Its The Eye of The Tiger, It's the Thrill of the Fight

Saturday morning was my 2nd meeting with my Walk to Run club. And the whole morning was just a comedy of error upon error that one can only look back and laugh. This previous week, school wise has been a killer. Taking the summer off was a big mistake, because I am finding it extraordinarily difficult to get back into the swing of things and refocus my brain on school. I find that every time I go to open one of my books (and seriously, why did I decide to take three really brainiac courses in one semester... I totally should have taken at least ONE bird course.. damn that over-achiever in me) I read three pages, my eyes start to cross, and I decide that Project Runway is a much more interesting endeavor, and shut my books, only to start feeling guilty around nine o'clock and start working again. Or, I come home, exhausted from work, brain not wanting to cooperate, decide that having some coffee will give me focus, and then I'm amped on coffee until midnight or one in the morning.

I promise, this crazy tangent will find it's home soon. So Friday at work, I'm thinking "thank God its Friday and I can sleep in tomorrow"...only to have that dream crushed by the realization that I in fact can NOT sleep in on Saturday because -sound the trumpets- I have RUNNING club on Saturday morning. Cover me in honey and call me sweetness, JUST what I want to do is wake up with the non-existent crows and beat my legs and feet into a bloody pulp trying to keep up with the bouncy gazelles.

Friday night, I drift off, cursing the fact that I had to set my alarm to get up earlier than I would on a work day, so that I can arrive bright and early to running club. (We use the local college's track on Saturday mornings, hence the early start)

At five in the morning, I am ripped from blissful slumber, not by Vivaldi's Spring (I love that your IPOD can act as an alarm clock) but by an incessant high pitched bleep coming from a direction that is no where near my alarm clock. My husband and I play a half roused game of "who's on first" discussing where the beeping is coming from, and realize that it is HIS alarm clock that has violated our auditory senses. A (read:ten) slap to the alarm clock finally launches our bedroom back into silence, and I once again attempt to fall back into slumber. At 5:30, just as I am on the precipice of sleep, his normal alarm clock goes off (sleeping bear must have activated that one his half awake paw went to silence the previous). Fully awake now, and totally pissed off, I gave up on trying to sleep since I had to be up in thirty minutes anyway.

As I sat there, stewing in the fact that while HE would be able to remain in bed as long as he wanted (and sidebar:he was still sleeping when I came home) I would be outside working my tail off. That's when I heard it. At first, I though, no... can't be, I must be imagining it. Maybe there are chestnuts falling on my roof .. which lead me to wonder if in fact any of the trees in the surrounding yards are, in fact, chestnuts... and if they actually sounded like raindrops when they fell on said roof.

But, just maybe, I dared to hope, they cancel running club if it's raining. Suddenly full of energy provided by this hope, I shot out of bed and ran (I love to use that word, but we all should know by now that clearly, I never actually "run") to my cell phone to see if just maybe I had a voicemail from my coach telling me that run club was cancelled. No. Such. Luck.

Annoyed, I finished dressing, and headed to the college. At least it's really just a mist... I told myself as I made my way to the football field (which is surrounded by the track).

The gazelles had already assembled, drinking their Starbucks, chatting amicably with one another, clearly not even phased by the mist - turned- drizzle. Which only made their hair shinier and gave their skin a dewy refreshed look. Figures those gazelles would look good even fresh out of bed at quarter to seven in the morning.

Then, as if being the frumpy huffy puffer, barely awake with puffy eyes and messy hair standing next to the gazelles wasn't bad enough, the clouds open and God laughed at me until he cried...big, fat, cold raindrops.

And, we ran, ala Rocky, in the pouring rain. Thankfully, the "running" portion is still intermittent, but I think the fact that we mainly walked in the pouring rain was perhaps worse than had we run in it, because it just prolonged the suffering.

I did however, learn not to be afraid of running in the rain. As the footing along the track was fairly solid, even in the rain ( I had been afraid I would slip and hurt myself). And, running on a smooth track is SO much easier than running the path through the downtown area that we do on Tuesdays. I was virtually pain free (as in pain in my heel, Achilles and knee) the pain from being out of shape, I fear has taken up a permanent residence with me. The out-of-shape pain, is going to be like that annoying cousin that stayed "just for a bit, until I get back on my feet" and still hasn't left four months later.

We've also been assigned core workouts and ab workouts. ( better known as torture and water-boarding in huffy puffy slang). Today, thankfully was a rest day. Tomorrow, will be a water boarding day coupled with twenty minutes of walk/run. And, Tuesday will once again, be time to run with the gazelles.

There's no where to go but up, from here!

~Millie