Whew! It’s been a quite a week of training and treadmills and puppies. I might be exaggerating on the training and treadmill parts but the puppy part…that’s been crazy, man.
TRAINING
My half marathon is coming up and my training time is going down. I’m pretty sure that’s not how the training books describe the training plan at this juncture. On Labor Day I did an 11 mile run (miracle in my book) and I pretty much thought I was a rock star. But then I had an epic allergy situation take place for the next few days and I was out of commission. By Thursday, I was off my game. I ran out of steam. In less that a week I felt like I broke the awesome little running habit I formed. So, what do I do when I need a little kick in the butt? I spend some quality time on Pinterest and look at the Health and Fitness page and ooh and ahh at the beautifully fit bodies, the really cool exercise routines and I promise myself that one day I will make that spinach-banana-chia pet-whatever smoothie. Yum.
TREADMILLS
I got over my “I don’t want to run anymore” mood when I looked at a calendar and counted only 3 more weekends before the half (well, that and the Pinterest fix). That was a nice tasty dose of reality…just as tasty as that chia pet smoothie, I bet. Anyway, I tried running outside but the air quality was very poor due to fires in Central WA. I busted out my trusty inhaler, ditched the outdoor runs and instead did some running on the treadmill. I even did an 8 mile run. EIGHT MILES on a treadmill! Not a lot of interesting scenery but I felt great and was proud that I accomplished that goal. I made fantastic use of my treadmill time and watched an episode of Rookie Blue, listened a bit to my audio book (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and I came up with a genius idea for treadmill manufacturers.
Instead of a calorie counting feature, there should be a feature that counts how many adult beverages you just earned. Let me break it down: Let’s say a glass of white wine is 130 calories. As you’re running on the treadmill, burning up those calories, an image of a wine glass starts to appear. As you burn more calories, more of the wine glass image is revealed. Once you burn 130 calories, your treadmill lights up the entire wine glass image. BAM! You just earned yourself a guilt free glass of wine. When you burn 260 calories, two wine glasses light up. Guess who gets two glasses of wine tonight?? And it doesn’t stop at wine. You can program it for martinis, margaritas, cosmos, whatever floats your boat. Anyway, I thought it was an amazing idea…Award winning stuff.
PUPPIES
So when I’m not coming up with ways to revolutionize the world of treadmilling (pretty sure that’s not a real word), I am busy with being a puppy mama which leads me to the Whippet Pupdate: Finn, the whippet puppy, is ridiculous. We cannot take our eyes off of him for two seconds. I’m not exaggerating. We can take our eyes off of him for one second but not two. He’s crazy fast and just disappears in a flash. It’s like his super power…We don’t even know how he does it. One second he’s at your feet, the next second he has vanished into thin air. Here’s a typical conversation at our house:
Me: Who’s got Finn?
Husband: I thought you had him?
Me: I thought YOU had him! Garrett!!! Do you have Finn?
Garrett: What?
Me: Do you have Finn?
Garrett: No. I thought YOU had him.
Me: Crap. Where’s Finn?? We gotta find Finn.
This conversation takes place 4 or 5 times a night. It reminds me of “The Walking Dead” when the adults always lose Karl. Karl is probably around 9 years old roaming around unsupervised in a land full of ravenous zombies. He’s the one and only child on the show that the grown ups must keep an eye on but Karl ALWAYS manages to disappear. Seriously grown ups, how can you lose Karl? If you’re a fan of all things zombies, you’ll love this show.
Anyway, back to Finn…
Finn looking playful
Finn looking thoughtful
Finn looking just plain adorable
Finn is a great addition to our family but I can’t wait until he’s old enough to start running with me. Then it will be Slow Girl and really, really fast dog! He will be the perfect solution to my “I don’t wanna run blues.”
