The 19 minute mile

The original title of this post was The 19 minute mile.  Then on Sunday, A took my actual run-time divided by my actual distance & came up with just under 18 minutes, so I changed it.  & then on Monday I upgraded my hand weights & it is back to 19 minutes a mile. 

In other two steps forward/one step back news I have now officially lost four pounds.  Naturally that does not include the ten pounds I gained & then lost when I first started (seriously, I still don't know what was up with that).  & I still think the runner's high is an emperor's new clothes style myth; the only people I know who claim to have experienced it have later back tracked & said "it is not so much a high as a felling you could just keep going".  Uh huh.  I have been high & I have felt like I could just keep doing whatever it was I was doing; I am confident I would never confuse the two. 

I have, however, gotten to the point where my overriding thought during my run walk intervals (more accurately described as jog stroll intervals) is not how much I hate what I am doing, how much I hate that I will probably have to do it for the rest of my life, etc.  Now during the longer stretches my mind can wander to all sorts of things & sometimes I can kill whole minutes.  Trust me, this is a good thing.

I have discovered a few other good things that make the ordeal more bearable:

Edy's Fruit Bars, especially the lime ones.  I spend the whole second half of the journey fantasizing about the lime fruit bar I am going to have when I get home.  One time, we got back from a run & A***** declined her fruit bar because she was avoiding the sugar-carb-thing.  I was appalled. 

& I was glad to refer her to the next good thing I have found, The First 20 Minutes by Gretchen Reynolds wherein there is possibility that the ideal post-workout beverage just might be chocolate milk.  I don't actually like chocolate milk, but I don't like Gatorade or other sports beverages either (they feel slimy) & I felt qualified to make the substitution.  There is a whole host of really good information in this book.  If you don't want to buy a copy, get it out of the library.

I have also renewed my acquaintance with Boudreaux's Butt Paste.  Why was I already acquainted with this stuff, you ask?  Because one of my horses has a really fat ass.  I mean big round monster fat.  She has the upper-butt cleavage of a Kardashian (seriously, she has this long thick pony tail hanging down across this thing.  I point to it & ask what celebrity it reminders whomever of & no one has ever guessed anyone else).  & while I have no idea how the Kardashian's deal with it (& I am not asking, if anyone who reads this knows, please keep it to yourself), I have used Boudreaux's whenever Coco gets sores from one cheek rubbing against the other.  I will spare you the details, but I too found a use for Boudreaux's before I discovered compression running tights/capris/shorts. 

There is one thing I have found no use for & that is an iPod or playaway digital book player or whatever.  Having your ears covered by headsets while running is a mistake.  I run on a country road with very little traffic & I have had enough encounters to know I am safer if I can hear the car/truck/doberman/really unpleasant old man walking up behind me.  Also, if I wore headsets I never would have heard the birds or the frogs or the cicadas or any of the other wonderful things about running where I run.  I would not have gotten to know my neighbors (we have lived here since 1998 & I am just meeting half of them) & if I hadn't met them I would never have learned that one unpleasant old man was also the driver of the two different vehicles that honk at me when they drive by or that the ex-marine on the corner had a talk with the old man's son to get him to stop.  I probably also would not be trying to find homes for stray kittens, but they are worth it too.