Flying

I played tricks on myself this morning: I wasn't sure that I wanted to do forty minutes on the rowing machine, so I promised myself that I could (if I so chose) do thirty minutes of erg and then fifteen on the stationary bicycle. When I got close to thirty minutes, I started setting smaller goals - get past x metres, get past y metres, sprint for a minute, etc. Besides, when you've done thirty minutes already, ten doesn't feel like much at all.

...I did some time on a stationary bike anyway, but nothing major.

The rowing machine is my favourite machine for zoning out. On the elliptical I get distracted by my feet going numb, on the bicycle I read, and on the treadmill I just want to curl up and die already... but on the erg there's nothing to do but establish a rhythm and stare off into space (Well. Or get a crick in my neck trying to see the television screens in the gym, and whatever's on is rarely worth it). I'm not always sure, when I leave, what thoughts went through my mind, but I know that I feel grounded.

(Speaking of grounded: I dreamed that I could fly! I'd never had a flight dream before.)

Little things

Man, I'd run all the time if the weather were like this every day - grey and cool and just barely muggy (yesterday and the day before it was hot hot hot and muggy and sunny and running was not so very much fun).

Today I ended up in blue shorts, blue sports bra, red t-shirt, and red socks... throw in my (very) blue eyes and (currently) red hair - not to mention my red face by the time I was through with my run - and I was very match-y today indeed. Silly, but it rather pleased me.

It's the little things.

Judgement-Free Zone

I saw a sign in a gym the other day: "Judgement-Free Zone". The gym was one of those huge ones with enormous plate-glass windows showcasing the cardio machines (and possibly weight training area, etc.; I didn't look closely enough to tell).

And I wonder - can that really be a judgement-free zone?

One of the reasons that I love my gym is that it doesn't have the whole plate-glass-window thing going on. I like that the crowd there is mixed; men of the rippling-muscle persuasion work out ten feet away from grey-haired, overweight couples. Moreover, it's three stories up; there are windows, you can't see much from outside. My body image isn't terrible, but neither is it flawless, and I would hate to have my sweaty, red-faced self in full view of the public as I hustled along on an elliptical.

Except - wait - I run in public. I don't mind that. And... I don't know what the difference is.

I know that, when I run outside, I open myself up to the scrutiny - however brief, however minimal - of the people I run past. At the same time, though, everyone out there on the sidewalk is in the same boat; the only difference is that most of them aren't running. I don't feel (very) self-conscious because I am aware that very few people really give a damn that I am huffing and puffing and really not very attractive while running. Somehow it is different with, you know, running in place and a giant plate-glass window. To many, I am sure that is fine (or better than fine). To me, it just... doesn't feel comfortable. Doesn't feel non-judgemental.

Dear self: Priorities, please

One of the reasons that I set myself this set of running goals - that I am following somebody else's plan and not creating my own - is that I don't do moderation very well. My inclination is to push myself farther than I think I can go... and then do it all again the next day, with an absolute minimum of rest days. In a way this training schedule is an exercise in frustration: it's not that I wake up every single morning with a burning desire to go run, but on off/strength/cross days, my inner bitch of a control freak rears her head and demands to know why I'm not running. You ran four miles yesterday, she says, so why aren't you running five today?

So that isn't why I run, but it is why I'm following a set schedule: hopefully it'll keep me sane a bit longer.

It's a lot easier to talk myself into breakfast/lunch/dinner when I'm running or otherwise working out every day (It really, really sucks to run when you haven't eaten in two days. Take my word on this one and don't try it at home), but I struggle with that. It's almost funny - I read other blogs, or books, in which women talk about turning to running to justify food, or talk about not allowing themselves certain treats unless they've met their fitness goals, and for me it's kind of the other way: I don't get to work out if I haven't eaten enough. I'm not really sure what that says about me, but... it has its ups and downs.

This past week or so has been a bit of a hard one in that respect. I think I'm getting enough calorie-wise (I don't think it'd be the best plan ever for me to count), but I'm planning it badly, running before breakfast and generally not eating after about five in the evening. This wouldn't be a big deal except that I can feel the difference when I run.

There is a bright side: I want to run more than I want to restrict. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

Straight Shot

I ran downtown again this morning - the same run that I meant to do last week, only this time I didn't get lost.

I spent a fair amount of time people-watching... at 8:30 on a Sunday morning, there aren't so many people out there (the place I caught the train back is kind of creepy in its emptiness at that time, actually), but - I don't know.

