapbook of sorts of our running experience. I've kind of been mentally all over the place as of late so we'll see what all comes out of this. I'm going to have to start timing myself soon. I've gotta bounce...later y'all!

-April

Certified courses

I found a cool listing of all the certified 5k, 10k courses in SC. I think I might try a new course each weekend for a while. Want to join me on another Saturday run? It's a guaranteed adventure every time!

http://www.usatf.org/events/courses/search/searchResults.asp?courseStatus=A&courseType=R&state=SC

Lauren

So we kinda skipped January I see...

Oh so much time has gone by I almost don't know where to start! Hmmmm, maybe I should start with I'm the person who posted last the last time we did a 5k back in December! Here we are in February now. SOME PEOPLE need to get on the ball (hint hint) (teehee, Lauren is sitting next to me right now and doesn't know I'm typing all this).

So we're training for the Get to the Green 5k (Part of the St. Pats in Five Points Festival). It takes place on March 15, so if anyone wants to join us, feel free; leave us a comment if you want to meet up with us. You can check out information at strictlyrunning.com.

So in preparation for this 5k (and just in general because I'm becoming a fat lard and need to lose weight), I've been working out usually at least 5 days a week. I got my gym membership and do weights and some row machine Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, Tuesdays and Thursdays are my go out and run days. Soooo, that means that today was a go out and run day! At first I didn't want to go. I was feeling lethargic because I had been sitting at my desk most of the day, however, I pushed myself to go out to the Riverwalk and run. It felt pretty good because the weather was nice and after I pushed myself to a point, my energy level went up. I found that after I ran and recovered a bit by walking, I wanted to run some more...so I did. I ran for a time, then walked to recover and then ran some more. And it was nice. It gave me more energy for the rest of the evening.

Soooo, I want to encourage you that even if you are feeling a little too tired to go out, give it a shot, it just might energize you a little bit. So, run, Lauren, run and get better Joeli (if you even check this blog anymore ;-) ) HA!

-April