A hot soak, a glass of wine, and Ibuprofen!

I am proud of myself tonight.  I think I may have done something I've never done in my life.  I ran 5 miles with 1 - 30 second stop to drink.  I took over 58 minutes to jog that distance, which make them almost 12-minute miles; BUT ... I RAN five miles.  A 10K is only (get this...only) 6.2 miles and I have until July 9th to reach that goal.  Last December I would not have believed this was possible.  It has only taken 8 weeks, and one of those weeks I did not run.

Why is this important to me and possibly others?  It shows that if we set a goal to do something, and get the right training or education for it, and we do not give up on that goal or ourselves, we have a good chance of achieving it.  It is funny, as soon as I wrote this paragraph; I remembered that I was talking to someone about this very subject this morning on my ferry ride to Seattle.

We were talking and I mentioned that I decided to learn to play the guitar and was taking the steps needed to do so.  I said that I had tried when I was younger but wasn't successful.  She asked why and I thought for a minute, said that when I picked up the guitar, I was not successful with it right away, and did not want to take the time needed to learn how to play, so I gave up on the idea.  It is (not) so strange that when I have conversations like that, my mind will churn away in the background and let me know many of the times I have given up on something I thought I wanted, because it was too hard.

That brings me back to my concept of Someday is Today, it is a way for me to think of things I have always wanted to do but was afraid to do, or too lazy to do, or too far outside my comfort zone to try, I can write it down and let my mind and the universe work on it and make it a possibility.  Part of my Someday is Today philosophy is to think of at least one crazy thing to do each year - and to find a way to do it.  Taking up running is this year's crazy thing.

Now off to draw my bath.

Last Tuesday I was running,

I have a running Ap on my Android phone and it times a 5 min warm-up walk and beeps at 2.5 minutes and again when I reached the end of the 5 minute period. The timer is suppose to time the specific run for that day, according to the program I was training with, and let me know when I reached the 1/2 way point so I could turn around and head back.  It worked well for the warm-up walk and then I started running.

I also wear a watch that has a stopwatch and heart monitor so I usually have a backup for the time I am running.  Well on Tuesday 5/17/2011 I ran and I passed the 1 mile point on my run.  At the 1.2 mile point I turned and started running up hill.  I ran and ran and thought boy this is taking a long time.  I came upon a woman with two large dogs and when she saw me she grabbed one and was putting a leash on him.  The other dog moved out into the trail, so I just ran in place until the woman could restrain him also (it was a welcome relief to not be moving uphill)  I then looked at my watch and noticed that I hadn't started the stop watch.  "grrrr" was all I could get out of my mouth - no air for anything else.  I then checked my phone and I still had about two minutes to run in the out bound direction, so I put my mind somewhere pleasant and looked at the trail about 9' in front of me and plodded on.  and on... and on ... and on.

Finally I came to a tree that had fallen across the trail and I clambered over it continued plodding up the hill - I took the phone out of my pocket thinking "these two minutes sure are lasting forever!"  I saw that I had been running for about 18 1/2 minutes.  I couldn't believe it - I hadn't heard the phone beep to have me turn around at 12.5 minutes.  I have to admit that I was pretty proud of myself - I had never ran so far up the hill before.  I decided that I would turn around and run down hill and I would run as long as I could before stopping.  At 36 minutes I decided perhaps I should stop before I hurt myself, as I had run 11 minutes longer than the training schedule called for and I didn't want to over do it and get to sore to run on Thursday.  I knew that I had run at least 3.1 miles - the length of a 5K.  I actually ran at least 3.5 miles that day - I measured it on Saturday, but forget the exact distance.

I always wished I could play a musical instrument

I always wished I could play a musical instrument ... Something other than a radio, CD player or MP3 player. Throughout my life, I have held some pretty limiting believes that have prevented my from trying and following through on many things in my life.  I was once told by a nun at the Catholic grade school that I couldn't sing, so I took that to mean I had no musical ability; I have probably held that belief for close to 50 years.

I remember once, as a teen, I bought a guitar and since I couldn't figure it out right away, I put it down or gave it away and knew I couldn't play.  I have decided that I would learn to play a guitar and so today I bought a beginners package and will put in time to learn how to play it.

I have ignored this blog for awhile....

and it is time I got back to it.  New dreams and goals are always available to me, and it is only right that I post them somewhere. 

The latest goal, or "crazy" thing for me in 2011 is training to run a 10K race. The Dirty Dash, you can watch a video at http://www.thedirtydash.com/ .

My training started not because of the 10K, but because a friend was considering starting a 5K race in Port Ludlow; in order to encourage her, I told her if she was successful, I would enter the race.  This was a stretch for me, as I had tried running in December of 2010, and I couldn't run 2 tenths of a mile, and I gave up.

Before I started training, my friend told me that she had entered a 10K race that it was going to be in the mud, she laughed and talked about how much fun it would be.  I smiled and said "Have fun."  A few weeks later after I had started training, she showed me a video of the race and I thought it would be a crazy fun thing to do.  I am now on her team, 5 women and two men.  I am the oldest by 6 years and probably the least experienced runner.  I am training and training hard - I have two goals.  1. To have fun and finish the race and 2. To not be the reason our team finishes last.

I am on my way to achieving those goals.