Yikes

This is disturbing.

Enjoy!

Disappointments

So I just went shopping after having a great dinner with my roommate, which I felt justified in doing after having completed one of the crappiest semesters of my academic career. I tried stuff on, it looked great, and then I realized...I am broke. We shopped at Express where they are having a massive sale and where my roommate had like five coupons that will give you $25 off for each $50 you spend, and I still couldn't justify buying two pairs of sorely needed pants and a shirt. At least not when I still have to pay rent, fees to Columbia, and other assorted bills. There is something about not being able to buy something for yourself that can just make you feel really, really awful. It is silly, too, because in the end it is just two pairs of pants and a shirt. But I sort of want to cry about it.

Things didn't really work out the way I was hoping they would today. I had planned to do laundry, pack, go running, and clean up my desperately and disgustingly messy room. None of these things were accomplished and I am now sitting here with dirty laundry that I have to pack (a daunting task) and a profound sense of disappointment in myself for not fitting a run into my day. I feel like my marathon training has been so half-assed this time around. I mean, I just feel so disconnected from it. It isn't a good feeling and I am not quite sure how to get around it.

I guess I just feel sort of disappointed in myself overall today. I should have done a better job of pulling everything together, and somehow I just let things slip by instead. It makes me feel like a loser. Not a good feeling. And now I feel really rushed, stressed, and panicked about the fact that I have a 9-mile run tomorrow morning and a huge amount of stuff to do tonight. I guess I can always sleep on the train on the way down to Philadelphia and then in the car from there to Maryland.

Here's another pretty song that I love and that I don't hear enough.

Caloric mythologies

Another really interesting article by Gina Kolata. This one is about misconceptions about caloric intake and caloric burn--it is constantly surprising to me how little people know about health issues like this one. For instance, I am really shocked to hear that a spinning instructor would tell their class that they just burned 900 calories in 45 minutes.

I guess people will believe what they want to believe about health-related things. And I will probably continue to be surprised by it. In the end, it all makes sense, I guess. Our country didn't get its high obesity rate by having a thorough comprehension of diet and exercise.

Mr. Yuck

There is always this shift that occurs in my thought process between the evening before I go to sleep and the morning after I wake up. Evening usually consists of the following: "I am going to do x, y, and z and start feeling so much better about w!" Morning is this: "Ugh, I don't see how x, y, and z are going to have any effect on w. Plus I just feel kind of crummy and I don't have the energy to do any of those things anyway."

I just pulled on a pair of jeans and now feel like someone turned me into liquid form and poured me into them, only to find that I am overflowing a little bit. It is a pretty gross feeling, and to be honest I don't really know how perceptions of one's body can change so quickly. Then again, I must have known that this feeling of overflow was coming because I have been avoiding putting on certain pairs of jeans for a couple of weeks now, choosing dressed, leggings, sweatpants or more forgiving pants instead. Just coming to that realization makes me feel pretty gross about myself, and I am really wishing I had some alternative to these jeans that I am wearing right now.

Today is a pretty yuck day, I must say.

Detox time!

I just finished an exam an hour ago; my room is a mess; I haven't gone running since Saturday; my stomach doesn't function anymore; I don't think I have really had several consecutive days of healthy eating in a loooooong time; what is going on? Is my life falling apart? This and other existential questions will be answered in this extra-special blog entry.

Except not really. I don't have the answers to those questions! I really just sort of feel like I want to spend several days eating nothing but fruits, vegetables, and yogurt (maybe I will make my own since I have the magical powers to accomplish such a task) and doing lots of running and yoga...good thing I have a long vacation coming up!

My brain is so tired and I kind of guiltily feel like I don't actually deserve to be tired. Sort of like I didn't do enough to really warrant being so tired. While studying for this exam I took today, I fell asleep three times. That never happens to me! I guess the reason why I am sitting here writing about it is because I am a little worried...this sort of fatigue doesn't seem too normal to me, and I sort of wanted to take an informal poll: does anyone else feel this way sometimes? any identifiable reason why? any theories (I will put it out there--I don't drink enough water, I don't eat well these days, but I do take my vitamins) about what might help? would it help to go for a vegetable, fruit, yogurt detox arrangement over the next few days? I kind of get the impression that my body is reacting to something I am doing wrong, otherwise I wouldn't be so tired and my stomach wouldn't be, like, revolting against me.

So, to sum up: what's wrong with me? Comments, please!

I'm so proud of you!

It's sort of funny, when I was training for the Philadelphia marathon, I kind of forgot what I was doing. Over the course of the time I spent training, I did 13-, 15-, 18-, and 20-mile runs, and it took me a while to put that into perspective and really understand that running those distances meant running a pretty considerable amount. I mean, it wasn't until I thought about what 20 miles looks like on a map, and the fact that I would never say to someone who lived 20 miles away, "Oh, yeah, let me just get my shoes on and I'll run right over". I mean, that would be sort of absurd. But while I was doing those long runs, and even when I ran the marathon, I sort of didn't think about how long it was. I just sort of ran it knowing that I would be stopping after a certain point. It was kind of like as long as I was running, I wasn't finished, so when I stopped running, I would be done. Distance and time factored into it on a certain level, but ended up not being quite as big a deal to me as I thought they would be. People who heard about the amount of running I was doing were always amazed, confused, or impressed, which I also had a hard time understanding. I guess that was just all part of the not really comprehending what I was accomplishing aspect of the training.

People's reactions were really interesting to me (and continue to be interesting to me), on one hand because I never expected to do anything in life that would provoke reactions of that kind, and on the other hand because I never really felt like what I was doing was all that special. As far as I am concerned, anyone can run, you just have to want to do it. But people seemed (and still sometimes seem) a little embarrassed, like in running a marathon I did something that sort of put them to shame, which was never my intention, and which never even crossed my mind.

A few people told me that I had really inspired them, and more than anything, that meant a lot to me. The truth of the matter is, though, that those people who said that have also ended up being inspirations to me! These are the people who somewhat sheepishly tell me how far they have run and seem almost apologetically proud of themselves. It is cool that they have started running in part because they felt inspired to do so by my decision to run a marathon, but I think that what is most important is that they have made a commitment in their own lives to do something amazing for themselves--it is hard to start running, and it is even harder to continue running. A lot of people don't even bother. So when my sister tells me she can now run for a certain amount of minutes at a time without stopping, or a friend of mine says he is trying to get to a point where he can run anywhere he would normally go on foot, it really almost brings tears to my eyes. I wonder if those people who are so careful to let me know that they feel like their accomplishments pale in comparison to mine realize how much of an impact their accomplishments have had on me.

I know I am not expressing myself very clearly here, and I am having difficulty saying what it is that I really want to say. I guess that what it boils down to is that most of the time, when people tell me how proud they are of me, all I really want to do is respond by saying, "I'm so proud of you!"

Days off are dangerous

Yesterday was a day off of running. I really shouldn't do that anymore. By the end of the day I just feel so listless, lazy, and lethargic (I rock the alliteration). It also doesn't help that I am feeling pretty discouraged about the lack of response I have gotten toward my fundraising efforts. It takes a long time to write letters, print them, address the envelopes, distribute them, or gather email addresses for everyone you know, write an email, and send it. I don't mean to sound whiny, I am just worried. I am not sure what to do to get through to people since what I have been doing doesn't seem to be getting much of a response at all. I really, really appreciate the people who have made donations, and I know that there are family members who are going to be making donations in the very near future, but as for everyone else...? The whole thing has got me feeling a little down, I must say.

So here is my keep your head above water song for the day, which I think will probably cheer me up a little bit:



Love. It.