Pre-Running

I’m following a plan from Runner’s World, which begins with eight straight days of walking. Then ten weeks of interval training, combining walking and running for 30 minutes, four times a week. In the beginning, it’s much walking and little running, but as the weeks progress, the ratios change until it’s half running, half walking. At that point, soul-searching determines whether to make the leap to a full 30 minutes of running or a repeat of the half and half. Anyway. Three days gone and I’ve walked every day, in spite of a nasty and fluctuating head cold that is now settling, against my wishes, into my chest. Gr.

My three day total is sixty minutes of walking, with a total of about 3.6 miles walked. Hoo rah.

Oh, and the other goals, hm, I’ve blogged or written very long email messages every day. And I’ve been in bed for at least eight hours the past two nights, though, due to aforementioned head cold, not slept a full eight hours either night. I’m trying. :)

It occurred to me as I was responding to Cass’s comment yesterday that I may not have been clear on the challenge I’ve set out for myself with this running thing.

I have never participated in organized sports. Or disorganized sports of any time. The one and only time I tried out for a team, was trying out for the Powder Puff football game in high school. I was one of only three girls cut. I took a tennis class in college. I liked it, but I can’t say that I really set the court on fire. I really enjoyed an aerobics class I took in college once, but I think I was more inspired by the hot, long-haired, rock-star looking instructor than anything else. The only physical activity I have stuck with for more than a couple of months is yoga. I participated in a class for nearly a year, and have maintained a spotty individual practice since then.

I don’t object to getting sweaty. I don’t even object to a little satisfying achiness after a good workout. So I can’t really explain the lack of athleticism in my life. The past few years, a lot of my physical energy has been spent on my small children. What with the incubation and the nursing and the carrying and the chasing (times three), I figured I was getting a pretty good workout, even if it was sort of random and varying in intensity.

All children weaned and walking responsibly now, I find myself feeling a little sluggish and looking for something physical to do. Hence the running. It’s cheap (I shelled out for some fresh Nikes [my olds ones were at least six years old, and a little weary feeling] and borrowed a stopwatch from my oldest child), so it doesn’t betray my goal to minimize my consumption. I can do it almost anytime and anyplace, which is helpful when juggling the schedules of three children and a partner who is often in demand outside of the work day.

It feels like a big deal to me, and I’m inordinantly proud and excited to be trying to run. Funnier now, don’t you think, that I’m less worried about the running goal than the sleeping goal?

Radar rainbow circus mist fungus desk

I avoid reading my spam as much as possible. Don’t we all? Gmail very conveniently dumps suspicious mail in the spam folder before I ever lay eyes on it, and mostly I ignore it. But, you know, every once in a while a non-spammy message ends up in there, so I skim the messages every few days to catch wayward messages.

I zip down the list of names and subjects. Most of them are unintelligible, garblings of drug and sex enhancement products, but every once in a while a creative spammer will have a catchy subject line. I don’t mean catchy as in commercial-jingle catchy or gross catchy. I mean that they do something a little different.

One style of message pastes in a bit of a news article or headline into the subject line. I guess they’re trying to fool us into thinking that someone has sent us a news article to read. These aren’t particularly interesting to me, but they do tend to stand out.

The style that I really like is the random list of words subject line. These are often like monkey-poetry. A random list of words that somehow come together in a lovely juxtaposition. More than once, one of these listy little gems has inspired a character or scene in my writing.

So, if you’re lost and looking for a smidge of inspiration, take a skim at your spam subjects. You never know what you might find.

Oh yeah, NaNo Day 1: 3500 words.