Such was my day today. I had a nice lie in and the house to myself (well, and the 70lb border collie/lab cross who demanded to be the little spoon), a nice breakfast that fueled me up for what I hoped was one heck of a going over by Jillian Michaels via my Frontside and Backside videos that (surprise, surprise) have killer exercises specifically to target either your frontside or your backside. For whatever reason, while I consider myself to be reasonable adequate when it comes to technology, the television-to-dvd-player-with-satellite-and-vcr baffles me to no end. Today, of all days, I just could not get the darn contraption to play a dvd.
Second plan! My laptop has a dvd player, I would just pop it in there and set my laptop up on a stand so it was an appropriate level. This is the first time I had tried to play a dvd in my (new to me) laptop, so imagine my surprise when sounds akin to a cougar that has pulled its prey into a tree started coming from my laptop... eeeeeeeks.
Fine then! I have to go with conventional, "real life" exercise, in the fresh air. I was reluctant... It was pretty warm... I would get a sunburn... I'd get so far from home and then be too tired to come back... Flies would bite me... My iPod was dead so I had no tunes to motivate me... I couldn't run if there was a car coming by! Trust me (and ask anybody who knows me), I can be the entire royal court when it comes to making excuses. Today was no different, but grudgingly, knowing that if I didn't work out then, I wouldn't get to work out later, I tied up my shoelaces, filled my water bottle, and grabbed my trusty companion, Morrie:
The running buddy is a 5 year old Miniature Australian Shepherd - they're a herding breed, so generally known to be high energy. Though he was not originally intended for me, Morrie has been my right hand man since the day that my parents arrived home with him at 2am and dumped him on the bed where I was sleeping and he pinned me down by my hair and washed my face - the rest, they say, is history. Good ole Morrie would do anything for me and with me... except run 2.9km, apparently.
That's right, the path was a 2.9km, mostly uphill ramble. I know this picture is tiny (I took it with my not-a-smart-phone) but try to understand my vision here. I was at the end and turning around and the red dot on the horizon, that's where I had to go back to. I chose this route for a variety of reasons, even though I could have traveled a different route which would have had -slightly- flatter terrain. Most importantly - not a lot of houses to see me coming by. Secondly - not a lot of dogs that might run out of their yard and attack the fluffernutter, and thirdly - there is a stream at the 1/4 mark where I could give Morrie a proper drink and chance to cool down. It was on our way back at this stream that he started to lag behind. Just tired, and lazy - a lot like me, but he doesn't have as much weight to lose! It soon became more that I was dragging him than him keeping up.Fortunately, I was wearing the most psychedelic outtfit possible and my sister, as she was coming home from a dog trial, saw me and drove down to say hello. Morrie begged his way into the air conditioned car and drove home with her while I jogged another telephone pole length uphill and then briskly finished off the trip back home. The last 1/4 of the trip, I kept thinking to myself "I can't wait to get home and blog about how I was able to motivate myself, for once!"
I won't lie. I'm pretty dang proud of myself for doing any amount of running without someone there to prod me along. I ended up completing 2.9km in 34 minutes. I would say that I ran or jogged approximately 1/4 of that and even did some of it uphill. I just kept thinking to myself "Don't stop." and somehow, that managed to work. Overall, I have to say... proud of myself. (The boyfriend (hereafter known as "G") also ran today - almost 5km himself - so I am pretty dang proud of him, too! Even though it did take some convincing for him to concede that my 2.9km equaled his 4.93km because mine had hills and his didn't!)
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