I’m starting to come to grips with the idea that long distance running probably isn’t my true idea of fun.  ( not that I’ve really even experienced any true long distances. ) Now don’t read into this as I’ve given up my quest to become a runner….but as of lately when I’ve come to dread my runs, I’ve fallen back into the old trap of it’s ” all or nothing”.  If I can’t stay consistent ….then screw everything and it’s a free for all for Holly!! WOO HOO!  Free for Alls = no exercise and eat what you want!

As I was out this weekend enjoying the long holiday golfing, biking, hiking…that I don’t have to focus on being marathon woman, but more so focus on just getting this ass MOVING! My true journey is getting healthy and fit…not to qualify for Boston.

Kerri and I on our trail ride...

Denise …thank you for missing me!…and getting my lazy butt here to post!  My running has been going good.  I have been doing all of my runs throughout the week and though they are hard…they are never as hard as they are on Tuesday nights at Fight Club. Why? Who the hell knows…but that’s the way it is.  Last night at Fight Club my body took a beating.  A few good hits to the stomach is what it felt like for most of my run.  My spirit might have felt a good beating too…that is if it wasn’t as strong as it is.  So it’s 1 for FC and 1 for ME. We will call it a tie fight.

I made sure that I stood right in front of the leader last night, so that I could hear all that was said.  I surely didn’t want to make the same mistake as I did last week!  Luckily Fran the leader yelled loud enough for everyone to hear..almost screaming actually.. ( hmmm, maybe she reads my blog!?)  ” Ok…everyone….Step 2- the ADVANCED group…I REPEAT the advanced group form over here.  Let’s not make the mistake that some did last week and go with the wrong group!” As she laughed her ass off giggled…in a polite, very friendly way.  I think she made it sound like there were actually OTHERS who might have made that stupid embarrassing mistake other than myself…though I know nobody else did.

I was sure to pick out the PERFECT group.  The group that consisted of the other women who I saw getting out of breath from the pre-warm up STRETCHING! Yes…I am most definetly in the right group this week.  As we took off on our walk, I walked next to a super sweet black girl wearing spandex pants, who gave my huge ass a run for it’s money.  Ok..it MUST be hard for this girl to run too !  I feel your pain Sista! I could possibly be drinking as I write this post.It seemed these girls had the same coach last week..”Marty”.   Marty says as we are doing our warm up walk…I will leave it up to you guys if you want to do an extra run or TWO like last week.  I laugh and throw out a line to see his response, so I can tell if he was joking or not. ”  I don’t think we should deviate from the plan…we don’t want to get into trouble.”  With not even a smirk he looks at me and says…” we won’t get into trouble!”   ummmmm…..hmmmm……ok….shit, he wasn’t joking!

So before I get into the fun part of the run, let me say that I have learned yet ANOTHER lesson of Fight Club.  It could possibly be the best lesson yet…..for my spirit.  No matter what….ALWAYS wait and join the LAST group.!!

So we are off and running.  In my head I try to review super quickly the lessons I have learned from previous weeks.  1.) Don’t LEAD the group. 2.) Don’t start out to quick. 3.) Go at my own pace towards the back of the group.  Ok….check, check and f*ckin check…I’m going to rock this run. !! It isn’t but 59 seconds 5-9 minutes into the run when the rest of the group starts pulling away from me at a quick pace.  Wow….that ass girl can run! <<< ( remember I could possibly be sipping on a Harpoon I.P.A as I write this! Jamoosh will understand. ) ok…no problem, just hold YOUR pace..slow and steady.  Hmmmmm……who are these people passing me?? Oh….just the group that was BEHIND us…and then the group BEHIND them…….and bla bla bla bla bla.  Long post…cut a little short. = I’m the LAST person of ALL the groups running….nice.

Fran the leader, runs back to run the rest of the way with me.   I still have about a half mile to go as the rest of the club is back at base.  I tell Fran, that though I appreciate her running with me, I don’t want to hold the rest of the club up.  ( We had guest speakers who were going to show us how to stretch after our run. ) She said ” they are grown ups ..they can go on without us.”  ………..well OBVIOUSLY I was the star of the party, because the whole group was waiting on ME to arrive.  Ha!    How SWEET ! …….with every Fight Club, I can’t help but wonder……..

“WHAT THE HELL AM I THINKING…actually saying out loud ……I’M DOING THE PHILLY 1/2 ???!!”

