runningfattyrunningfree

[runningfattyrunningfree]

Sometimes, you need help.

I finished Couchto5k week 3! And it was a shitshow. I was very impressed with myself for sticking to the running on the treadmill and making myself leave the couch on Friday afternoon to log my workout. Was feeling sick Sunday morning but by Sunday afternoon, I’d recovered and was ready to take on the world...!

And I’d lost a quarter mile somewhere. I jogged a lot, but somewhere that quarter mile I’d found in the first two weeks of logging my workouts on GPS went missing. Did my phone re-calibrate? Was I insane? Is there some app witchcraft that zapped me? 

I’m guessing it’s more that when you go from running 1:30 intervals to jogging 3 minutes at a stretch, the duration knocks you out of that high-powered sprint-like speed. Or maybe since I was aware I’d be jogging for slightly longer stretches, I didn’t push the intensity like I had before. I am going to do my best this week to let the throttle out and see what I can accomplish. I don’t know the intervals for week 4, so the app may be all “Run, K, run, keep running!” and everything may work itself out. It’s important not to beat yourself up too much. If you figure out how to do this, let me know. I am a champion self-criticizer. (No I’m not, I’m terrible at it, and everything else I try. - j/k, sort of.) 

So workouts are going okay. I have a challenge in that work is getting busy. We do a lot of ramp-up to the busy season (Christmas, Valentine’s) so the bulk of my holiday work is just arriving now. And we lost a crap performer at work, so even though the work was crap, we’re splitting it up and covering it, too. 

The good news: I hired a housecleaner. (Did I say that in my monster post?) She’s (plus helper, I think?) coming over this afternoon for a deep clean. The weird part is that since the cleaners are coming, this has really motivated me and my husband to clear some stuff away. Next I need to hire a contractor to fix a hole in our drywall. This hole has seriously been there since I started dating my husband (he bought the house before I came into the picture), and he’s just never gotten it fixed, ever. It’s funny how something can just become a part of your landscape, just another contributor to your level of ‘ugh’ and after a while you don’t feel like you can do anything about it. It’s like the inertia of not doing anything becomes too great to escape. You need a shock to change shit sometimes. And maybe the help of a housecleaner and a couple of contractors.

Maximum effort.

[runningfattyrunningfree]

Running on a treadmill?

So yeah, last post was longest post ever. Here is a shorter one! 

I plan my running around the best days of the week for me: Wednesday, when my schedule is more flexible; Friday, when I get off work a little early; and Sunday, when it’s a lazy morning and the usual crowd on the trail/sidewalk are mostly at church. (Me? I probably should be at church, too.) 

But alas, thunderstorm! A huge massive cell rumbled through. But I’ve been really committed to running again and I want to stay that way. So in spite of being tempted to put off Week3Day1, I put on my sneakers and got on my treadmill. I’m amazed it wasn’t covered in dust. It’s squeaky and next to a shared wall so that’s made me leery of jogging on it (I can’t stand being rude to people, or the idea that people who’ve been working all day just got home and have to listen to the squeaky boom-boom-boom of me jogging indoors). 

BUT the storm was already in full swing, and there is always a good reason to not do the thing you should be doing. So treadmill it was.

AND DAMN, I’M SLOW. By GPS, out there in my neighborhood, I’m covering ground. By my treadmill’s estimation? I barely moved. I was down a good .4 miles from where I’d been out jogging on the sidewalk. Maybe my treadmill is harsh? Maybe I’m cheating a bit outdoors, and every second I lose walk/jogging up a hill I gain back powering down it, but the treadmill doesn’t offer that option.

MAYBE THIS IS ALL OKAY, THOUGH. I did it. I mean? I did run. Sometimes runs are shitty. Sometimes you give up halfway through and shake your head and question everything the book ‘Born to Run’ had to say and think ‘this is why we’re no longer persistence hunters, Christopher McDougall, because it’s BULLSHIT.’ 

Except it’s not. Running makes me a better person. And if something comes easy, it doesn’t feel as amazing as when you finally do it. 

