According to the calendar, although I can't hardly believe it myself--feels shorter, I have just entered my fourth week of our morning exercise routine.
I have to say that having another person equally committed makes all the difference in success. That reason and that reason only is why I succeeded with the "Learn to Run 10K" program in the first place (yes that's right, I'm talking about you). So I'm grateful now to have Brad lugging himself out of bed at 6:30 am three days a week right beside me. Because I'm not sure how consistent I'd be otherwise. Many a morning (can we say most mornings?) the alarm rings at 6:30 and I think, "just ten more minutes" and then ten minutes pass and I think, "not today. I just don't want to today!" It's not the exercise at all--no, I quite enjoy that. It's the getting out of bed part. On our lazy days the kids jump all over our heads and unravel the toilet paper in the bathroom and procure themselves crackers from the cupboard and dump those all over the floor and jump on our heads some more until the glorious hour of about 8:00, and I'm okay with that. It feels kind of slothful (how you know you're getting responsible: 8:00 am feels indulgently late), but it feels nice. 6:30 am, on the other hand, barely gives me enough time to doze back to sleep after I've brought Liam to bed at 5. You know?
But anyway, the good news is that Brad is always there beside me, probably thinking the same thing, but neither of us is willing to be the lead in the proverbial pants, so we get up.
We are usually ten minutes later than planned.
But we're there.
Typically I get about 35 minutes of track time. It's been good--the older kids run around the track or play in the chairs surrounding the ice rink (although because of an overzealous employee we've had to tweak our routine a little and it now involves less playing in the chairs and more watching of TV shows on the iPad--because you know, the world is too dangerous a place for children. Best regulate them out of options until they're forced into the safety and security of television and video games. UGH). The other regulars recognize me, and since they're mostly all over 50, they love the novelty of a young mother bringing all her children to run around the track. I don't want to start throwing around words like "popular", but obviously it's unavoidable.
(here's a picture I found to help visualize)
I've been working on building up my endurance. My goal is to get to 5k by the time we move, and then no matter where we are or what we're doing, the weather will be warming up and the sun will be rising earlier and I should be able to establish a nice tidy habit over the summer--or that's the dream, anyway.
Monday was a glorious day, though! It's all because Brad was sick! Sound counter intuitive? I know. Here's the thing: usually I'm pushing Liam around the track in a Chariot double jogging stroller (without a pivoting front wheel, unfortunately), and usually I start off with two full rounds (each round is 250 m) and then walk half a round, run 1.5 rounds, repeat. But on Monday, because Brad was sick, I got the kids all cereal and left them at home while I went to the track (Evelyn is a very helpful and useful human being--it's great having older kids. They should advertise the advantages of this to parents pulling their hair out with only two children under 4--IT GETS EASIER!!!). And guess what? I did FOUR rounds of running in a row to start, and could have gone more but I didn't want to push myself to the point of never wanting to return. That's a solid kilometer! Woot! Proud! I think that everyone should have to push a stroller when they train for running--because when you need a boost, you just forego the stroller and miraculously your skill is like ten times further advanced than you thought! Do you remember that from when we were running together? I sure do--turns out it's hard work pushing even the best of strollers around!
Anyway, that's it. That's why I'm writing: I ran 1k easy. Feelin`good. 5k here I come! Next stop: Disneyland marathon, am I right?
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