Eddie Izzard just ran about 1000 miles. I’m a little disappointed he did do it in drag, but Eddie Izzard is awesome no matter what he’s wearing.
I am a lazy beast. This has been well-documented over the years, but lately… things have been changing. Freddie is trying to get me to run a half-marathon with him in April. I’m not quite sure that will happen, but I think I’m going to try.
How much am I running now, do you ask? NONE. At this present moment, there is NO TIME. None. The kid? Stopped napping in the afternoons, which were previously my treadmill hours. The puppy? IS INSANE. I spend A LOT of time refereeing between them. The good news is that having the puppy has killed any crazy desire to have another kid. I think we can officially say that We Are Not Doing That. Of course, we were adamantly against having the first one until we decided to maybe see what might happen if we didn’t prevent it, and look what happened.
Anyway. It can be done, I think, this half-marathon thing. I will have to figure out how to MAKE time, especially if Freddie is running, too. There are not enough hours in the day. I do have a lot of ‘free’ time, but I’m always and forever accompanied by either the human kid or the canine kid, neither of whom are runners.
Hm.
Yes, I’m talking myself into it.
I have the gear. I have shoes. I have a vague, not-quite-fully-formed desire to get out there and go. That’s enough, right?
Last week, Freddie and I participated in the 1st annual John Basilone Fun Run, which is part of the John Basilone weekend held in our town. It used to be just a day with a parade and some ceremonial stuff by his statue, but the Chamber of Commerce looks to expand it and make a whole weekend festival thing out of it, which is good. Our town is teeny and there’s not a whole lot going on here, so to have something like this is a good thing. His story is pretty amazing.
With luck and the support of the town, maybe 20 years from now Freddie and I will still be running it and we’ll be able to say that we have done it every year.
But that’s the thing – I want to run it, not walk it with my mentally-unstable puppy. As she gets bigger, she will want to run more instead of ‘run run run sniff sniff oh a LEAF I need to eat that run run tangle up the leash in mom’s legs ooh, what’s that my tail [chomp] OW’ so that will work itself out, but I need to work myself out.
I used to run a lot. All summer. I so wish I had pictures of the barrels at Holiday Sands, but that was back in the day when we all had digital cameras and cell phones with cameras and all that. There are so few pictures of those summers to go with my memories and it bums me out. But. Those barrels were my home. You could get four (sometimes five) people up there, changing the balance and controlling the speed… it was perfect interval training for a runner. Start out slow, build up speed gradually until you’re sprinting and everyone falls into the water. You had to keep good posture so you didn’t tip over the front (which I did a couple of times and I still have scars, oops). I can’t think of a better way to learn good running form. Elbows in, short strides, quick turnover… I miss those things.
So I’m keeping that in mind as I start to run again. Short strides. Quick turnover. Elbows in. Stand tall. Take walk breaks. The major difference between then and now (besides the seventeen years in between), is my boob situation. I used to be fairly flat-chested, which wasn’t the greatest thing ever for a teenage girl, but now? I would give ANYTHING to have my almost-B-cup boobs back instead of the DD knockers I currently sport, thanks to my lovely daughter. Once I get that under control, I think it will all get easier.
I want to run.
I need to run.
I’m gonna run.