The early bird gets 1/2 the worm

It's my first week back at training and of course, I have to fly for work and miss the group training session :(. To make up for it I decide to get up super early and go to the gym...super early is 5am but I'm such a spas at that hour of the day that I don't make it out the hotel room door until about 5:45am. I get to the gym and realize that I only have about 30 minutes to workout before I have to get ready to meet the clients. I'm supposed to run about 6 miles according to the schedule but I only get about 3 miles completed. I mean, how much earlier can an early bird be and who likes worms anyway. I think I might have to become a morning person to really committ to this running thing. :(

Cross Training Karma

Well I struck out with my gym attempt yesterday so I thought I would get up early and go to a yoga class. It would be a nice relaxing way to get back into working out. However, Monday morning came and I thought that the nicer and more relaxing thing to do would be to sleep and so I did just that. Before you snuff and say "of course, typical" and roll your eyes, know that I more than made up for my slacking this morning, this afternoon. I forced myself to leave work on time and head over to the 13th street gym for a much needed weight training class called Chisel.

I ran on the treadmill for about 10 minutes to warm up and then headed up the stairs to the class. When I got there, the instructor was still teaching bangra (I think that's how it's spelled). It's an Indian dance involving lots of shoulder movement and such. She seemed in good spirits and everyone looks like they were having fun. I stretched out while I waited for the class to end so that I and the 50 other people waiting to stampede in could get set up.

We finally get in and set up and there is almost no room to move, so what does the instructor do...she has us jack and lunge and kick and move about in a space that's already extremely crowded. I can't really concentrate on my form because I'm so nervous I will kick or be kicked by someone as eager and uncoordinated as myself. The class moves alone and so far so good, I'm even impressed that I can breathe and keep up on us because she's pretty tough on us. There is no stopping from jumping jacks to squats to lunges, to jump squats and back and back again. She starts yelling at us to hear her out and I'm thinking "I am hearing you but can't really answer as it's getting harder to breathe". All of a sudden there is a lot of heavy breathing and maybe it's my imagination but I think I hear her yell "Take It" in an angry and strange sort of way.

Now maybe it's just me but that's a phrase you typically don't hear a woman shouting at the top of her lungs while people grunt and breathe heavy. I ignore it and push on but she says it again. I soon realize that she must be a dominitrix on the weekends. She increases the repetitions and the weights and continues to instruct us to "Take It". I keep wondering if she's waiting for us to yell something back...several phrases come to mind (use your imagination because I don't feel I'm at liberty to share that here) but instead I simply remember to breathe through it and "take it" At the end of the hour I feel sufficiently worked out and I'm quite sure I'll be walking funny for the next week. What I'm not sure of is whether I was in a gym class or an adult film...gotta love Crunch.

The city that never sleeps except on Sunday after 10PM :(

I was all psyched about training again but you do need time to rest so I waited about two weeks after I signed up to start up. I promised my cousin that I would go skydiving with him after my marathon so I got up super early, popped a bunch of decongestants (I was fighting a bad cold) and drove down to South Jersey. By the time I got back it was pretty late and I was starving but fully intended to get a workout in to get back into the swing of things. I packed a gym bag and headed out to get a bite to eat first with Thomas. By the time we were done and I walked over from Spice on University to Crunch (the gym) on Lafayette, it was closed. I figured I'd walk up a bit to the Union Square Crunch but no luck. The workout would have to wait. :(

(I know I skipped the skydiving details but this is a running blog so for skydiving pics and commentary see myspace.com/lana_rose).

Why everyone loves re-runs

I ran my first marathon in Anchorage, Alaska. The training, the people, the charity, the event...everything was awesome and I was really proud to have completed what seemed like such an overwhelming task 4 months ago. I was also really pleased to have raised over $5,600 for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I should have been ecstatic for weeks after (I mean I could finally sleep late on weekends!) but I found myself a bit sad. I pushed through my melancholy telling myself I could relax for the rest of my summer, no schedule to meet, no coaches yelling at me with foreign accents, and no racing to practice after work like most people race to watch Greys or American Idol. Wait! That's exactly it...what do people do when their shows take their seasonal break? I guess they find a new show but nothing else seemed interesting enough to me and that's when Kat sent this at the bottom of one of her e-mails...

P.S. I AM RUNNING THE NIKE WOMEN’S MARATHON IN SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's when it hit me :) I didn't need a new show...I could re-run and exactly 10 days after my 1st marathon, I signed up for my 2nd! Let the training and fundraising begin all over again.