I suppose we all just wear bed sheet togas...

The 5k I'm running in tomorrow is sponsored by a popular local running store. I went to the store today to pick up my race packet. Let me preface this little story by telling you that the store was pretty well populated...it certainly wasn't dead in there. Plenty of ears around for the following verbal transaction between myself and the older gentleman manning the packet pick-up table.

OG: Name?
Mrs. B: Mrs. B.
OG: Ah, here you are, Mrs. B. Shirt size, extra large. No...WAIT! ONE X?! I didn't know they made them that big!
Mrs. B: *stunned silence*

Really? Seriously?! The man was just kind of clueless. He really wasn't trying to be malicious or mean, but saying something like that out loud? Let alone loudly out loud? In a populated place?

Where's that brain-to-mouth filter when you need it? Ugh.

"A change gonna come"

"Oh, there been times that I thought I couldn't last for long,
But now I think I'm able to carry on,
It's been a long, a long time coming,
But I know, a change gonna come. Yes it will."
("A Change is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke)


The mission: I will lose 30 pounds in 11 weeks.

The rules:
1. I will stay under 1,500 calories per day.
2. I will do a t5k at least four times per week. Every week.
3. I will eat salad for at least two of my meals per week.
4. I will eat lunch and dinner out only once per week.
5. I will take all of my medications as prescribed.
6. I will lose at least 30 pounds (2.74 pounds per week) at the end of 11 weeks.

The reward:
For each of the 79 days of this challenge (August 1 - October 18) that I successfully complete, I will deposit $2 into a dedicated bank account. If I have lost at least 30 pounds after 79 days, that money will go towards getting the tattoo of my dreams (which I am expecting to cost between $200 and $300).

If I have not lost 30 pounds after 79 days, the money I have collected will go into our regular savings account and I will have to wait until we can save up the money again and I have lost at least 30 pounds to get the tattoo.

My first wedding anniversary is October 18th - 11 weeks from this weekend. My original goal this year was to lose 60 pounds by this date, which would put me at under 200 pounds for the first time since high school. Waffling around for six months has made this goal less than realistic, and as I've always said, losing ANY amount of weight is a victory. If I did nothing more, I would probably finish this year saying I lost 10 pounds and ran two 5ks. While that's definitely progress over last year and pretty much every year up to now, that's just not good enough for me. I will finish this year saying that 2009 was the year I lost forty pounds and ran five 5ks.

Thirty pounds. Eleven weeks. One possible outcome: success (and a new tattoo to show for it).

I'm going to need your help, but I'm going to do it by and for myself. Are you with me?

p.s. A super-special-you're-the-bomb Thank You to Lyndsey for suggesting and unwittingly letting me steal her awesome reward idea...

Wanted: Reward

I've got something brewing...something big for me. I'll fill you in on it when I get all the little details worked out.

Here's the problem:

I don't know how to reward myself. I don't know what to work towards (other than weight loss and health benefits, obviously). Should I reward myself weekly, since I've got a gnat-sized attention span? What can I do that is somewhat inexpensive, since I've got a gnat-sized bank account at the moment? I want something good that will help keep me motivated, and I just don't know what that something or somethings good is. Are. Whatever, you get the picture.

I don't know what to do, and that's a big, fat chunk missing from my big, fat plan.

Help!

Mystery and Intrigue at Chateau Noir...

You all know by now how The Hubs’ crazy schedule is: on Mondays he has class from 7-9:15, and work from 10p – 6:30a. This means that I get to see him after I get home at 5:35 until he leaves around 6-6:10. The past few Mondays I’ve come home, he’s been up running around, making his lunch or finishing some last-minute homework and whatnot. One day a couple weeks ago, I got home, tried to open the door, and found he had it chained. He promptly rushed to the door and opened it for me. Trust me, Grasshopper, this will all make sense in a minute.

Last night, I got home at my normal time. I unlocked our door, pushed it open, and BAM! found it chained again. Assuming that my husband was running around as usual, I shut the door and waited for him to come rushing over to unlock it, only…he never came. After a few seconds, I opened the door as far as the chain would let me and realized that it was completely dark and silent in my apartment. I think, his car’s outside, and the chain’s on the door, so obviously, he’s got to be home. I call his cell phone – straight to voicemail. I call his cell phone again – straight to voicemail. (What’s that saying? The definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Just call me crazy.) I think I called his cell phone at least 4 times, and every. single. time. – straight to voicemail.

