I haven’t been writing much (at all) lately, and I haven’t been running much (at all) lately but I have been doing lots of cool stuff I can’t wait to write about. Everything from indoor rock climbing to the beach at night to just exploring new places. You know what I haven’t been doing? I mean besides what I already said?  I haven’t been taking any pictures of all the cool!  Lame, I know.  So I’m on a mission to find some good pictures that other people took of some of the cool places around Tampa I’ve been exploring.

And also to stop being so amused with what I’m doing that I forget that I’ll want to write about it later and so forget to take pictures.  In my defense, Bert would be proud.  (Don’t tell him but I always liked Ernie better. And Grover. Also, I have no idea who that guy singing is. Don’t tell that guy either.)

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it here, but I have a crap-ton of family.  Yes, that’s the scientific term.  And going back they are Italian, which basically means we all hang out in the kitchen, eating a lot, and throwing our hands around while talking in a way that is dangerous to all. We get together fairly often, and it’s always for a meal.  Breakfast at the sister’s, dinner at wherever; I don’t know why but lunch is never officially a thing. My slightly off kilter family calls it dinner after 12 and breakfast before, and since noon is only one minute long it doesn’t count.

We never meet up at my house because everyone else’s house is bigger with more sitting space. I’m not allowed to cook because I’m a vegetarian and enough said.  They always tell me to bring the salad or the veggy tray, apparently I am not to be trusted around anything that must be heated.

We have experimented with using a private Facebook group (my idea but not everyone would play along) but we usually just use a group email and edit the menu part. My silly family put me in charge of the email a few years ago, I think for Easter.  Maybe Thanksgiving, I don’t remember. I changed everyone’s answer to Dr. Seuss answers (Roast Beast, etc.) and was never allowed to coordinate again. Sad but true.

Apparently they forgot because they put me in charge of the emails again this year.  (Insert evil laugh here) this time I decided to go all high tech on them and use a site called PerfectPotluck.com.  I found out about it when a co-worker used it for a work potluck.  It is very cool!

Basically you tell it how many you want of each item (side dishes, desserts, plates, utensils), jot down a note, type in all of your recipient’s email addresses and off you go.  They click a link in the email you receive and enter whatever they’d like to contribute. It’s pretty cool and super easy.

This is our first family event we used this for and I just sent out the invites but I’m pretty sure based on how well it worked at work that it’ll be out easiest arranged potluck yet.

How does your family do Thanksgiving? Does one person do everything or do you potluck it like we do?

Well, tonight I ran outside for the first time I can remember.  I had stopped running completely for probably 4 months, until last week I started running just a mile on the treadmill after tae kwon do classes.  When I was running last I was running on the treadmill for months – it just appealed to me for a while.

All I ran was a mile and a quarter before class tonight, but that’s all it took. I feel the addiction starting again…

I have to say, as not-common-sense as it may sound I think running barefoot outside is so much better for my feet than running on the treadmill.  On the treadmill my toes get sore from rubbing on the tread, outside my feet feel fine.  I did see a lot of little broken glass in 2 places tonight, but that’s pretty easy to see reflecting the street lights.

Anyways, the long and short of it is I do believe it’s time to get back on the running horse and start working on getting some mileage going!

So no photo today.  The prompt was landmark, I really didn’t have anything older to fit that prompt and I didn’t even get outside today on my lunch so I had no chance of getting a photo today.  All good though – it’s been a great day.

Have you ever tried barefoot running?  If you like running and you haven’t tried it barefoot, what’s stopping you?  Give it a try!

The photo prompt today was streets.   I love pictures of streets, trails, and rivers; they look inviting and always make me wonder what is just around the next bend.  If you ever were to look through my pictures on my computer there is a disproportional amount of them of rivers and trails.

It just so happens I took the picture below on on my way home from work right before I got the photo prompt.  I love this picture, the trees and windmill behind a busy street full of cars is exactly how it is where I live. I was sitting at one of the last lights before my neighborhood, within walking distance of home.

This afternoon while I took a walk on my lunch break I took a couple of other pictures of streets.  These are different angles of the same street, Linebaugh Ave. As seen from walking on the street, from walking below, and walking directly below.

