Day Nine - Reading signs

First, I'd like to apologize to the woman I mistook for a dog.

Second, today I learned an important lesson. It's important to look for signs. Not cosmic signs - this is not the spiritual mumbo jumbo blog - actual signs. Like, with words. Or sometimes pictures. You'll understand soon enough.

Let me tell you, muffins, I had no desire to go out running today. None. Work was... tiring, let's say, and really, I just wanted to come home and veg out, as the kids say. "The kids" being me and my peers in the midst of our 1990's adolescence.

But.... I'm pretending I'm accountable to people reading this thing (are there people reading this thing? I might not want to know the answer if it's no), so off I went. I really don't understand the people who eagerly "hit the gym" after work each day. I'm wholly convinced that there was some sort of electroshocktherapy in there somewhere. Or maybe hypnosis by treadmill. Don't ask me.

There's an idea for a horror movie... a possessed elliptical machine that keeps people... um, ellipting (?) until they drop dead. Wes Craven could direct.

Today, however, was not a gym day, but an outside day. I might prefer the possessed elliptical to the Tennessee mugginess, but thank the everloving Lord, the heat seems like it might, maybe, possibly, please God, be breaking soon. But here's how today went down:


The Goal:

Warm up one mile. Switch off every two minutes between a hard run and an easy run, for one mile. Cool down one mile.

The Result:

This is where the sign thing comes in. Because if I'd read the Big Ass Sign on the walking path, I would have known where the one mile mark was and I wouldn't have run an extra half mile, resulting in what I'm sure was some highly attractive panting and wheezing.
Oh and "hard run" in this case meant jog to moderate run, whereas "easy run" meant brisk walk.

Today's Suck:

Other than not seeing the sign and exerting myself more than necessary (gradual, people, remember, we're going to leave the "Push It" mentality to Salt n' Pepa, and I promise that's my last '90s reference of the day), I just really wonder if I'm actually ever going to be able to run (outside) for more than two minutes in a row and even do that without having an borderline asthma attack. And I couldn't even do the hard/easy run thing.

Today's Success:

It's starting to feel really lame to say my success of the day was trying at all. Okay, I actually did the 2 minute run/walk interval thing.... I think before this, I'd been on more of a 1 minute run/two minute walk deal. So, all right, that's progress. At a slimy, slimy snail's pace.

Oh, and I'm going to go get an Italian soda. I'm not even putting that under the suck category because it's something I utterly should not do, but I'm feeling smug in my defiance of should right now.