[runningfattyrunningfree]

I hatch my feelings like an egg.

It’s really not a quality I love about myself. Other people can say, ‘Whoa, I feel kind of hurt’ right there in the moment. I feel the hurt, stuff down to the hurt, mash it into a ball with other hurts, and then rock back and forth on it until it cracks open and a flood of emotional yolk vomits out. 

It’s not that I realize always that I’m doing it, or that I hold onto everything. There are plenty of hurts where I take them apart in my brain, realize the other person was having a bad day, forgive it, and I absolutely forget them. The majority of them, I’d say. 

But with the weather changing, my commute lengthening (everybody loves our city and is moving here, more cars=more traffic, and my commute was already kind of insane), and me staring down the barrel of long, dark winter drives from home to work, plus me trying desperately to fight back the mess in our house (HOW DO TWO ADULTS AND A CAT MAKE THIS MUCH MESS?!), and keep up with running (spoiler alert: I totally am, this is not one of those ‘look I tried for a week lol’ blogs... not saying I’ve never made one of those, but I’m headed successfully into Couch to 5k week 3, y’all), I just had an absolute meltdown of ‘This isn’t fair!’ 

When I met my husband, he owned a house. It’s a nice house. Years ago when I was scraping up money to rent a subsidized apartment, I would’ve dreamed of living in something so nice. But it’s kind of small if you want a treadmill and like to collect lots of things. But he owned it, I had a pretty plain apartment, the drive from the house to my work wasn’t impossible (think an hour each way), and after a year or two it seemed great to move in, drive to work, and stop having to pack a bag, pay a separate rent, and be away from all my stuff every weekend. (And for the record, he drove up to see me at my place all the time before that.) We got married, he’s taught me things about love and life that I never would’ve thought possible. He’s great. 

But back then, we agreed we’d eventually find another place closer to my work. Eventually. And I’ve been making the drive for years now. And I’ve pared down my stuff to better fit into the crowded house. And he’s not so great at letting things go. He loves to collect and catalog. Hundreds of years ago he might’ve been one of those dark ages monks that made lists of seeds and things. (Was that even a thing? I feel like it was.) But we’ve been working on it, and he’s been listening to me and I can tell he’s really trying to think about that sort of thing lately. It’s been hard. We’ve had those scenarios where I’m like ‘Hey, these two lamps, we don’t use ‘em, let’s get rid of them’ and he’s all ‘what, two lamps? Let’s put them right here, they’re perfect!’ So it’s been tough. He has always been very good about handling his own laundry and for taste reasons (he eats nuclear spice and doesn’t love lots of veggies) we mostly do our own cooking. He’s great with dishes, better than me. But I do most of the rest of the chores like dusting, vacuuming, sweeping/mopping. And it’s all gotten away from me. And it also doesn’t feel fair that I should have to handle it alone, or become the chore manager, especially when he does not think the house is dirty. (It’s not dirty because I occasionally clean it.)

God, this has gotten long. Anyway, work is stressful, the traffic is stressful, and I’m trying to deal with getting in some cleaners/pest control/contractors/etc. in to help me with this house that I’ve never felt was fully mine. I mean, it’s my home, it’s a nice home, but the poor thing has always been to me ‘the place we are living until we move.’ And it was like I just felt crushed, like we were never going to move, I’d be stuck with the drive and all the work forever, help me, I need help, I want to go, I am fucking TIRED.

Aaaand I couldn’t come home and be all, “Hey, look, I know you’re going through a lot too, but I’m feeling like my dreams are over and I got lied to, so Eventually can no longer be a thing, kay?” Because I need to shove it all down, make my egg, and have a sleepless night secret-crying about it first before it hatches. 

