Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Running? Huh?

Someone told me last night they haven't noticed any Facebook or blog posts about running lately. Wait. What? I'm supposed to be running? Holy crap! Ok, ok, I've been running. Sort of. I'm not running as much as I should be if I really want to do a 50K in a month. In fact, I'm doing about half of what I should be.

I'm sure I can come up with a ton of good excuses, but the fact is, I freaking hate the heat. I've had enough of it. I am soooooo done with heat and humidity. My clothes stick to me and my thighs rub together and sweat is running down my legs and pooling in my shoes. All I can think about is how much I'm sweating. I'm a miserable soggy mess by the time I hit 4 miles.

Enough of the whining. I'm trying to do better! Last week was great during the week and I was all excited for my weekend of running. Then it started raining. And raining and raining and raining! Rain is good since we are in a severe drought, but come on! Couldn't it rain on a Wednesday or something? I know there are dedicated people out there that would run anyway. I'm not one of those people. I'm a fair weather runner. This makes it sort of hard to achieve my goals, so I am trying to improve.

Saturday morning I think I'm having Rick drop me off in Independence and I'm going to run home around the lake to avoid the highway. Rick has a softball tournament and won't be home to come pick me up if I get tired and want to quit. No excuses!!* If I text or call any of you and ask you to come pick me up, don't do it! Unless I've been attacked by a snake or dog or baby chicken or something. Only in a real emergency can I have the option of quitting. However, if you would like to bring me a donut or pancakes or pie or anything, I will gladly take a break to eat. Or drink. I'm not picky! Oh, and if you want to run part of that with me I would be happy to have the company!

*I reserve the right to move my run to Sunday if the weather is horrible. We are supposed to get tons of rain Friday and it isn't supposed to cool off overnight Friday either. Plus, the humidity will be about 5000%.

If any of you have my cell phone number, feel free to text me Saturday morning so I will keep running! I need encouragement! If you don't have my cell phone number and want it so that you can send me encouraging texts, I will gladly provide it if you inbox me on Facebook. If you aren't on my Facebook I'm probably not friendly enough with you to give you my cell number. Or maybe I am. I need lots of kind words :)

Happy Running!!

~Mel

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Long time no blog!

I've been slacking. Not only on my blog, but on my running. Life got crazy with baseball season and all of the exercising and I just got completely worn out. I was exhausted. I decided to take a week off. I'm so so so glad I did! I needed it. When I tried to come back my knee hurt so I took another couple of days. I ran one day and then the next time I was supposed to run it was freaking hot. 82 degrees at 5 am. No thanks. I did run on Saturday though, albeit less than I planned. Long story, but I got a little over 9 miles in and that made me happy. Besides one 3 miler it was my only run in 2 weeks, so 9 miles isn't atrocious. 5.5 of them were on the trail and I loved every minute of that. Well, there were a few minutes in the middle that I had tummy troubles that I didn't love it. I will leave the details out. You're welcome :) The plan was to run again Sunday, but I was really sore. Wimp, party of 1! Your table is ready!

This week I am back in the saddle though. Monday night I ran the bleachers at the football stadium in Indy. It was almost 100 degrees and I had just finished swimming so I didn't do it for very long. I did it though! Tuesday morning I hit the trail again for around 4 miles. My watch was being unfriendly so I don't know exactly. It was fun though.

My fun sort of came to a screeching halt this morning though. It was a biking day and it ended up being quite the experience.  I was riding my bike and was about 3.5 miles south of town. I turned to head home and there were two coyotes in the road. I've never seen coyotes when I was running or biking, but there are tons around here. I wasn't in the least bit concerned. They will normally run away if they see people but these didn't. A truck came up behind me and they finally ran. One ran off into the woods as is typical but the other didn't. It kept running. It ran alongside the truck for a long time. I stopped being able to see it so I assumed it ran off into the woods. A bit later, maybe 30 seconds, I hear a thump and realize the coyote had been hit by the truck. This happens all the time in this area. However, the truck didn't even put on it's brakes! I'm thinking "OMG. Someone just killed an animal and didn't even slow down!" I don't want someone to have a car accident or something to avoid hitting an animal, but I expect them to take reasonable measures to miss it.

After driving about half a mile the truck turned around and came back. The lady stopped and I realized I knew her. She said "that wasn't your dog was it? It was a coyote?" I assured her it was a coyote. I was assuming still that she hit it on accident and wanted to make sure she hadn't killed my dog. Oh no! She told me she hit it on purpose! :o:cry: She said that it was acting strange (it kind of was) and that she was afraid it would attack me so she killed it! She said it kept going back towards me and she was scared it would hurt me. I was speechless. She was all shaky and upset but really felt like she had no other choice than to kill it to save me. I told her thanks for looking out for me, because that's really what she was doing. She may have been misguided, but she truly was trying to help.

I've been thinking about it all day and have decided to be thankful that someone was looking out for me. I've always thought that if I were stranded somewhere and needed help I would be able to find some. I guess this kind of confirmed for me that people around here care about each other. I really really wish it hadn't happened, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. At first I felt like it was my fault that an animal was killed but it wasn't.

I hope the rest of the week is without crazy experiences!

Mel