I think, Okay…I can’t get to him on the phone, and the door’s chained. How else can I get into this house without having to break down the door? The windows are all locked, so that won’t work. I had a fleeting pang of hope when I remembered that I have a key to the sliding glass door, but we’ve got a metal bar on the inside so that it can’t be slid open. I try in vain to somehow magically snake my arm around inside the door and simultaneously pull it as closed as possible to try and undo the chain. If you’ve ever seen a movie, you know this won’t work, and only succeeded in making me look like an idiot when our neighbor decided that that exact moment would be the one in which he would take his teacup Chihuahua out to poop.

I yell Jack's name, I bang on the door, I yell his name some more. There’s a very fine balance I’m trying to strike here, because the apartments I live in are not exactly strangers to the cops. I don’t want to yell and bang too much because I don’t want to (a) embarrass myself even more, (b) have the cops called on me, and (c) have to explain this situation to ANYONE. Without any other solutions in sight, I yell, and bang, and push on the door some more.

Now, at this point, I’ve been struggling to get into my own house for almost 25 minutes and I’m starting to panic. The Hubs is always up on Mondays. What is going on?! Why isn’t he up running around getting ready for school? Why is his phone dead? Is HE dead? Did somebody break in and kill him, and then chain the door to slow me down from finding him, and leave out the bedroom window? Did he have a heart attack from all the stress of night school and working third shift and having a crazy lady who’s contemplating breaking down the door for a wife? (Remember…I’m in panic mode).

Add this situation to the two other ill-fated chained-door entry issues in the past, and the door jam was barely hanging on by a thread (or a screw, I guess) at this point. I could push on the door and the jam would bow out from the wall, only attached at the top and bottom. Now, I’m panicked, my husband has surely been savagely murdered by someone conscientious enough to come back and chain the door before exiting out a window, or he’s in the throws of a heart attack, and I need to get to him. The only solution is to break open the door. So I start pushing on the door, and wedging my hand in between the jam and the wall, seriously hoping that I don’t get a splinter or get mamed by the screws hanging precariously on the jam. I’ve screamed his name, I’ve banged on the door, I’ve called his phone, I’ve solidified my crazy lady existence to the neighbors, and now I’m trying to break in to my own house.

Finally, I succeed, and the door jam breaks away from the top of the wall with a loud *crack* but remains connected to the bottom. It's enough for me to start working my way in the door, and then I hear an “oh, shit!” from the back room. I knew instantly that my husband was, indeed, alive, and not suffering from gunshot wounds or a heart attack, and I wanted to kill him. Since the jam was still connected at the bottom, the door was still only partially open but I could see The Hubs rushing down the hallway from the bedroom. “Are you okay?” I whimpered, and by the time he got to the door, I was leaning against a wall in the hallway completely sobbing. The thought that he could have seriously been gone had finally hit me. And then relief, mixed with absolute fury over the experience that I had just had took over. It manifested itself in blubbery, loud sobs.

Jack, concerned that my crying in the hallway might elicit some response from the neighbors, (as if the yelling, banging, and breaking down the door wasn’t enough) told me to come inside, but I couldn’t get my shit together. The purse I’d dropped on the floor in my attempt had spilled, and the decorative hanger that I had flung down there after my attempts to open the door got serious, lay discarded too. I finally managed to gather all my things, come in the door, and throw them on the ground. I calmly and politely asked my loving husband to not lock the chain while I'm gone, which came out something like, “You better never fucking lock that thing again!”, and sat down to decompress.

The Hubs, who probably had not once been scared for his own life that day until AFTER I got in the door, said he was sorry, and that his phone was dead and that he had been sleeping. I wasn't quite ready to chat yet, so he got all of his stuff together for school. I made myself dinner, made his lunch, kissed him goodbye, and spent the rest of the evening watching bad tv (Hello? Bachelorette? Ed gets the last measly 5 minutes, and you give Reed a half an hour?!) in bed.

This morning, the door jam is still hanging there, the chain is unuseable, and all is (at least temporarily) right with the world.

I Believe In You

Yes, yes, I'm alive. But I'm not quite ready to resume blogging just yet. In the interim, however, I'd like to share this sweet little ditty that I heard on the radio the other day...

I Believe In You - By Don Williams

I don't believe in superstars,
Organic food and foreign cars.
I don't believe the price of gold;
The certainty of growing old.
That right is right and left is wrong,
That north and south can't get along.
That east is east and west is west.
And being first is always best.

But I believe in love.
I believe in babies.
I believe in Mom and Dad.
And I believe in you.

Well, I don't believe that heaven waits,
For only those who congregate.
I like to think of God as love:
He's down below, He's up above.
He's watching people everywhere.
He knows who does and doesn't care.
And I'm an ordinary man,
Sometimes I wonder who I am.

