Sunday, June 5, 2011

Reheating a Tater


I have been a neglectful tater. Not only have I not been updating this blog, but I have been slacking off fitness wise. I have an excuse. I bought a house. Not a house I love, but one that makes sense and has everything that we wanted. It was a mad, frantic search and finally I’m here.
The purpose of this blog was to keep me writing and to motivate/ keep me accountable to get healthier and in shape. Through the stress of the house buying and the upcoming move and I was just in wedding, I did not deal with my stress in a healthy way. No running. Slacking on the push-ups for the #2011pushupchallenge. No yoga. Mostly, I just frantically searched for owner financed homes on har.com and consoled myself with Ben & Jerry’s.
Whenever my mom has one of her pity parties as she calls them, she sees a blind person.  To her, this is God’s smack to the back of the head (NCIS Gibbs’ style) for her to stop feeling sorry for herself, be thankful for what she has, and keep on trucking. Well, hopefully God doesn’t say keep on trucking, but you get the idea.  It sounds crazy, but several people, myself included, have seen this happen. 
That seems like a strange little story to put in there, but I have gotten my own blind person/smack to the back of the head recently. I was stressed and unmotivated to the point of not exactly giving up, but not putting forth any effort either.  In my head, I was going through the speech a coach gives their team when they’re down by 20 with a minute left in the fourth of their playoff game. You had a good run, let’s finish this game with your heads held high.
Perhaps I spent too much time around coaches in my formative years.
I was just entertaining those thoughts when fate smacked me.  It came in  a few different forms.
1.                    Annie and Becca, the evil genius minds behind the #2011pushupchallenge, decided to switch things up a bit on the challenge. As we get further along on reps, a few people are needing an extra day of rest. Enter a few tweets/Facebook messages and I have been recruited to be the leader of the third team. What does this mean? It means no more slacking on sculpting my guns (side note: with crazy real estate happenings this week, I did slack, but I’ll be back on the wagon now that I am moved from the hotel to the house),
2.                    The smack for this one happened in a series of light smacks from several different sources.  I keep slacking on running.  I had originally planned to run a 5K at the end of April in Fredericksburg.  When I figured out that I could not afford a weekend jaunt to Fredericksburg, my training fell to the wayside. I had been doing three or four runs a week increasing my distance and my time spent running each time (I utilize a walk/run method). I hadn’t built up a lot of distance but I was going a little over two miles which would have put me on track for completing a 5K.  My runs dwindled when my goal disappeared. In the back of my mind though, I remembered the Rock N Roll Half Marathon in Vegas. I believe Annie was the one who brought it to my attention first then I looked at the website- stripatnight.com.  Running the strip at night! How fun, but it seemed out of reach- physically and financially. Once the 5K didn’t happen it seemed even less likely. Then all of a sudden the RNR half seemed more prominent. I kept seeing great deals for Vegas airfare (it is way cheaper flying from Houston). We talked about it at work; my manager has run several half marathons and when he found out it was at night in December, he was intrigued.  Then my cousin Missy started running again. She had to take a time out earlier this year after a surgical procedure and now she’s back and I see her updates on Twitter and Facebook. We talked this last weekend and once again the Vegas Half popped up which just so happens to be on her birthday.  She suggested we could do it economically if we split the hotel room. The half takes place in 6 months less a day; I know I’ll need to throw a 5K in the mix somewhere but this is my new goal.  So running tomorrow (or today as I’m typing this on a Saturday night (try not to be jealous) and will post this when I can find some place with free Wi-Fi).
3.                    As I had mentioned initially, this blog was about my being more healthy and getting into better shape, but it is also about my writing.  I started slacking on keeping up with the blog back before I had a decent excuse. Then my head smack came in a rather delightful, non-smack like way. SpokenFor gave me a great comment that was incredibly encouraging.  It was just what I needed to get going again.
So in lieu of getting a concussion from the smacks to the head, I have decided to surrender.  I tried to be lazy, but apparently there are other plans and I am back on the way to being a hot potato (considering that we’ve already reached 100 degrees twice, I do mean that).