If I’d had time I would have liked to add some pictures of the streets in my neighborhood.  They are all curved enough to make pulling out a a driveway a challenge and most of them have either water on one side, trees on one side, or both.  The ones that have both I avoid like the plague when I run outside at night.  Which I haven’t done in way too long….

In addition to #NaBloPoMo I also signed up for Photography 101 this month.  All or nothing, right?  The photo theme of the day is ‘home’.  That’s a word that means different things to different people and which has meant very different things to me at different times.

I’ve lived in Arizona most of my life, and a few years in California as well.  I felt at home in those places, or I thought I did. I was perfectly fine with either one of them really.

But then I moved to Florida and I found that home isn’t just where the heart is as so many people say. Home is the place that when you get there you find you don’t want to leave.  I’ve only been here 8 years but after the first year I was already hooked.  Visiting other places is fun and I’d love to go back and visit the desert and the mountains, but Florida is home to me.

I don’t seem to be able to get back into running OR writing ever since I stopped when I was sick.  It’s not because I don’t have time or anything logical like that, I just got out of the habit and haven’t got back in yet.  To help me get back in the habit of writing (since I do, after all, enjoy it!) I joined a Writing 101 class.  It’s not exactly a class, but that’s a close enough description for me.

The first assignment?  Just to write freely for 20 minutes.   And then post it. I am taking the fact that it is an assignment as an excuse to simply write for 20 minutes without worrying about wrapping up the subject, giving an  answer to the problem, or looking for a picture to go with it. One neat thing about this assignment is that when I was done I had all kinds of other things that I wanted to write about.  I do believe this class may work to get me back into writing!

So here is assignment 1, free writing.  It’s kind of funny because writing the first paragraph I wasn’t even planning to write about food.  🙂

Am I the only one who sometimes looks around and feels overwhelmed by everything there is to do and everything there is to accomplish? I want to do so many things, but I just don’t. I’d like to say there isn’t enough time, and there really isn’t sometimes but most of the time I simply don’t know how to get started or after I have started I don’t know what to do next.

One of my big challenges right now is eating right, and making certain that my kids start eating better. One big challenge is that the boys and I have tae kwon do classes three or four nights a week and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for cooking dinner, especially since we don’t want to eat right before we leave for class. Running around with a just filled stomach is not the most fun thing ever.

I know that prepping food on the weekends, planning easy things like sandwiches, and using the crockpot all would help. Knowing this and doing it are two very different things! Of course it doesn’t help that my kids see any food that’s not what they usually eat as something to run from. Frozen pizza, burritos, or chicken nuggets are their idea of the perfect dinner. It should be as easy as not buying the things I don’t want them to eat and I do that often enough, but then there’s the little part where I have to supply healthy food as an alternative. Curses!

One thing I never learned at home was how to cook. My mom always did a meat, a veggy and a starch and we always sat at the table together and ate. But us kids had nothing to do with the actual cooking. I think the most I ever did in the kitchen was make kool aid. Of course it didn’t help that I became a vegetarian and moved out when I was 17, I didn’t even know what vegetarians where supposed to eat let alone how to cook whatever it was.

I bought the book Lauren’s Kitchen and started making my own breads, sprouting, and all the interesting things that were in the book. Not bad for someone who was known for burning water. But then I had kids, and baking bread and sprouting was replaced with walking around and around the house or neighborhood with a colicky baby, reading stores, taking day trips to the library for story time, all the things that moms of little ones find consuming all of their time. Food was the last thing on my mind, I ate at work or grabbed a cheese sandwich, whatever was quick and easy.

All of that seemed fine and good and I really didn’t worry about what I was feeding myself or my family much. But with the advent of social media a person really can’t ignore or say they didn’t know about just how bad some of the food is that we eat every day. Chemicals in the food, hormones in the dairy and meat, and now GMOs to worry about. How is a person not to be overwhelmed?

About that 10K goal.  Ya, I still have it.  But how do you take anything too seriously when it’s summer time and you are living in Tampa? If you know don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.

Ya, huge Sublime fan here.