But I believe in love.
I believe in music.
I believe in magic.
And I believe in you.

Well, I know with all my certainty,
What's going on with you and me,
Is a good thing. It's true,
I believe in you.

I don't believe virginity,
Is as common as it used to be.
In working days and sleeping nights,
That black is black and white is white.
That Superman and Robin Hood,
Are still alive in Hollywood.
That gasoline's in short supply,
The rising cost of getting by.

But I believe in love.
I believe in old folks.
I believe in children.
I believe in you.

But I believe in love.
I believe in babies.
I believe in Mom and Dad.

And I believe in you.

"Ahh, ooh, push it..."

...p-push it real good!" ("Push It" by Salt n Pepa).

In May, I had a t5k best time of 52:39.
Monday, I broke that record with a time of 52:11.
Tonight, I shattered that record with a time of 51:20.

And damn, does it feel good.

I was sabotaged by a dead man.

I had every intention (okay, almost every intention) of doing another t5k last night. Monday's went well...1:30 run/3:30 walk at an 0.5% incline, which left me with my fastest treadmill time to date: 52:11. For some reason, I can't seem to get under 52:00 on that darn thing. Anyway, it went well, and I was able to keep it up for the whole duration of the 5k, so that's a good sign of things to come.

And as I said, I had almost every intention of doing it again last night. But then...I was flipping through the channels on the TV and came across the Michael Jackson memorial service on BET. I ask you this: how's a girl supposed to get up and run/walk 5k while she's crying her eyes out?! Not that I'm a crazy MJ fan who is devastated by his death, but pretty much any death is sad. And then to see his family and how much grief they are feeling, and then you add in music? There was no chance. Brooke Shields' speech? Marlon (I think) singing "Smile"? Paris saying that her daddy was "the best daddy in the whole world"? While I might raise an eyebrow at that, you can't deny that three children just lost the only person they've ever known as their dad.

If that doesn't bring you to tears, I don't know what will.

Anyway, I plan on staying as far away as possible from any more coverage of the memorial. If for no other reasons than (1) my heart can't take it. I'm already an emotionally unstable mess with The Hubs being gone all the time, and (2) I really, really want to get back on that treadmill and (I absolutely hate this saying) git 'er done this week.



MJ, it didn't matter if you were Black or White. You took it in stride when the world was against you and said that you were Bad. They may have told you to Beat It, but you proved to them that you weren't a Smooth Criminal. You weren't a criminal at all.

You made the whole world want to Rock With You (all night), and I don't mind saying that You Rock My World with your music. Billie Jean may not have been your lover, but there were millions of other women in the world that wished they were. I will always Remember The Time you did the moonwalk at the 25th Anniversary Motown show, and I'll never lose The Way You Make Me Feel when I listen to your music. It's always a Thriller of an experience.

I hope that now, when you look at the Man in The Mirror, you see that You Are Not Alone. We Are The World, and we will always remember you.

P.S. Your daughter is such a P.Y.T.! What a cutie!

Rest In Peace.

Finally...

In this battle of good vs. evil, where good = actually getting my ass on the treadmill and doing what I need to do, and bad = sitting on the comfy couch and watching bad tv all night...

Good totally wins for once.

Treadmill 5k, here I come!

"Motivate me..."

"...I wanna get myself out of this bed,
Captivate me,
I want good thoughts inside of my head,
If I fall down, would you come around,
and pick me right up off the ground?"
("Motivation Proclamation" by Good Charlotte).

249.4

That pound I lost? Found it! God, why are they so easy to find?! Even with running a 5k this weekend (update later) I gained weight. Bah.

So let's talk motivation.

Somebody around here told the karma gods that I thought that 5k was going to be easy...and when I find out who it was, you're going to be in "big trouble, mister"! That 5k? Was so. not. easy. It probably could have been, had I been training. It's a simple case of cause and effect. And when you boil it down, the whole weight loss thing is a simple case of cause and effect, too.

Cause: I didn't train before my most recent 5k.
Effect: I pretty much felt like I was going to die and only, somehow magically, beat my previous time by 18 seconds. 18 seconds.

Cause: I eat crap and don't work out.
Effect: I weigh 249.4 pounds and have two chins and a bowl full of jelly.

So, my motivation consists of many things. Currently, though, my motivation is the fact that the last 5k totally, 100%, kicked my ass. I was miserable. I considered quitting. Like, seriously, considered turning around and going back. After less than a mile. It shouldn't be that hard. Especially when I've already done it once, and had another month to get in better shape for it.