As kids we would always make fun of my grandmother for not being able to hear.  Not nice…I know.  And as we grew older and my dad inherited the non functioning ears we began to tease him.  You know the old game that is fun to play with people that have a hard time hearing … ” hey Dad-  have you senfgendf  my ferieoous indadfae ? ”  Dad = “What did you say? All I heard was jibberish?  ” Dad…shushka fartenipous incagneteceres??? ” We would go on like this until we couldn’t keep a straight face anymore and burst out laughing.  This would always end with the same response from my dad= ” you guys are a bunch of assholes!”   I’ve learned 2 things as I’ve gotten older when I think back to those times.

1.)  we were assholes and 2.) Karma really is a bitch!

Fight club was not pretty tonight…..

I got there a little early and started chatting it up with “Joanne” …one of my new running ” buddies”.  She said ” well…it turned out to be beautiful this evening…I was praying for that storm to hit, thinking maybe we wouldn’t have to run.”   Ha~ yes, definitely one of my new running buddies.  She also mentioned that she hadn’t done ANY of her runs for the week.  I thought to myself…PERFECT…I will have a leg up on her !  ….Plus she’s an older lady, so that could only help. Right?? HA!  We really chatted it up …so imagine my surprise when it was time to brake off into groups and she didn’t follow me!!   All I heard was one of the coaches say ” ok…whoever…bla bla bla..Baxter….run…bla bla bla go over there..ok, not everyone move at once..”  Well ….Baxter was my coach last time, so I thought ok…I guess I will go with Baxter again.  As I walked towards Baxter I turned around expecting to see my new friend following me……hmmmm, I wonder why she’s not.?? Oh well….off we go…

So I told myself…slow and steady…don’t start off to quickly.   I kept a close eye on my watch because god forbid I run a few seconds over..    Hmmmm, I wonder why the coach isn’t telling everyone it’s time to WALK …we are definitely over the running time…we should most DEFINETLY be WALKING now!… I found myself getting slower and slower until I was in the very back of the group leading the rear….and then eventually leading the group FOLLOWING ours….and then again “leading the rear” of the last group.  As I eventually became unofficially apart of the last group they began their walking session.  A mumble of the word hallelujah could have slipped out of my mouth.  Off in the distance I could see my original group STILL RUNNING! ….ummmm, doesn’t anyone in that damn group have a WATCH!?  Oh well suckers….looks like I found the smart group, and I’m now walking. The coach bringing up the rear of my new group was walking along side of me.  ” Is that you beeping? What the heck is beeping?”  Me = “oh maybe it’s my watch, but I can’t hear anything.”  Coach=  ”what’s it warning you of?”   Me =  ” oh, probably warning me that I have about 5 seconds before I collapse!” Coach=  ”ha ha….1 more minute until we run.”  Right about this time my FIRST coach is running back towards me. I knew he was coming to see if I was still alive I was keeping my true marathon pace.  ” I’m still alive~ I’m just keeping the slow group company.” I yelled to him…

As we came around the corner I met up with my ” buddy” from the beginning of the session.  She said ” hey….you didn’t tell me you were running with the ADVANCED group today! I saw you take of with Baxters group.”

Me= ” oh….I must not have heard the ADVANCED part!!”

Ughhhhh…..Fight Club truly kicked my ass tonight!  I got many ” ummmm, are you ok’s?” as I was saying my goodbyes.  I guess people aren’t used to seeing my special shade of PURPLE on a humans face.

Hey….No Guts, No glory…right!!???

Why I am associating my new (beginners) running club with ..Fight Club ?? I have NO idea…but I am !  For some reason every time I think about or mention “running club” – Fight Club pops in my head.  Crazy..I’ve never even seen the movie ! Maybe it’s my inner struggle that sublimely keeps telling me to keep fighting? or..maybe I just want to  feel cool like the guys in Fight Club?  ( that’s probably more like it )

Anyway…last night was my first meeting with the group.  The first actual meeting was last week, but like all of you know I was in Boston.  Of course at the beginning it was just like I kind of feared it would be.  Everyone seemed to make fast friends last week, and were all chatting it up about last week, their runs for the week, who is now BFF’s with who…bla bla.  There seemed to have  been clique’s already.  Now if I knew that last week was the official “bonding” session and everyone would fastly <( don’t think this is an actual word, but I like it just the same ) fall in love with one another I would have flew home early from Boston to be apart of the love fest.  So I’m definetly probably being overly a little over dramatic, but it was a little disappointing.  No worries though…I migrated to a group ( the larger people, who looks like they might be on the slower side group) and chimed in with a witty line.  ” ummm, soooo…how long did you guys run for last week?”   Ok…maybe not so witty, but at least I was talking to a group…now known as the ” cool kids group” !