Last night, it hatched. And because I’m very good at ruminating and dismissing smaller stuff, it was a big old GRRRRAHHHH of surprise weeping and ugly crying. And because he’s my actually lovely husband who once came and rescued me after he worked a 12-hour shift on his birthday when I was afraid my car would run out of gas (power outage=no gas anywhere, long story) because he freaking loves me and is actually on my side, he held me and was all like, ‘Okay, I will help, let’s do this thing. We can get a POD, find an apartment.’ He was ready to go now. I’d meant that we needed to not keep this house thing in the potential realm, I’d been thinking we could fix up our stuff and move in the spring/summer and felt so much better once I’d gotten it all out, but if I said I was hurting, he’s there. Which is why he’s my husband and he’s great and I love him.

This is really long and it’s not about motivation or jogging. I do recognize that my life is so first world problems right now. We don’t have to worry about our jobs or keeping the lights on. We’re insanely blessed. And this house that I commute to is attached to a nice area where I can do my jogging, and I only have to worry about that one dude who’s walking the three pit bulls. (I’m sure they’re nice pitties, but I am not going to run up and find out - plus he takes up the whole dang sidewalk and more). 

I start Week 3 when I get off work tonight. I’ve been using the Couchto5k app (I keep typing it ‘Coughto5k’, which could be a good running app for people giving up smoking) and Runicorn is the one ordering me to jog/walk. My neighborhood has lots of slopes in it, and so sometimes I find myself extra-motivated to walk when the hills hit so I can zoom down the other side. I do realize eventually I will be running the whole thing, but I try not to think about that too much. 

[runningfattyrunningfree]

Day the second

Couch to 5k week one, day two down. This is totally confidence-building and not soul-destroying because I have formerly run and know how to run. I remember what it was like to just walk on the treadmill for weeks until I finally had the confidence to tick the speed up into a shuffle-jog, and that was still hard. 

But I’m almost 50 pounds lighter today than I was at that point in my life, and now I know I can run (a little). This is psychological and physical easy-mode, as far as exercise goes. People who’ve never jogged before might have a really tough time with couchto5k. If I’d tried it back then, I would’ve burnt out hard. I am stopping myself from being too smug by reminding myself that comparatively I am still oh so slow and it’s going to get much, much tougher in the coming weeks. And when winter arrives? Hahaha, self, the joke is all on you. 

They do make a couchto10k. I wonder if there is a couchtohalfmarathon? A couchtomarathon? Couchtoultrarun? 

The scale is up (Grooves, Cheezit Grooves, you jerks, totally your fault and not mine for overeating, oh wait), but I had a really good time doing the workout and I’m going to keep going. The walk/run cuing means I don’t need to stare at a watch, and I’m not guesstimating at distances. 

Next run is Sunday!

[runningfattyrunningfree]

WINNING!

I’m wondering if I should just shout this whenever I notice me being critical of myself. Yes, Charlie Sheen used it to justify coke and hookers, but maybe it’ll make me feel better about not having shaved my legs for a week. 

[runningfattyrunningfree]

Smacked in the face by endorphins

So I started this blog in part to help motivate me to get back out there. I used to be a much more regular jogger. Then I had a crazy health issue (long story made short: my skin attacked me, for a while things swung from ‘Shit, this is serious, do I have fucking cancer?!’ to ‘It’s really annoying and will impact your life, but is harmless.’ Which is super stressful and I developed weird coping skills like doing my entire bathroom routine in the dark. I still do most of my bathroom routine in dimmed light, but I like to think that’s because I’m vain and enjoy looking shadowy and mysterious. I failed to make this short) and quit and worried for about four months. But I no longer think I’m going to die from it. And frankly if I am and all the docs have missed something, I should probably be in good shape for a fight, no? Exactly.

So back on the horse. Once more into the breach. Put on your fucking running shoes. And I did! But I did not do 3 miles as promised. Instead, I downloaded Couchto5k and let that tell me to walk and run for about 2.15 miles. It was nice, and helped me turn my brain off during, which is one of the reasons I love running. 

I’d been having a pretty shit morning. Things between me and the hubs are pretty good, but they haven’t been as good as they have been. He’s on some new meds and is about to go through a really stressful time at work, and sometimes it seems like we’re a million miles away from each other. I spent a lot of the morning having one of those imaginary fights you do (okay, maybe you don’t, but I have imaginary fights and star interviews and fight assassins all the time in my head) with him. Then I ran and it’s like, oh wait, I love the crap out of him, I’m not the worst no-fun wife ever, IT’S ALL GOING TO BE OKAY. 

