my new boyfriend

I did not get arrested at Best Buy. I also did not get a registration packet. I got in the looooong line of people waiting to pick up their bibs and talked to my best friend on the phone about whether or not I was going to go to jail. She came up with the following brilliant suggestion:

Me: So I think the likelihood of them asking for money is kind of high here.
Bff: Just ask how much it is then say you have to go to the ATM and then don't come back.
Me: (stunned, awed silence)

But it didn't come to that. Instead the girl behind the counter searched for my name in the binder and didn't find it (I did however notice that my aunt and uncle were running the race, shoutout to Frank and Jenny, hope you enjoyed the free beer!), then pointed out a guy for me to ask for help. I thanked her, milled around until she wasn't looking and then left the store. BOOYAH.

So instead of running a five-mile race this morning I just went for a five-mile run. It sucked mostly. There were 26 mph winds and I just felt slow and bulky, and then about halfway through I got a side stitch that then migrated to just under my ribcage near my stomach. I didn't stop (I don't ever let myself stop and walk) but I did think about how I have newfound sympathy for people who get stabbed in the stomach as I am sure it is exactly the same pain.


ugh whatever Drew, dramatic much?

Later I went to run some errands with my dad. He needed new running shoes so we went to the amazing Movin Shoes where I peppered the salesmen with many questions, including if compression socks are worthwhile, if Mizuno has really changed everything about the Alchemy Wave which will anger me and what size technical T-shirt I should ask for on my marathon entry slip. My dad waited patiently while I did all of this (they know him so well there that someone was heading back to the stockroom to get his preferred shoes the minute we walked in), then asked if there was anything I needed.

WHY YES, YES THERE WAS. Which brings us to me and my new boyfriend:


Not at all representative of why I am single.

I realize I look spastic here but this literally is how excited I am to finally have a new foam roller. My current foam roller (aka now my ex-boyfriend) is in storage with my other belongings post-breakup, and it is also cheap and from my physical therapist's office so it's becoming depressed in the middle from all the rolling. Foam rolling sucks and hurts like a mother but it is also, in conjunction with icing, the only thing that keeps me pain and injury-free. So I have to stop blogging now because I have to go spend some QT with my new main man. My excitement about this will end in about five minutes when I am in excruciating amounts of IT band pain thanks to not having a foam roller for the past six months. It is an abusive relationship, to be sure.

THE RUNS (haaa)

I'm 12, for serious. I wanted to upload a picture I took at the grocery store yesterday to prove this, but it would require somehow getting a photo off my BlackBerry without creating an email account and I don't know how to do that. Instead I will recreate it for you!



Apparently this is some sort of English dessert, I don't know. Obviously this is why I never received my invite to the royal wedding. That and the fact that my name is Kate and my hometown is Middleton, so there would have been some tension and confusion about who was the correct bride (I think we all know the answer to that).

Anyway, onto the running! I went for a wonderful 4.2 miles on Tuesday at night and was reminded of a bunch of things, like how much I love running in the evening, how good Wisconsin smells when the weather pretends it is spring and it's right after a rainstorm, and how good running can be when it doesn't totally suck. I would rate that run about an 8.5 out of 10, it could only be better if it had been faster (I was at a 9:10 pace) and if I had not eaten a jillion Cheez-Its right before I went.

Today, I went running with my friend Allison. Allison and I have been friends since high school, she was one of the first girls I was ever good friends with because I learned at a young age that girls are DRAMA and being friends with boys is easier. (I then went to college and joined a sorority and now my number of girlfriends equals my number of guy friends; turns out I'm equal-opportunity.) Allison and I ran cross country and track together in high school and she hated me at first for awhile because once on the track bus I announced in front of our coach that my boyfriend had told me he had seen her at a - gasp! - DRINKING PARTY that weekend. I do not really blame her for hating me for this and also, I am a moron. But she did not get in trouble and then our coach made us run 18 200's one day and we have been friends ever since.


Sadly we do not look this nice when we run, especially because Allison spends a lot of our runs swearing at me under her breath for making her go.

Als is the only person I have ever really been able to run with, I think just because we spent so many years in sync that way that it's just easy to fall back into it. I emailed her a few weeks ago and asked if she wanted to run with me sometimes while I train and thankfully she said yes! So we went today. It is a very happy thing because it was cold and rainy and gross out and if left to my own devices I am not 100 percent sure what would have happened. We did my 3.6-mile loop at about a 10-minute pace which felt REALLY slow to me, but I went when it would have been easy not to so that is what I am focusing on.

Allison is running a 5-mile race this weekend and she asked me to do it with her and I was all meh, because it is $50 and I have only been running for two weeks so I'm trying not to push it super hard. I got through about half of the online race registration process last week and then decided to just register for that fake Legend of Arlage 5K instead. BUT then I got this email today:


OH REALLY?

I am confused by this but also excited because I enjoy a bargain, and what is a better bargain than getting to run a race for free? So I'm going to head over to Best Buy tomorrow and see what happens. I think the chances of there being a packet for me are pretty slim. I also think the chances of them having some record of my unintentional shadiness and then demanding payment are kind of high, and if they do, I am going to say no and leave which makes me look INTENTIONALLY shady, but whatever. As Allison said, "You are never going to see them again anyway." Of course she just wants someone to run this thing with so probably I shouldn't listen to her. I guess we will seeeeee! If my next blog is via BlackBerry from a holding cell in the back of Best Buy, YOU WILL KNOW. Of course that depends on my being able to blog from my BlackBerry; odds of that are slim at best.