So fight club was a rude awakening to just how out of shape I truly am.  But as we were running ( and I was about to collapse ) one of the girls mentioned that she just ran her first 5K…and then corrected herself and said ” well more like walked and stumbled my first 5K ” and I KNEW I was in the right group.

Tomorrow night is the clubs April meeting and I would actually love to go..but I have a work thing at night, so I can’t.  I’m really hoping to get involved as much as I can, and feel comfortable with because It feels kind of cool to be a part of a “club”.  Am I dork? …maybe….but that won’t stop me from ordering a official club jacket !! lol

It’s kind of funny.  From all of the running blogs that I read of my blogging friends, sometimes I feel like a running expert ( in my mind only of course! ).   Whether it’s about marathons, the benefits of running, or even barefoot running..I feel like I know it all.  In my mind I run effortlessly…( for more than 4 minutes at a clip), 5K’s seem totally doable and my 1/2 marathon is not out of the question.  BUT…once I start shuffling these feet, I’m smacked in the face by reality.  Either way…. my loyal followers keep pushing me on, and I thank you!!

“Hey, you created me. I didn’t create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility!”

-Fight Club

me..at 4:30 a.m before my run

So as many of you know I’ve been throwing around the talk about doing the 1/2 marathon in Sept.   I’ve been pretty casual as the whole thing goes.  Marathon talk will come up, and I might throw in “yea, I’m doing a 1/2 in Sept.” Bla bla bla.  I even have the necklace to prove how dedicated I am.  One side of the charm says “Believe” and the other side says ” 13.1 ” .  So I’m definetly ” in it, to win it!” …Right? Well OF COURSE I AM! Didn’t I just tell you that I have the necklace?  So it never really dawned on me ( <<< that’s more for literal effect, because it HAS dawned me..I’ve just been lazy busy ) until someone said… ” so how’s the training going?”  …” ummm, the what? ohhhhhh, the TRAINING? Yes…it’s going fine.”   >>>>> Instant thought in my head =  ” OH SHIT, I NEED TO TRAIN!”

I’m not lieing about doing the 1/2 !….  Didn’t I tell you that I have the necklace?……

So in all kidding aside fashion….I figure my training plan should be about double as long, since I’m basically two people in one…and well hell…MORE practice definitely couldn’t hurt. I have decided on a nice Run/Walk beginners plan…and today was the official Week 1: Day 1   !!

back in the saddle...

lean on me..

Back from Boston and I must say that all of you were RIGHT ! I did get re-motivated !! It’s so hard not to.  We got to Boston  on Saturday and instantly fell in love with the city.  There’s just something about Boston that sucks you in !  I don’t know if it’s all the history of the city, the architecture, the vibe….whatever it was we loved it!  The first couple of days the weather was rainy and not very good for site seeing or picture taking….but we didn’t let that put a damper on our trip.  We hopped on the Trolley Tour, stayed dry and learned so much about the city.

Everywhere you looked there were runners around the city.  It’s a super cool bond that fellow marathoners have.  Everywhere we stopped my uncle and other fellow runners would spark up conversations about the marathon, other marathons they have run, etc…  It’s so hard to not want to be apart of something like that.   To want to be dedicated enough to something to put in the time and heart of the training.   I do want that!  I don’t really ever seeing me desiring to do a FULL marathon …but I do have my sites on the 1/2 in Sept.  It’s funny the looks I get from certain people when this comes up.  I get the once over look…from head to toe.  ” oh, that’s nice. ” ~ LOL ~ I’ve said it here many times before.  My goal is not to RUN this half marathon.  With a combination plan of walk, run, shuffle and stumble..my goal is just to FINISH! One step at a time.