My motivation is that I know I have to put myself through this hell three more times. And I know that I have the power to make it easier on myself. I can make it so that it's not such a horrible experience. It's going to suck, yes. But it doesn't have to suck that much.

Strangely, after the first 5k, I didn't want to get back on the treadmill. I was sore, and felt like I had accomplished a feat, so I deserved a break. That damn break quickly turned into a downward spiral into old habits. For me, that's probably the hardest part about this whole damn thing...I can never quit. I have to keep going. I have to make it to every single workout. And for the rest of my friggen' life. UUUUUUUUUUGH!

I can't think about that.

What I'm focusing on is this: after this 5k, I now feel much more desire to get my butt back on that treadmill, and back to t5ks and c25k, just so that in one month's time, I'm not wishing I could lay down in front of the leaders of the pack and get trampled - put out of my misery. Right now, it's not even so much about losing weight, as it is about getting my running back on schedule. (The plus side is that one leads to the other...)

I gotta Forrest Gump my ass into that next 5k. I want to finish in less than 46:00. I want to make progress that you can actually call progress. I don't want to feel like I'd rather drop dead than go out there and do it again.

And it's all within my power to do so. I just have to do it.

In other news:

The Hubs started 3rd shift last night. I saw him for about 10 minutes as I was getting ready this morning. The next time I'll get any extended quality time with him will be Friday night. Fun times.

And I think that's about it.

I hope you all are doing better on your journey than I am!

47:19

That was a rough one, but at least I beat my time! More later, lovelies!

Here we go again...

I should totally be in bed right now.

I've got to be up and out of the house by 6:45 tomorrow morning for 5k number two. And then I've got a wedding to go to. Yeah, it's gonna be one of those days...

The Hubs and I went and picked up my race "packet" today, which consisted of my race bib (Number 10 this time) and my t-shirt. What?! No freebie 5k swag?! I feel totally jipped. As we all know, I only run these things for the free samples. And as we all know, I'm lying. Still, a couple free samples would have been nice...

We drove the course after I got my number, and it actually seems easier than the first one. I know, I say that now, and then come in with a time in the 50's tomorrow, right? I'm so trying not to jinx myself right now, so if you didn't tell the karma gods that I said it looked easy, I'd appreciate it, okay?

The course is almost entirely through a compact residential area, and only one small section is on a main public street. There are maybe three or four hills, one of which is a little steep, but short. The others are all slight gradual inclines. I think, possibly because it winds through a relatively small residential area, it seems shorter than the last one, which ended with one big, looooong straight-away through most of mile 3. That might be playing with my head right now and making me think it's not as daunting as the last one. I don't know...

What I do know is this: I have to finish this 5k faster than my last one (47:37). If I do that, I'll be happy.

I also know that I've somehow got to muster the strength to attend a wedding and reception, where I'm sure I'll be required to Cupid Shuffle, Cha Cha Slide, and Booty Call. (Yeah, that last one sounded dirty.)

As always, I'll let you know how it goes. If you're up and at 'em at around 8 am Eastern Standard Time, this chubby little runner sure would appreciate some 5k mojo sent her way. Think good thoughts for me, eh?

And if you read this after 9 am Eastern Standard Time? Wake up and move your butt! I already ran a 5k today...what have you done?!

Hi, Koo!

Excuse my fat ass
Unfortunately flabby
Did I sit on you?

Diets are no fun
I hate counting calories
And moving my ass

I'm running 5ks
And trying not to throw up
It's so not pretty

Rabbit food is gross
But ultimately low-cal
Suck it up, you wimp!

Conquering my weight
Hard, but not impossible
Willpower would help.

Running Down a Dream: Songs to run to

I've made my playlist for Saturday's 5k. I try to stick to music that is not only very upbeat, but that will keep me distracted interested throughout the duration. For this playlist, I also chose quite a few songs that are old favorites that I may not have heard for a while.

1. Proud - Heather Small (a.k.a. The Biggest Loser theme song)
2. I Know You Want Me - Pitbull
3. Buch Dich - Rammstein
4. Cupid Shuffle - Cupid
5. See You Again - Miley Cyrus
6. Crazy Bitch - Buck Cherry
7. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
8. Boom Boom Pow - Black Eyed Peas
9. Pussy Control - Prince (haven't heard it in forever and it's got a great beat. Don't judge.)
10. Let The Bodies Hit The Floor - Drowning Pool
11. Ladies' Night - Kool & The Gang
12. Gasoline - Kicking Harold (the song they play at the end of every Overhaulin' episode)
13. Push It - Salt 'n Pepa
14. Shut Up and Let Me Go - The Ting Tings

Let's get this show on the road!