Summer is always a little bittersweet if you ask me.  The possibilities are endless, except for that whole gotta feed the kids 9-5 thing.  My 9-5 is as a technical analyst. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, I actually have to think 8-10 hours a day.  Nerd that I am I enjoy it, but when I’m done I’m done, and this is what’s left.  🙂

Anyways, back to my 10K goal.   I have been following the plan minus the cross training. I do yoga after every run, sometimes quite a bit, but that’s a much cross training as I’ve done since starting the 10K plan.  Until this week, when summer time hit.

First, I started the Kinetic Revolution 30 Day Challenge which, as all things do that look super easy at first, kicked my butt by the second week and reminded me that people who do not cross train are weaker than people who do. So ya, my legs are a wee bit more tired than they should be.

Then, to celebrate and make official summer I went paddleboarding AND kayaking.  I paddleboarded out, switched with my boyfriend and kayaked back in.  Best of both worlds!  You want some excellent cross training, try anything with a paddle.

Then, to also celebrate and make summer official I went for an hour swim.  It was both hella fun and hella exhausting.

And then I realized.  I have the choice of continuing to try to up my distance running each week, jumping into all kinds of other crazy exhausting but fun other summer activities, or trying to do it all.  I choose a lazy combination of all of the above.  I’m going to stick to running 4 miles on the weekend for a while and swim, paddle, hike, and other summer stuff my heart out.  I still intend to gradually add distance to my ‘long runs’, but not every week until I get used to all the extra stuff I’ve been doing.

I had my eye on a cool sounding 10K in July, but it specifically said it was NOT for run/walkers. That’s intimidating since it would be my first 10K and I’ve never done a 5K that wasn’t a mud run or fun run. Plus some people said that it was not only extremely hot in spite of being a night run, it was extremely dark in some parts which would make me nervous running by myself barefoot or not.

I’m thinking I will let summer be summer, gradually continue with my plan but repeat weeks as much as I want for a while, and look for a 10K when it starts to cool off a wee bit, maybe in September. I feel pretty good about this since paddleboarding and swimming are WAY more exhausting than running so they can only help my running in the long run (no pun intended).

So, what is my current goal? Paddle a lot, run 3 days a week consistently (hopefully including trails but not ticks, a whole ‘nother post)  listen to a while lot of Sublime, Weezer, Slipknot and such, appreciate the local bars, wineries and breweries, visit some aquariums and generally live like a tourist because I DO live in vacation land after all.

These guys agree with me, I’m pretty sure.

I’ll leave you with an entirely inappropriate but yet completely my favorite Sublime song because it’s summer and so I can.

How about you, do you change your plans for summertime even if you are an adult who doesn’t get the benefit of being off for the summer? You should!

I am. After all, I wouldn’t even be kinda zennish if I didn’t.

I said that I was starting a 10K running program and that I’d start doing a weekly update, I bet since you haven’t seen an update you think I quietly skipped out (again), right?  Wrong!  So far so good, no skipped or moved runs at all.

I decided it would not be a cop out to add a cushion week in before starting the actual plan since it had been a while since I ran and I didn’t want to give myself an excuse to quit the first week!

I’m running Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.  I may switch that to a Saturday here and there since a weekend run is a weekend run, but no other editing.  My add on week was a 2 mile, 1.5 mile, then 2.5 mile run.  This week I did a 2.5 Tuesday and 2 miles tonight.  So far they’ve all been barefoot and on the treadmill.  Sunday I’m meeting a running group (never did that before) and will do a 3 mile trail run.  That’ll be fun!  My oldest son is going with me so I know I’ll finish, I don’t run with anyone else often so when I do I don’t even notice the miles because it’s something different.  I’ll wear my minimalist shoes for that and maybe for all of my ‘long’ runs because the 10K I think I’ll be signing up for is a midnight run and I was told the turnaround part is really dark.  I like barefoot but not in pitch black conditions!

I’ve been doing yoga after every run and though I can’t say it’s been easy for me to finish all the runs I can say I haven’t been sore anywhere or had any real issues finishing.  I just have a horrible habit of looking at the mileage every 2 seconds which make my runs seem to take FOREVER.  I’ve been listening to Zombies, Run!, Rock My Run, and podcasts and it makes a big difference.  Especially if I hit on a really funny podcast.