If I wasn’t totally pysched enough with the vibe of Boston…I DEFINETLY was by Marathon Monday!!  I got up early to get my uncle to Boston Commons for his bus ride to the starting line.  Then I went back to the hotel and got Kerri and my aunt to head back into Boston.  We wanted to be there early to make sure we were able to find parking and find where we were going.  It really couldn’t have worked out better.  Parking garage RIGHT next to the finish line!   We really didn’t know what our plan was for the day.  Some more site seeing, shopping, marathon watching?  After finding parking we wanted to get breakfast somewhere.  All the bars were open and everyone was already drinking at 9:00 a.m.! We ended up at Whiskey’s who said they were serving food…it just wasn’t BREAKFAST food.  We decided to stay and stuffed ourselves with fried bar food and coffee.  We might have missed out on the eggs and toast but totally scored in other ways.  First we all got FREE t-shirts for being part of the first 150 customers ! ( free souvenir    Then we realized that we were in eye shot of the finish line and would have front row to watching the marathon.  I really wanted to see some of the marathon and we knew we would have to stake out our spot for hours to see it….so we did. ! Bought some chairs at Walgreens and set up camp.  Another bonus about Marathon Monday?? The SUN was out and NO rain.  Perfect day for the runners.  57 and sunny ! So happy for this!  It was really cold and breezy for us fans…but nothing a few hats, gloves and a instantaneously made  babushka couldn’t fix it.  The energy was amazing!!!  I still have my blistered finger from ringing the cow bell to prove it!

The whole weekend and marathon experience was wonderful ! Loved everything about it.

Congrats to my Uncle Dan for working his butt off and letting me be apart of it .

Sorry to all of my great friends on here that I’ve been neglecting. ( HEY- did you even know I was missing?? ) LOL

Hope everyone is well…and working harder than me!

Rob Udewitz, a clinical and sports psychologist in Manhattan, said many runners change their pace when they run in a group. “There is a phenomenon of running with people where you run faster and easier,” he said.

Call it motivation. Competition. Or accountability.

This is so true.  Motivation and accountability were some of the main reasons that I wanted to join a group.  I’m imagining too that running with others, I will want to push myself.  A good push is exactly what I need. ( away from the refrigerator !!)

On Monday I worked out for the first time in a long damn little while, and it’s crazy how much I feel it. Like SUPER crazy!…and I love every achy, moaning bit of pain.  I did the first work out from my New Rules of Lifting for Women book.  The first workout included squats and step ups with weights.  When I go to stand up or sit down, I resemble an elderly person who is just attempting to work unused muscles.  But…it’s ALL GOOD

I should be getting back into my normal “routine” soon, since Kerri is on the mending road.  Even with the unexpected pints of caramel cone crunch ice cream ups and downs that life throws our way, I will always feel the same…LIFE REALLY IS GOOD!

Along with being blessed with this perfect day, I have realized that I’m blessed with wonderful friends.  I came home the other day to a package waiting for me, from my friend Pam. Pam is a friend that is very close to stepping off the edge and committing to doing the 1/2 marathon in Philly with me.  I think she only needs a couple more weeks of poking and prodding positive benefits chat and she will be ready to say “YES !” out loud.  Pam’s friendship has really become a blessing to me…and her sending gifts doesn’t hurt either listening ear is greatly appreciated.  Package = Gift = Christmas again for Holly

Pam got these tech shirts for Kerri and I to help keep us motivated along our journey to a healthy life.  They are so AWESOME !! Beyond the super kind thought…it is SO me! I’m a sucker for motivational things and powerful words ! Pam has a friend who owns the store 3:16 Athletic Wear where she got these, and it’s a super cool store.  Check out their website at the above link and tell Julie that I sent you.  She has absolutely no idea who I am…so it would be fun! LOL !

” Fight the good fight…Finish the Race…Keep the Faith”

There are friends in our lives that have been around so long ~ that somehow they find it acceptable to just pop in unexpected.  I will admit that as of lately I have turned my back on them and have neglected them like the plague.  Not kind of me, I know.  But have you ever had those influences in your life that just aren’t healthy?  I will admit…for a long time I made them a huge part of my life.  I spent crazy amounts of time with these friends and even loved some of them in …well… unhealthy ways.  Only because I’m trying to clear my conscious here that I will even go as far as to admit that I have visited MORE than one of these friends in the late hours of the night.  Maybe looking for some type of comfort? Maybe a good time? Whatever the reasons…..I gave into them this past weekend.   Believe me when I say that after the weekend was over….I didn’t feel good about myself.  The guilt of our no holds barred weekend weighed heavy on me…and even more so on my evil incorrect number spewing pal ( who I’m convinced rounds up to the nearest 5 lb just for the fun of it. ) !     The next time my so called friends Beer, Burgers, and Bakery stop by unexpectedly…..I’m refusing to answer the door.

Enough bitching…off to the gym I go.