There are the other runners, who can be broken into various subsets - the smile-and-nod-in-solidarity runners versus the I'm-in-my-zone-don't-look-at-me runners, or the in-pain-and-not-trying-to-hide-it runners versus the BQ-or-bust runners, or the lycra-shorts-and-colourful-sports-bra runners versus the rumpled-t-shirt-and-ill-fitting-shorts runners (or the guy I saw running in jeans and a polo shirt. Yes, really).

Then there are non-runners of similar subsets. You get the people who smile at you and step out of the way so that you don't have to slow down (this morning, one man turned to smile and say, "You go, girl!"), and you get the people whose facial expressions say, clearly, "Why on earth is she doing that?"

If you take the subway home, you get three kinds of looks from people: "Good for you! You've been out exercising already", "Ew, get away from me, you sweaty person", or "Uh... why are you on the subway? Shouldn't you be in a gym, or running, or something?" (Well, you also get a lot of people who just don't care. But that's par for the course anyway.)

If - like me! - you get lost a lot, you end up interacting with more people than you might otherwise. I have honed my direction-asking skills - it pays to be small, female, and have a trace of an accent (I am told that this combination comes in handy in evading speeding tickets as well, but... well, I still can't drive, so that point is moot). I guess it's also a matter of knowing who to ask (i.e., don't ask the guy talking on a cell phone and juggling a cup of coffee and checking his watch as he hurries in the opposite direction), but honestly... people up here are nicer than they get credit for, I think.

I guess at some point I'm going to have to figure out how to make this run a loop - I like loops; I like Point-A-to-Point-B runs; I very much dislike there-and-back runs - at which point I may get to find whole new subsets of people to eyeball.

Rowing forever and ever and ever...

I love the rowing machine. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it's because I feel as though I'm using my whole body to row.

Saturdays are (according to my shiny training schedule) cross days, so... erg it was this morning (last week I swam, but the local pool is small enough - three lanes - that just a few people too many and it's impossible to get a rhythm going). The erg is the only cardio machine for which I can't read while working out (bikes & books, treadmills/ellipticals & magazines), but... it doesn't matter. I've stopped bringing an ipod to the gym - largely because I don't run with one anymore - so rowing is time to either think or zone out.

I play games with the clock on the machine: At least three minutes have to pass before I look again. Let's see if I can get to x metres in the next 30 seconds. At y time, I'm going to sprint for a minute. They're kind of like the games that I play with food, actually, except (I hope) it's less destructive when it's just rowing.

Anyway. My parents are coming up to visit next week, so I told my mother to pack her running clothing: she has never used a rowing machine, which I think is TRAGIC. We are going to remedy this situation (and, yeah, probably go running, too).

The thing about the rowing machine is that I really do feel as though I could just keep going and going. I mean, with running - even when I enjoy it - I know that I'm going to hit a brick wall and it'll be freaking hard to push past it. The wall with the rowing machine is more like cardboard.

Of course, whether or not I actually apply them...

Lessons learned today:

-Running in misty rain is really quite lovely.

-I can go over dance choreography in my head while I am walking. I cannot go over the same choreography while I am running.

-Stretching does, in fact, help my shoulders stay loose while I run.

-There are way too many traffic lights en route to the pond to justify running there and back - not worth it unless I'm also running around the pond.

-Sometimes you need to just get up and run. Sometimes you need to sleep in and run later. Either is okay.

Blackmailing myself into stretching

Three miles this morning... it was definitely one of those days when I didn't want to run, which is one of the reasons that I'm grateful to be following a schedule. Although I'm probably harder on myself than any schedule that I could find to follow (again with the "I don't do moderation well" and "Rest days? What are you talking about?"), there are sometimes those days when you just don't. want. to. run.

I haven't lived here for long, so I'm learning my neighbourhood by running it: I use googlemaps to plot my routes, and then... well, then I try not to get too lost. Because I don't always know the areas I end up running through, it's a mixed bag: sometimes I run through the sort of classic, historic parts of town; sometimes I run through areas that I probably wouldn't want to walk through carrying a purse. I recently figured out just how easy it is to run downtown - under four miles (on Sunday I ran downtown, ran around the Common to make it an even four, and took the subway home. My roommate was very amused by this).

Today's run was one of my bread-and-butter runs, though, a loop around the neighbourhood (mostly because I plan my runs the night before, and last night I was too tired to bother coming up with something new). It's pretty flat, pretty basic, the weather was cool and dry -

- and, yikes, everything hurt. My shoulder (which is normal; I never remember to stretch), my back, my chest, my knee...

So, note to self: stretch before running tomorrow! Stretch, self, or we will run hill sprints again!