And it will. 

I should probably be using more hashtags, but this blog is going to be all over the place probably. 

[runningfattyrunningfree]

95% of productivity books

Boil down to ‘hey, just do it.’ 

I returned Dietland to Audible. (I might grab something else body-positive - I have already listened to and really enjoyed Lindy West’s ‘Shrill’, for anyone ready to tell me not liking Dietland means I am a self-hating fat person or hate fat people. Shrill was great. And since she read it herself, she was able to really convey lots of emotion and vulnerability - her book’s message is basically ‘Hey, I’m, like, a person who shouldn’t be treated like crap because of my body’ which is just so fucking nice and wonderful. Some authors who read their own books are hard to listen to -- thinking of you, Sarah Vowell -- but she was great.) 

So I needed a new book, still do, but had no time to search for one. So I scrolled down and picked ‘Eat That Frog’ out of my sale-purchased self-help book pile. It’s only 2 1/2 hours long, which is a nice amuse bouche length for an audiobook. Audiobooks are fantastic for me because I have a long commute and like to jog, and they make me feel so entertained and/or productive. I resisted an audible subscription for a long time in favor of podcasts purely because of the cost factor, but now that I’ve given in I love me some audiobooks. Take all my money, please Audible! 

I love self-help and productivity books. They are all the same, like all diets are the same, with different window dressing around ‘just do it’ and ‘burn more calories than you take in’. But I do find them motivating. This one is short, easy to listen to, and is full of encouragement to ‘Eat That Frog.’ 

From the author’s site:  “Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worse things that is going to happen to you all day long. Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it.” 

In other words, just do it. Start with your worst, hairiest, goblin-iest task and the rest of your day will be easier. Which sounds sensible and simple, so I’m going to try it.

“A self-development book that seems like a long PowerPoint presentation.” - A GoodReads reviewer on ‘Eat That Frog’. 

Tomorrow, I aim for three miles. 

[runningfattyrunningfree]

Fatty book club

So I’m reading Dietland. 

And I am really conflicted. I have a lot in common with the protagonist. Which is highly sad to admit because she is a highly sad fucking person. I recognize a lot of myself in her experiences with diet culture, calorie counting, feeling ashamed and separate. I really wanted to like Plum. 

I don’t.

There are so many places where I’m like “okay, wow, time to turn left!” and the heroine turns right. Or rather is turned right, because she’s a pretty passive character. It’s kind of a shame because I can fully get behind anger at so much of society’s ridiculous body standards and how not helpful self-hatred is, how cruel, harsh, and shallow some people can be. On all that, yeah, I’m with it. 

But in the book’s view it seems like every man is (overtly or covertly) a slavering, drooling beast wielding his penis as a weapon. And all pornography is hideous and is only about the violent objectification and destruction of women. And all women who are part of the establishment are collaborators and deserve to be destroyed, too. 

The sex stuff. The sex stuff is really giving me a lot of pause.

It seems like eating is taking the place of orgasm in at least one scene, but not in a good way. There are plenty of books where food = porn (I’m thinking of you, Bill Buford’s Heat) and the author’s descriptions of pasta/sauce/dessert/whatever hit you so viscerally, you might as well be using a vibrator. Except you’re also hungry. There is a weird lack of any kind of good or neutral sex in the book. The only sex it contains is violation. 

Maybe there is a sex scene later on in the book? Maybe I’m wrong, and the end is full of orgasmicness and wonder at the possibilities our bodies contain. But I don’t think the book is going there. So maybe I should put it down and pretend in my head that it turns left. That Plum wishes the ladies of the house well, drives away, and decides to pursue her writing in a cabin in the woods. Maybe she could meet a lumberjack or lumberjackess and she could eat rich food but discover the joys of chopping wood, feel the way the soft flesh of her arms curves differently over muscle. And have real orgasms plus the kind you get from delicious food.

