First off, I’d like to apologize. What even happened to lofty goal of ‘writing daily’?!? I can’t believe today is July 1st, and I haven’t written (well, published) in two months. Tsk tsk.
I have had some cool things happen though! For starters, I actually landed a job in the economy. One that pays decently well. I held off accepting a Starbuckers job for $7 an hour because I knew I could find something better than that for full-time work. Heck, I realize the economy is a shit-hole, but seriously, I’m in Silicon Valley for crying out loud. So far so good (knocking on wood as I write…)
Another thing is that my boyfriend and I post-poned any real actions for marriage for at least awhile. All is a good thing though! So no worries there. He’s heading to Oxford in the fall, and I’ll stay here. At my lovely reception position. 
It’ll be an interesting journey, but we are both actually excited for this new growth, whatever it may bring. I’m sure I’ll have more posts about it…one already comes to mind about some realizations of myself…interesting how relationships seems to bring out areas to grow in…and also, how beautiful that growth can be!
So as you can imagine, after moving around to, on average, one major city/year and a half, I haven’t head consistent doctors. Heck, I actually think I stopped going because I was never (knocking on wood again) sick with more than the common cold (or the weird ‘common’ cold where you also lose your voice for about 5 days). So after having starting a great job with great insurance, I have begun to book appointments with doctors for general exams. Yesterday was with the eye doctor…today with an MD. The eye exam can be another entry. Today, I want to focus on one thing from my general check-up that made me run 6+ miles with hills mind you.
We were talking about thryoid stuff, as I just want to see how those levels are doing, and I was mentioning that I was quite surprised I haven’t been losing weight since I’m Miss Active all of a sudden. I have a 30 minute round-trip daily bike commute+running about three times a week+tennis or good walk/hike here and there. Granted, in the past couple of months, I probably have done all of that in a week just a handful of times because I was recovering from an injury, so I’m sure when I was speaking to him I was exaggerating slightly. But still, I felt for some reason it was ‘true’ and ran with it. Oh, and I also mentioned that I had trained for a marathon in the fall while doing bikram yoga, and dropped weight like no other. (FYI – wasn’t in it for the weight, just to actually get in shape and push myself!) Of course, his response made perfect sense: your body has plateaued. Mix it up. Cross train. Your body has to feel like it’s dying to actually change. No wonder why I came to love that feeling I had in the fall. This absolute tremendous feeling of pushing yourself so hard, that you have to eat and sleep, or lie around to recover. It went perfect with grad studies…
Earlier in the day, I emailed my Jonathan to say I was taking the day off. I’d run tomorrow to give my body a day of recovery. I ran Monday about 3.2 miles- enjoyed it while pushing and having negative splits! (Plus the 30 minute bike commute.) Tuesday – hiked The Dish (a hilly open area of land) with a friend – 3.7 mile loop + bike commute. So it was normal for me to want a day of rest. However, to be honest, my muscles seemed fine, perhaps slightly tired but really okay. After Mr. Awesome Doctor said I needed to push myself to feel change, something switched in me. I wanted to keep pushing myself for the mere fact to push myself. I had come to like that feeling, and just because I wasn’t perhaps ‘training’ for something officially, I still wanted to have it.
So, yours truly after her bike commute, ran 6.5 miles and I am very happily to report there were hills in that course. Let’s see…1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Five. I was so proud of myself. I only stopped twice – once midway through the first hill for a few seconds. I psyched myself out…and reminded myself I was passed by a little boy on the way up…so said to myself, “I still have energy to try.” So I tried. I made it up. I stopped at the little flat area for a few seconds looking a head to the steepest hill on the loop. I made mental notes of markers to look at and run to – a tree, then a bush, then a sign. Pretty soon I passed each one. Once I got to the top, I walked for about .3 miles to make sure my heart wasn’t going to pop out of my shirt, and then ran the rest of the way. Each each hill had their own mental game to play, i.e. reminding myself I actually liked hill #3, pacing myself with hill #4 and #5. And actually, there are 6 hills now that I replay everything in my mind. Hill #6 is right at the end, right when you want to be done and yet you’re so close but NOT DONE. My endurance kicked in, I opened my stride and imagined where I’d be in another couple of miles. Home. I was half way…then three-quarters, and finally over that hill.
The run down to the start of the course, and the last 1.5 miles were great. I actually thought I’d walk mile 6 as I only planned on running between 4 and 5. When I heard the course was 6+, I thought, “Well, I can still try.” I tried and accomplished it! Now my pace wasn’t the greatest…averaged about 10 minute miles, but hey…I tried on a day when I mentally had checked out before…and it was one of my greatest runs in a while!
Cheers to yours!
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