6 miles – Silvia July 21, 2008

This morning I woke up not wanting to do anything except drink coffee and look at our garden which is overflowing with blossoms. It looks like an artist took his paint colors and strewed them over our backyard. Alas, Yoga starts at 8:15 and I need the stretching. It felt good to stretch, difficult but good. It’s like my body was saying thank you, thank you. I remember when I was in middle school, I could have done all the poses easily, but now, I feel like an 80 year old woman trying to contort her body into simple poses like downward and upward dog. My favorite part is the end, the last five minutes are spent in the Savasana pose, which is a fancy yoga word for lying down on your back with your eyes closed just breathing. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Bliss.

After that I did my “Power Flex” workout, which is 45 minutes of strength training using barbells and weights. I read that strength training is important for runners. I have been doing it since April, and I like it. Probably because there’s loud music and an instructor telling me what to do. I love not being alone with my thoughts. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I don’t like relying on me. I am too weak.

After that I was done. I was at the gym two hours already and wanted just to go shopping for my mom (I am going to Canada to visit and there’s stuff here she can’t buy as cheaply over there. For example,  there’s a tube of toothpaste at Trader Joe’s for 1.99 here and in Canada, it’s close to 6.00. No kidding. Keep in mind the dollar is basically at par. So there is no reason for the prices to be so much higher, but they are. I digress.)  So, I figure I would go shopping, go home and grout. (The stupid stairs are still not done! I figured out the secret to tiling stairs; pay someone to do it!) Then later this evening I would go back and run my six miles. I leave the gym, go shopping and was about to go on the highway headed for home, when I thought, who am I kidding. I won’t  go back to the gym. I will get sidetracked for sure, and progressively more lazy as the day wears on. So, like a good girl, I went back to the gym, hopped on the treadmill and began slogging the long, slow, six miles. I actually did 6.2, so it’s like a 10K.

Unlike, Meghan, I did not feel I could do more. I think that her body is just more conditioned. She has a great base with being a regular 5 mile runner. I am still in the process of building up my base. There is a reason that ‘they’ say that you should have been running for 8-10 weeks before you start training. I feel that I am not conditioned enough to make the training easy.

Today’s problem was sweat. Yes, I was in AC but I was soaked. I sweat a lot. I don’t perspire, or have a healthy glow. I sweat like a monsoon after the dry season in the Serengeti. That’s just me. I always have, even as a kid. I start sweating on my nose and then every other place that there is a pore in my body. I think that’s why I can’t keep those ear phones in my ear, the sweat slides them out. I sweat so much that when I run the marathon in Arizona I bet the desert will turn into a tropical rain forest. Anyway, what happened was that I began to sweat in my feet. I felt them get hot and sweaty. Then my toes began to rub together. You know what that causes. Blisters. Ouch. My feet burned. I just kept thinking, run through the pain, run through the pain. If I can’t run 6, how will I run 26.2? (Don’t forget the 0.2, that 0.2 will be so annoying by the end of the race, I just know it!)

Then my shirt got soaked. I mean soaked. So, you guessed it more rubbing. This time it was the bottom of my  bra strap and my skin. I felt it rubbing back and forth. I even tucked in my T-shirt into the strap   ( I didn’t care what I looked like, one look at my tomato red face tells anyone that I am not here to win any beauty contests) to provide a buffer, but the T-shirt kept coming out.  At last, after 58 minutes and 55 seconds, it was over. After my cool down walk, I got off the treadmill and couldn’t even walk properly on my feet they hurt so much. I had to walk on the sides of my feet. And my drenched shirt was just clinging to me. Luckily, I had sandals in the car and took my shoes and socks off to let my feet breathe. I wish I had those toe separators like when you get a pedicure.

When I finally got home, I struggled to take off my clothes. You know how hard it is to take off clothes after they are wet. I felt like I went swimming in salt water. When I had a looksie at where my bra was there was a huge red rash – like a rug burn. OUCH! The shower was painful. It burned when it hit my rash. After I couldn’t even put on a regular bra, so I had to hang free all day. Not comfortable at all for someone like me, I am not a woman of the Borneo rainforest. As I am typing this, it is still painful.

Nonetheless, week two is done. Hallelujah!