May 12, 2010: Rain is wet and other astonishing revelations

I frequently fly on the wings of my husband's self-assured statements, he is after all, hard to resist with his deep, sexy voice and cute smile. Monday was no different. We've been on a mission to get fit around here - and eat healthy. Always the extremists, "we" are eating organic, whole foods, and "we" have made the decision that running is the best form of exercise "we" can get and is a necessary means to the end...fitness and a half-marathon. (Saying "we" is like when my husband says "WE" should do a homebirth, and "WE" should have like 10 kids, which of course we ladies know, doesn't have so much to do with them.) Soooo, on that note, I've been running for the past 2 weeks, motivated by my eager husband (whose hands are poised over the keyboard waiting to hit send on the registration for a marathon next month) and what I see in the mirror. I've lost nearly 30 of the cough....forty....coughsixcough....pounds I gained with this last little go-round. I'm not sure what happened there, but I only gained 11 pounds by 20 weeks, and when they told me their might be something wrong with the little bean, I stopped running and exercising altogether so I wouldn't be depriving him of oxygen. That and the fact that Sonic moved to Vacaville. Anyway, no turning back now, all this flubber is perfect fodder for my aggressive exercise campaign.

The "running" has been going pretty good...considering the only form of exercise I got for the past 6 months was walking up and down the stairs of my 2-story house. I was surprised that I could run for 20 minutes straight without barfing or needing resuscitation. Score. That motivated me to keep running, because, as Jeff reminded me, I've never seen an out-of-shape runner. (Not quite the phrase he used, but I don't want to offend anyone). In our running zeal, we also got a Garmin Forerunner - a handy little navigation thingy that you wear like a watch and it shows you how long you ran, where you ran, and what your average pace, heartrate, and elevation was...all that good stuff. Since we like gadgets so much, that has been one of the best motivational investments ever. As soon as I finish the run, I plug it into the computer, upload the info and then see how fast I ran. I've been adding sprints just to see what I'm capable of, too. Right now I'm running pretty slow, but I blame the saddlebags. The longest distance I've gone is 4 miles, and the fastest pace I've run is 6:44/mile. Of course that was only for like 30 seconds, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day. (Or was it Paris? Oh no. Time to go back to school!)

Which brings me back to my original story. Jeff has Mondays off, and went for his little 5-mile run, then came back to assault my comfortable morning routine of coffee and facebook..."Your turn!" He said, totally serious. Then I started blurting out all the excuses I could muster up - I'm really tired, I'm starting to get sick, I don't know where the heart rate monitor is, I think all my sports bras are dirty, I can't find my spandex (that I wear UNDER everything, to hold all the jiggly together!)....finally I mumbled, "Just let me finish my coffee and one more bejeweled game and I'll go." There. I committed, and Jesus said He would rather us not make commitments at all if we aren't going to keep them, so I was kind of stuck now. Not that I didn't want to go, but I just didn't want to go at that moment. He volunteered to take the kids (all of them) with him to recycle the cans (we are collecting cans - send them our way!) and that way I could go for a run and come back and have like 20 minutes to myself. He really said that last part. 20 minutes. To myself. The bribery is getting thick around here these days. That may not seem like a lot to those of you lucky ones out there, but 20 minutes all by yourself is a big deal to someone who leaps at the opportunity to go grocery shopping solo. I got my gear together and stepped outside...it was a little rainy, but only off and on. This is where my husband utters the comment that I will circulate in my brain for the next 46 minutes or so - "It's not going to REALLY rain, just GO." So, I thought, he's right! Rain is just wet, anyway, it's not going to kill me or my brand new nike lunar trainers. Stop being such a sissy. And I was off, planning on one of my longest runs yet - 4 miles.

It didn't rain much. Until I hit the 1.6 mile mark, which is about as far away from the house (or any house for that matter) I could get. I started pouring!!! Jeff later recalled it was like a monsoon. I would venture to make a more direct relation and say it WAS a monsoon. I was soaked to the bones - the wind was whipping the needle-like rain against my cheek for a half-mile, my capris were beginning to sag with the weight of the water clinging to the fabric and my beautiful new, white, sneaks were beginning to get sloppily sodden....taking my "joyful heart" with it. The snarky voice in my head beginning recounting Jeff's last prophetic words and the fury propelled me faster (okay that is a bit dramatic, I was only running because walking would keep me out there longer!) towards home. Then he called me, because he was home now (and thereby eliminating my 20-minute "me" time) and wanted to see if I was okay. What he really wanted to know was my location, so he could drive by and laugh at me. And he did. It was pretty humorous, I must say. It's a good thing I'm so stubborn, because it really pays off in times like these. I could have stopped, gone back to my cozy computer, and half-heartedly committed to run later when it was nice out - which it was, ALL day. But, like 2 Timothy 4:7 affirms: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith..." and my reward was a 4-mile run under my belt and -486 calories. Now that isn't a crown of righteousness or anything, but it isn't bad!