You've got to tri

So turns out I didn't go out with my friends last night. The one has been incredibly sick now for the past week. Poor thing. So I spent my evening sitting outside on the deck, eating dinner and listening to Randi's Vinyl Tap. I love that man. Anyway, that's not why I'm here today. I'm here to make a confession. I am a masochist. It's Sunday morning and instead of sleeping in like any normal human being might, I was up at six this morning. Granted, I don't sleep in anymore anyway what with Rosamae and all, but I usually get up at seven. Not anymore though. I'm up at six so I can get dressed, get Rosamae fed and relieved, get everything ready so that at 7, when Mom comes, I'm totally prepared. You see, Mom somehow talked me into running a triathlon with her on June 22 in Smith's Falls. Don't ask me what made me think this was a good idea, but I said I would do it for her, and I figured getting in shape and having a goal wasn't a bad thing. Now, I'm the first person to admit that I'm rather over weight. This makes exercise harder for me than it would be for those people who are a good weight, but dammit I'm still doing it.

So I started learning to run two Sundays ago. We had a pattern. We would go for 30 minutes, run for 30 seconds and walk for 4.5 minutes six times. Thirty second runs, I thought. That's nothing. I can totally do that. So I ran, as fast as I could for thirty seconds. What was I thinking? Pretty much anyone can run thirty seconds, no problem. That was my thought process. I was in for a surprise. After about fifteen seconds, I'd be hyperventilating. Every time I inhaled, it was like being back in the hospital. I couldn't get enough air into my lungs and it hurt like hell. But I kept going and finished. I was determined. So I ran that week for one minute intervals. I didn't slow down. I thought, in a few days, I'll be able to do this. By Friday of that week, I was about ready to die. After every run, it was all I could do to keep myself from crying my eyes out. I was in unbelievable pain. I felt fat, and I couldn't understand why this was not getting any easier. And then Saturday came. Friday had been raining. Saturday, it was thinking about raining but it hadn't started yet when we came out to run. I tried to keep my mind off the act of running. I thought about my favourite things. I remembered Peter Pan telling Wendy to think happy thoughts if she wanted to learn how to fly. So I was thinking happy thoughts. It wasn't helping. OK, hthat's not entirely true. For the first three jogs it sort of worked. But by number four, I was ready to die again. I couldn't figure out why Mom's footfalls didn't match mine. I thought it was because she wasn't running at a consistent speed, and I was getting mad. But she told me that it was, in fact, me who wasn't running consistently. "You're trying too hard. You're running too fast. You have to slow down, and once you have better endurance, then you can think about increasing your speed", she told me. So on the last run that morning, I finally listened to her rhythm and followed it, and I was fine! All of a sudden, this didn't seem so horrible anymore!

I took Sunday off, and started out fresh on Monday morning. I ran with my chiropractor Alana. She is one hell of a good coach. Where Mom and I normally fight, and Mom's version of criticism is a hundred percent negative a lot of the time, Alana stays positive. So I started again, running at the new, slower speed. It was great. Sure it still was tiresome, but it's supposed to hurt a bit, and it's supposed to be a challenge. The difference this time was it was a challenge that I really thought I could face now. By this time, we were running 2 minutes and walking 3. This was a huge improvement, and those 2 minutes flew by each time. I was amazed at how fast they went actually. Alana told me at the end that I was smiling the whole time. Yay for the happy thoughts, also slowing down to a comfortable pace and not overdoing it. I was feeling so coonfident that day. Wednesday was the same, although on Wednesday I was really trying to learn how to breathe better. I'm not taking in enough oxygen which is why I'm out of breath. I guess it's a natural reaction for our bodies to think that we're going into panic mode when we start exercising, so we don't breathe deep enough and it's hard to control. But I'm learning, slowly. Mom came home on Friday, but there is now something wrong with her knees and hips, and it's bad enough that she's going to have to pay a visit to an orthopedic surgeon. So I need a running partner now. She will do the swim and the bike portion of the triathlon with me, and my o and m instructor said she'd run with me. For now though I'm still going to train with Alana whenever I can. I didn't run today, we had to do a fast walk because if we had tried to run, Mom would have passed out due to the pain, and that would have been a problem.

Also, this morning, Dad and I busted out the old tandom bike for the first time in a long, long time. Biking is not half as hard, unless you count how soar your ass is by the end, but I can live with that.
It's amazing how different all my muscles feel after only two weeks of running. I'm finding that I'm more motivated to do this now. I feel good at the end of the runs instead of terrible, and I think I'll be able to do this! Happy 4/20 everyone. If you need me, I'm somewhere, being high on self confidence, unexplainable happiness, and endorphins.