All Alone On The Internet

I hate that in my tailbone-induced blogging absence everyone up and abandoned my blog. That's fine, I didn't like you guys anyway, even though I totally still subscribe to all of you and read you every day, including several people who don't know I exist because I am a certified Blog Lurker.

o hi there, just enjoying ur blog

THAT IS JUST FINE. It does make me think of important philosophical questions, though, like "if I blog and no one reads it, is it still a blog?" Really, the absence of readers is just expanding my mind.

After bravely announcing my marathon plans to the world, aka my friends and family, most of whom were then strong-armed into donating money to my cause, I proceeded to sit around for about a week and a half. Just sitting! Pondering and thinking seriously about running, but never actually doing it. I don't really know why.

Well, partly I do. I am very good at procrastinating and also occasionally good at not following through with projects, so you can imagine the one-two punch that Training For A Marathon induced in me. Normally when I am getting back into running shape I start by going 2-3 times per week, about 20-25 minutes each time, not worrying about distance or pace, just focusing on running for roughly the same amount of time each outing. This has always worked for me. It takes me about two weeks to get back in some semblance of shape this way, and then I go from there. But THIS time, because I was Training For A Marathon, the very idea of going for a 20-minute run was killing me. I don't know if it was intimidation or just feeling like a 20-minute run was an insult to the idea of marathon training or what, but I just Could. Not. Do. It.

I am a master of excuses, of course, so there were plenty of REASONS why I couldn't go, like I had to work or it was raining or my rabbit chewed the laces on one of my running shoes and now it was like really hard to tie. All of these things are true and actually happened, it's just that none of them are a good reason to skip running. Finally on Good Friday, after procrastinating for three hours, I got fed up with myself and went out to run.

It was supposed to be a 25-minute run; it of course ended up being 3.72 miles and 34 minutes because - surprise! - once I actually got OUT there, I was all, "oh right, I like doing this." And then I got up early on Easter Sunday and went again, this time for 3.62 miles. And now I feel sort of in the zone about it, which will of course change at some point; I will be crabby about having to run and I won't want to do it but thanks to publicly announcing my marathon goal to the world (and simultaneously no one, since no one is reading, dramatic pause for my weeping), and thanks, more, to the fact that I am running now to benefit homeless animals, I know I will go and get it done.

I am a lot slower than I like right now (I am running pretty consistently at around a 9:10 pace). I am also working hard on reminding myself that I have run three times after taking three months off and maybe I should just shut up and let that improve by itself, or at least shut up and let myself get to a point where I am in shape enough to do speed and hill work. Either way I am trying to shut up.

To keep motivated and make sure I keep training I also registered for a 5K on May 14. It's called the Legend of Arlage Spring Run 5K. I have zero idea what any of that means, though apparently it is a race to fight homelessness. I looked it up on DailyMile and it didn't exist there so I had to create a page for it. Currently I am the only participant. I mean I am sure in the non-internet world there may be other people registered, but at least on DailyMile, I am totally going to win my age group. Booyah!

I would have tried harder to make this post more entertaining, like with photos or by showcasing more clearly my wittiness, but I don't think anyone will read it anyway so whatever. Also this is the one and only time I will ever whine about not having readers, I'm so not that type of blogger. Consider yourself whined warned.

tap tap

Oh hello, world of internet running blogging!

I am back, sort of, which is to say that my tailbone is healed (I think) and I am going to start running again really, any day now, as soon as I stop moping around about the fact that I still have not been able to find a job and am still living in the Great White North, and also, maybe some time soon, I will stop saying, "Since I am obviously going to start running again tomorrow, I am going to eat many delicious things tonight because after tonight I will be In Training and Eating Healthy!"

Things I have rationalized eating with this speech:
-cookie dough
-three huge breakfasts (on different days; please note how long I've dragged this out)
-Cadbury eggs (don't regret)
-two boxes of Cheez-Its (don't regret)
-two calzones with so much cheese it would choke a non-Wisconsinite (don't regret)

I mean I really don't regret any of this if we are being honest, on account of the deliciousness and also the fact that my clothes still fit, but it's just gross and stupid, especially since after all of that "O.M.G.This Is My Last Night Before I Start Training"-ness, I have, you know, not started training. Shrug. And I don't even have the cold to blame anymore because it's consistently in the 50s and 60s here, which for the Midwest is a damn heatwave.

So I did what any sane person would do when needing motivation to run: I registered for a marathon.

Source

I know. Well, I have wanted to run a marathon forever, and I put it on my list of Things To Do Before I Turn 30. And then I up and turned 29 in February and all of a sudden turning 30 is this thing that is actually going to happen to me, like WHAT, so I hopped to it and picked one and here I am having the cold sweats about it online for the world to see.

I picked the Chicago Marathon, for several reasons. If GOD FORBID I am still in the Great White come October, it will be very easy to get to Chicago, and if PLEASE LORD I am elsewhere, it is supa-easy to fly into Chicago (much easier than it is to get to my hometown, actually, and cheaper). My stepsister and her boyfriend live there so ostensibly I will have free lodging (nope, haven't run that by them yet), and it's close enough to home that my family can drive down to watch me run. And the Midwest in October is a climate and a terrain that I am familiar and comfortable with. It is the perfect plan! Except of course that registration was closed so I had to join a fundraising team. So now I am not only running for myself and my before-30 dreams, but for homeless cats and dogs in Chicago. Really, it could only be more perfect if they were homeless cats and dogs in Wisconsin, and frankly, IT IS CLOSE ENOUGH.

So! I am back! Sort of, in that I have not actually done any running YET, BUT I WILL FOR SERIOUS, and I am sure I will fall down many many times and have more hilarious stories about which to blog. In the meantime I leave you with this:

Hey. I was homeless. Now I'm not. Maybe you could donate some money about that.

See, even my sweatshirt-wearing cat can do it! My bunny rabbit, however:

I was homeless too. Now I watch you sleep.

....probably can't. But I feel pretty confident he would want you to.