My one fail has been cross training.  I haven’t been.  It’s part of the plan and I need to get started on it. I wish my Radio Flyer looking bike wasn’t messed up, that would make cross training fun.  I did go kayaking last Thursday, that counted as cross training for certain, even if it was a run day!

Lots of other great non-running things have been happening too. I’ll have to give an update soon on the garden, the chicks, our newest farm-y addition and some other things like a giveaway to the Margarita Festival coming up in Tampa!

Are you training for or starting anything new?  How’s it going so far?  I love the first few weeks of pretty much anything, it’s always so much fun to start something new!

I have a couple of confessions to make.

1. I haven’t run, done yoga, or much of anything else for about 3 months
2. I also haven’t written much because I operate on a switch, my motivation is ON or it’s OFF across the board
3. I have a serious commitment issue – I’ve been running off and on for years now but I’ve never got much over a 5K an I’ve never once committed to a running plan.
4. I am one of the most excellent people you will meet at making excuses about why I don’t want to get on and stick with a plan, and also I’m most excellent at making excuses.  Even about things I want to do, and then I convince myself (pretty easily) that my excuses are actually truths.

So, ya.  That about sums it up.  I’ve decided not to do that anymore. Again. Sound familiar? But this time I’m going to try a couple of things I’ve not tried before. Because you know, that thing where if you keep doing the same thing over and expect different results…  I’m about 2 more times from being committed.

I chose a plan to get to a 10K and I’m committing to actually doing it.  I usually have preconceived reasons of why I might skip a night or why I might not finish it.  Yes, really.  This time I wrote it all on my calendar and I’m not making any schedule changes or skipping any nights.  If my run doesn’t happen until midnight or if I have to get up at 5am to get it in, so be it.  I looked at a bunch of plans and decided to go with Hal Higdon’s novice 10K plan.  A lot of people swear by him and the plan includes cross training and such so there you go.

My usual method is to tell no one when I start something like this because that way when I quit before I finish no one will ask me about it. This time I even told my sisters, so there is some built in shaming if  so much as skip a night.

Also, I’m going to do a weekly check in here to keep track of my progress.  Probably boring for anyone else to read but this blog actually started as a running journal way back when, so it works for me.

Finally, it’s about time for a new mantra.  I’ve read this one on the internet a bunch of times and it seems to about sum things up for me at the moment.

So here I go, off to find out what happens if I actually start something fully committed to doing it by the book. Wish me luck, and feel free to be part of my shaming team if I come anywhere NEAR to making excuses.  Which I won’t.  🙂

Do you ever have an issue with following through on commitments you try to make to yourself?  Do you have any suggestions on how to break through the limitations a person puts on themselves?

I haven’t been running at all lately, but tonight I did a nice slow barefoot mile on the treadmill and then did some yoga and I am feeling amazing.  Someday maybe I’ll be one of those brilliant people who wake up in the morning to run and then feels great all day but not quite yet.

Here’s the yoga I did tonight, very easy and perfect for right before bed, especially if you work at a computer all day like me.

 
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ejZxy7Doc?rel=0]

So why am I running on the treadmill inside when it’s absolutely beautiful outside?  Partly because I’ve fallen so out of the running habit it just seems easier to do if I stay inside.  But also partly because we have a wild hog with lots of little baby hogs in our neighborhood at the moment.  These things stand as tall as my shoulders and of all the animals I’ve run across since moving to Florida these are the scariest (on land anyways) just because of their huge size.  They tend to be seen a bit after it gets dark, just about when I like to go running.  So, no running outside for me this week.  The HOA hired a trapper to come and get them and hopefully bring them safely somewhere else.

OH and I’ve also seen a FEW alligators in the last week not to mention a few people have told me they’ve been seeing a bunch of snakes lately.

And people think a few rattlers, scorpions and killer bee swarms in Arizona are bad. I don’t know about anyone else but I am not feeling at the top of the food chain at the moment, and I don’t think being vegetarian has anything to do with it.

Have you ever run into wild animals while running or just out and about in your neighborhood?