October 1st

This weekend is not looking good:

• I have a cold. I had to call in sick to my field placement today because I felt terrible. Stuffy nose, cotton-wool headache, sore scratchy throat, etc.
• It rained all day, and upon checking the weather online it looks as if there is a 40% chance of rain this Saturday! 

Sunday is looking to be warmed/drier than Saturday, so if all the room-mates agree we'll switch the days up to save ourselves a miserable time. I mean, it's going to be pretty miserable anyway, without being cold and wet.

I've been wasting time looking up racing events for the next two months. I've had to talk myself out of registering for a couple because I don't know how I'll feel after this weekend. If all goes well (my knees don't break and I still enjoy running) I may reconsider! Looking at races is exciting though....

However, I don't really need to RACE to have fun with long distances. I mean, running a distance alone is just as real as paying to run that distance... Oh well, I'll have to wait a few more days until I should register anyway, because Calvin would be my ride to all these races, and he should get a vote on how far we drive :)

Life

I wonder if entries really need titles? I remember seeing an entry in my blog list, where the title was just a dot and I had THE HARDEST time clicking on it, because it was just that dot that was linked. So perhaps that is why we have titles, and the longer ones are best.

Well.

This week has been pretty great!
I went to school all day on Monday 08:30-21:45. I promptly went home and went to bed, because on Tuesday I had work from 08:30-16:30. I went to work and did great (I'm an intern so learning is my main job :) ). But after work is the impressive part: I came home, skipped my nap and ran for TWO HOURS.

I ran 15kilometres. FIFTEEN! I mapped out my ridiculous route on google maps, and I kept squishing the thought that told me that I could always cut my run short if I wanted to. I took bus fare with me, to take the bus back if my legs hurt or if I got stranded 7.5km away from my house :)
But I didn't use it! I did use my bus fare to by Gatorade on the way back, and I ran with a bottle for 4 blocks. It was almost silly, because I dropped the half-ful bottle three times.
But I made it back, and it was GREAT!
And ... wait for it...


....


...

after my run, I took A SHOWER (rare happening) and then WENT TO THE LIBRARY TO READ!!!!
I was so impressed with myself, I came home and went to bed early (11pm).
Wednesday is my slack day, but I still woke up late (10am) and helped out at Club's Day. I then came home, did some homework, went to class and relaxed the rest of the day.
But I made sure to BIKE while watching my TV shows, so that I'm not really 'wasting time'. :)
I also got to chat with my little sis, and that's always great.

And since that was Wednesday, now we'll talk about Thursday: work, work, work. I did all my class reading AT work, so I had NOTHING to do when I got home. So I took a lovely, long, well-deserved nap.
And I had dreams of running another 15k this weekend, but will all the training and laser-tagging I'll be doing, I'm not sure when I can fit it in.
I really want to go for a swim soon!!

Here's hoping to next week being as, or MORE, productive than this one! Have a great Friday people! :D
(I have no class tomorrow :D )

Messy rooms and lots of reading

I spent some time this weekend cleaning my room. It's been in a bit of a disorderly state because when one of my room-mates moved out, I kept his bed. And I kept his bed on top of MY bed, so I was sleeping on top of two box-springs and two mattresses. While it sounded like a great idea at first, it was a bit of a hassle once I realised they were two different sizes and didn't fit well on top of each other.
So I had clothes on the floor, a mattress leaning vertically next to my bed, papers, yarn and crap everywhere. I decided that it's time to organize, rearrange, clean and sweep everything, if I'm going to be able to concentrate on school.
And I did. And everything looks great now. I CAN SEE THE FLOOR! It's this gorgeous hard-wood that I haven't seen in a few months :) I've found lots of things I had thought I lost, and I've also done my first load of laundry since I've been back from India. (Since our washing machine is a little broken, I took my clothes to London to wash, hehe)

This weekend I drove for 20 minutes! While that might not be a big deal to a lot of people, it's super exciting for me :D I passed the test for my G1 back in January but haven't had access to a car to practice for my G2 entry test, which'll be in January. I'm pretty nervous, because while I have taken driving school, it was at least 3 years ago. So we drove, and drove, and had a little freak-out behind a pair of silly motorcycle drivers, we finally arrived at Value Village! One room-mate was looking for some Halloween stuff, and while we were waiting a took a chance and peeked at the shorts section. And I scored! I found, and bought, my first ever running skirt! I am super excited and have already slept in it and it's super comfy. But since it's been raining and I've just spilled green tea all over myself, I'll just have to wait to try it out another day.

I did run 8.5km on Saturday, and it felt great! :) Took my time, walked when I wanted to, tried out combinations of run-walking for the 5 hours in two weeks. I'm still excited, and I'm already planning out snacks and drinks we could keep around for each loop :D

30mins

On Monday I ran 2.3km and my calves hurt.
On Wednesday I ran 4km and nothing hurt.
The difference was my shoes.
While I still strongly believe that my Vibrams helped with my knee issues, I don't think my running form is perfect and I end up with a lot of calf tightness and pain. But for the present, I will try switch up between the shoes I have, and use Vibrams for shorter runs and the others for longer ones.