I don’t know. There are some elements of the book that I like. You should celebrate your body and all it can do for you. That includes being physically in your body. That includes hugs, kisses, and being wobbly at your first yoga class. Walking too far, getting blisters. Having a day where you get so much sun, you feel like lolling around and napping like a big sea lion. Do instead of being done to. 

So I’m battling with myself whether to keep going or to pack it in. Ugh. It’s so much easier when you don’t like a book from the beginning. When you’re this far in, you feel like you might as well keep going so you can work up a serious head of steam about it. 

[runningfattyrunningfree]

Me: Wow, those original Trek communicators were so big!

Husband: Yeah, we’ve come a long way since then. 

...But have we, though?

[runningfattyrunningfree]

One bender later

The older you get, the more you know about yourself. I know that if I buy the rippled potato chips and the french onion dip (holy shit the best ever) I will eat it and dissolve into a puddle of satisfied salty-fattyness. Then I will have about half the dip left and do it all over again. I feel like shit the next day. I feel sluggish and gross, like I’m internally overdue for a shower. AND I STILL EAT THE REST OF THE DIP. 

Yeah, so that was this weekend. Add in cookies and greek food (which is healthier than lots of cuisine, but let’s face it - pack in the sauce and pair it with fries, I might as well have gotten a burger - lettuce doesn’t fucking cancel things out) and booze, and I’m up three whole pounds.

But I did go out for 3.5 miles down at the park. There’s a lovely trail that starts with dodging soccer kids and ends up in a relatively lovely and solitary lake area. I only ran about half before I got a stitch up near my hip. I’ve been walking a lot but not running very much lately, which I’d like to fix. Especially now that Fall has risen back up to beat back the summer. It feels like we barely had a summer to me. 

I ended the weekend walking another couple of miles and thinking about life and what I want out of it. I would like to be a running person. I would like to feel content and productive. I would love to be one of those people who triumphantly says “I did it! Here’s how:” and I’ll have arrived and never have to think about it again. But this whole working out and dieting thing is a journey, not a destination. Some people seem to intuitively understand how to be healthy and take care of themselves. The rest of us sometimes lose control of our inner sheepdog and let her eat all the dip. And then some more. 

You gotta keep your foot on the accelerator. 

[runningfattyrunningfree]

A new week, a new start

This weekend was an orgy of food. People are great at fooling themselves. I am personally amazing at going to the store, buying a few ‘treats’ and then convincing myself that I have good reason to eat all of them at once. (My reason this time? I’m finally cleaning the house! It really needed it. I think I found dust from the previous owners. We’ve lived here for years.) 

So I cleaned. And I ate. All weekend long. It’s always easier to excuse eating junk when you’re under stress, or are doing something else you don’t want to do, or have worked out a lot. A reward, yay! And when you’ve been working and you’ve smelled of bleach and cleaner and bug spray (how did that giant spider even get in here?!), it’s easy to just think what the hell and go for it. So I ended up eating a bunch of junk that, when I was at the grocery store, I probably told myself I’d easily stretch out over the course of at least a week. 

Regardless, it’s a brand new week. I’m going to try and avoid the candy bowl (full disclosure: I’ve already had two caramels THEY’RE DELICIOUS). And I went to my workplace’s sponsored yoga class. Our instructor, Es, is tiny and bendy and takes lots of breaks from tough vinyasas or flows (I still haven’t memorized my Warriors 1, 2, and 3 - I am a beginner) to instruct us about things like making sure our shoulders are pulled back. A friend who takes the class with me thinks she talks too much and should just get on with the yoga. But Es has hair like Merida from Brave and repeatedly tells us how she knows we’re all so strong and can do it. And after a few weeks I can kind of touch my toes? So I’m a little in love with it.

I did get invited out to dinner with my husband and a few of his work friends. I really like most of them, but it’s at a Mexican restaurant. Avoiding shoving all the chips in my face at once is always hard, but imma do my best. 

Next run: Wednesday.  

[runningfattyrunningfree]

It doesn’t matter how fast you go

Just that you go. Your race is only against yourself.