Reading on running

I read a lot, and by "a lot" I mean 4-10 books a week. My interests vary - some weeks I read nothing but murder mysteries, some weeks it's all YA lit, some weeks I can't get enough of memoirs or nonfiction. I read while eating breakfast, walking down the sidewalk, riding the subway, cooking dinner, using a stationary bicycle. I am only partly kidding when I say that it is one of life's great disappointments that I cannot read while running or rowing.

My current running plan is actually one that I found by browsing through a bookstore's running section: I poked around until I found some authors whose styles I liked, narrowed those down to running plans that were challenging enough to keep me happy but manageable enough that I wouldn't accidentally keel over dead, and... went to the library to see what was available.

(I'm poor. If this whole running thing works out, I'll buy the book for real.)

Anyway, after deciding that I liked the flexible attitude demonstrated in Hal Higdon's books, I ended up using a plan from his website (http://www.halhigdon.com/). First, though, I checked out some general books on running. The library options were a bit limited, actually, but I did find a couple of running books tailored to women...

...which were quite a disappointment.

Don't get me wrong - they had good advice, and a lot of what they said made good sense. But I was struck by the emphasis on beginner that these books had compared to books not tailored towards women. Gender-neutral books (with the exception of books written specifically for beginners) spend a couple of chapters talking about beginning to run and then dive into longer distances, competitions, running for time. The women's running books that I read spent chapter after chapter on diet and weight loss and the benefits of running and what to wear and how it's really not that hard to run a 5k! You can do it!

Again: don't get me wrong. The books have a point, and for a beginning runner the emphasis on, well, beginning is much more useful than a book geared towards serious long-distance runners. I think I just resent the fact that there's so little on long-distance running for women - a couple of chapters at best. (That, and I just can't get behind a book that refers to taking a bathroom break while running as "taking a potty break". I guarantee that that phrasing wouldn't fly in a gender-neutral book.)

...One author said that, if you're going to judge other runners, don't judge them by how far/fast they run but by how devoted they are to running (i.e., whether they run every day, rain or shine, or only on weekends). That was about where I stopped taking the book seriously - I'm not interested in judging how "real" a runner anybody else is.

I picked up some useful tips from these books, but when I buy a couple of books about running, they probably won't be geared towards women. I'm not in it to lose weight or to de-stress after work. I'm in it to run.

Why "Just Dance"?

I guess it doesn't make a ton of sense to call this blog "Just Dance" when I'm talking about running, huh.

I danced for three years in college. It was simultaneously the hardest and most rewarding thing that I did in those three years - I have no dance background, minimal coordination, and a giant dose of stage fright (it should be noted that there were no tryouts; the group accepted everyone who wanted to drum or dance). It was the thing that kept me sane, the thing that drove me insane, and the thing that kept me moving (three two-hour practices every week makes for pretty good exercise).

Then I graduated, that was the end of that, and I joined a gym.

At this point I go for a run more often than I go to the gym, but what I found was that some kinds of cardio - the elliptical machines in particular - give me the same feeling of strength and joy that dancing did/does. With the right music, it doesn't feel like exercise at all. I haven't found that feeling yet with running, haven't yet found a space where I don't know my limitations, but that's where I hope to be eventually.

Today was a gym day instead of a running day: I'm on the second week of a 12-week half-marathon training program (I don't do moderation very well... but that is perhaps a topic for another time), and Mondays are "stretch and strengthen" days (stretching: another thing that I don't do very well). I have mixed feelings about circuit training, but it definitely makes for a nice break following yesterday's four-mile run - my longest yet! I'm chomping at the bit somewhat, though; I miss cross-training.

The rowing machine is my favourite cardio yet: if I could find a way to row and read at the same time, I wouldn't need to run.

And thus a runner was born

It's my sister's fault, really.

Okay, that's not fair: I started running because I was going insane from lack of exercise (wait - that's not fair either - I was going insane, and lack of exercise wasn't helping). Hey, I thought, why not run? Running would definitely be cheaper than the gym.

Running was horrible. Shin pain. Asthma. Boredom.

I joined the gym.

But then my sister called from Vancouver, all chipper. Had I heard of this couch-to-5k program? No? Well, she was trying it.

What the heck, I thought. I can do that.

I'd love to be able to say "and thus a runner was born" (hence the title of this post), but I don't think I'm a runner yet. I'm not sure what the difference is between a runner and somebody who runs, but for the moment I think I fall in the latter category. Yes, I run. Talk to me in a month or so, when I've run my first 5k: maybe I'll be a runner then.