Eye of the Tiger, Man.

This song reminds me of grocery shopping in my old neighborhood in Seattle. It would always play in the QFC by my house, and it was so hilariously overexuberant for a simple grocery trip. I wanted some boxing gloves and fancy footwork, punching out the rows of Hamburger Helper and dancing around the tumbling displays of apples. But more importantly, I think it is the absolute best motivational song for working out.

It was my birthday on Saturday, and through the generosity and support of my family I was able to afford two very important components that contribute to my new goal (which I will get into in a minute)... new running shoes and an MP3 player. I have been complaining about my shoes since Day 1. You all know this. NO MORE! I got some sweet Saucony shoes that feel like clouds and help me push off with each new step. I'm breaking in both of these beauties today... although I have not yet downloaded Eye of the Tiger to aid me.

The aforementioned goal relates to how I'm graduating in less than two months and have no goals. "Pursue internships and jobs" is pretty much what I'm telling people. Which means, "I am scared shitless of the real world; these seem like good ideas." So since I don't want to face the job market and the student loan payments in my future I decided to settle on personal goals. You know, those friendly, unintimidating things that make you feel good about yourself. And it was about time I set a running goal, since I've been aimlessly wandering and not progressing. I have been running in my absence from this blog, but I haven't progressed. That is, until Tuesday.

My wonderful new roommate Danny is like my much more pleasant and infinitely more attractive Mickey, the gruff New York attitude trainer from the Rocky films. With his company and motivation we accomplished a nearly five mile run on Tuesday (about three times longer than I've been running lately and almost twice my longest run... how embarrassing). We stopped a third of the way through to check out Fairhaven Runners, where I got my shoes yesterday. (We also checked out the hot sales guy.) My legs and hips have been paying for that run ever since, especially because I was in my old shoes, but I was so amazed that I actually went that far. Danny is training for an 8 mile downhill run on Memorial Day weekend, so at least once a week we'll be running together. That way, if I wuss out running on my own, I'll have to make up for it when we work out together...

So, I'm back, aaand hopefully here I will remain, because of my goal: work my way up to a marathon. I don't have a goal date set for this, because I don't know anything realistically about pacing myself. But if I am capable of doing a five mile run now--which is only 1.2 miles away from a freaking 10K--I don't think this goal is impossible. I'm on my way.

Brief Update

I am not sore today. This only adds to the miracle that was our 1.5 mile run yesterday: I did it without getting winded then, or sore now. Let me assure you, as if the cheese grater metaphor and the muscles-bursting-through-skin image were not enough, that I was suffering on the days after each of our little uphill jaunts last week. I felt like one of the frozen cuts of meat Rocky Balboa beat up till he bled.

This must mean I've gained endurance. It only took a week?? It was a terrible, awful, why-am-I-doing-this-to-myself week, but it WAS only a week.

We didn't run today--Mike is extremely achy and groggy. But I feel like I could've run, which is just about as good to me. 

Thanks for reading! I got a lot of support and great feedback from my very first post and I'm so excited. I don't think I mentioned in the first post that my major at WWU is English, specifically Creative Writing. Blogging is a really good way to get yourself out there as a writer now, seeing as we all just sit around on our computers or smartphones all the time anyway. I was sort of inspired by watching "Julie and Julia" the other day. I loved seeing how Julie got her start, with her only readers being her mom and a few coworkers. From there, she made it all the way to a book deal! I could only dream of such a thing...

Upcoming soon will be "before" pictures of my legs (well, sort of before... I've already been running about a week and have seen a bit of improvement in muscle tone) and a discussion of my laughably bad running shoes.