-
I usually have high goals and great intentions. I always tell myself I'll run further/faster than I did last time, but sometimes I quit early because I get bored (usually) or something will start hurting and I should stop to prevent it from getting worse.


Today, my aim is to set out for a run and return one hour later. I want to keep moving for 60 minutes.
I would like to practise the 2-1 method, or another version where I'll alternate running with walking. This is to practise for a crazy race/event-thing that my room-mates and I are doing in 2 weeks.

We've mapped out a 2-mile route around out neighbourhood that starts and ends at our house.
We've also set a 5-hour limit.
We want to see if we can keep moving for that long.
And also, to see who can run the furthest.
I think  hope know I could win by chugging along and using a run-walk ratio. My roomies are VERY fast, but they can't keep up their silly pace for ever. So I intend to start slowly and keep it up. We've decided that walking will still count, because you can still cover a decent distance by walking. I guess the real winner is the one that will stay out there for a full 5 hours.

And if it's cold out, we'll just get our crew to make us hot chocolate, so we can have something to look forward to each lap :)

New Blog

Haha, just kidding! But with the new Blogger layout, I keep ending up hitting the 'New Blog' button and slowly realising it isn't the 'New Post' button I was looking for :(

My friend's been trying to lose weight back in Kuwait (I just rhymed) and he's decided to eat a vegetarian diet for three months to help him fulfil his mission. He's been a real hard worker this week too: he ran 4k twice already and did a really long bike. Wow! I was able to  keep up with him by doing a 5k run on his first day, but I haven't been able to keep up with him since then.

Since he let me know that MY competitive-ness is keeping HIM competitive, I decided to go for a run tonight, in order to keep the challenge going. I usually like night-time runs because there are less people that yell and joke at me, and there are usually less cars on the road.

Tonight felt a little like Halloween. There were few people around, but they were huddled in loud, obnoxious groups. The weather was cool. Since it's Welcome Week, they were wearing 'costumes': the shortest skirts/dresses/shorts and/or a white shirt for Graffiti night. The run was scary:

• I started my run down my street, where a few people out on their front porch started yelling encouraging phrases at me as I went by.
• A huge truck was driving down a street it wasn't supposed to be on, and I wasn't sure it was going to stop at the red light (massive momentum, and all) so I waited for it to take the right turn before I crossed.
• Once I passed Mcdonald's, feeling smug that I wasn't eating there OR sitting through the Drive-Through, the red car that was stopped at the window opened all their doors and started CHEERING for me, as if I was in a race. I kind of ran faster, because that was a little weird.
• Two seconds after this happened, I heard a rustling in the grass. Turning to my right, I see a cute skunk and fear pricks me as I realise that it IS a SKUNK. Cue sprinting because I am terrified of being sprayed by one.
• While running through my old neighbourhood, I hear a loud scream and see two college-aged girls running across the street in front of me, chasing each other. Okay. But then I see another 5-6 people chasing THEM (all in single-file), so I'm not too sure what was going on there.
• I saw a skateboarder pick up his board and look both ways before walking across the road. Ha, that never happens.
• I ran through a very dark street on my way back. I didn't realise that all the garbage was out because it's Sunday, but this was ideal skunk conditions, and I ran in the street as to stay furthest away from skunk-land. Hate skunks :(

Usually only one or two weird things happen during my night-time runs, but today there was A LOT going on. 

September

It's September! Which means that this time next week I will be freaking out over what to wear to my 4th year BSW orientation, and mentally reviewing everything I know about the Code of Ethics! School is almost starting, which also means that it's almost ending. I know that's strange... it's just that it's going to go by SO FAST, and as soon as I blink I'll have my BSW and I'll be a graduate :)

Since my room-mates are away (trip to Washington, some down-time in London, and last-minute moving-in errands) I've been a bit bored. And when I'm bored, I tend to park myself on the couch and entertain myself with the World Wide Web (who doesn't love stumbleupon??!). I've caught myself watching over 3 hours of TV without moving from the couch, and that HAD TO STOP!

While I can't think of too many things to do by myself in the city, I know I can work-out by myself. So I did that. This week, I've burnt 1570 calories through 4 workouts totalling almost 3 hours. Which I know isn't a lot, but it's just Thursday. I'm keeping myself healthy AND entertained! And I did a long-ish run of 6km. AND I have a bike-date for 50km next Wednesday! Seems like my last week of summer won't be too dull.

29.08/ bike/ 25min/ 5mi

30.08/ bike/ 40min

31.08/ bike/ 50min

01/09/ run/ 45min/ 6km