Stop Rubbing Our Noses In What a Yokel You Are

I know everybody’s upset with me since it’s been so long since I updated, but it’s because I haven’t been running. In case you haven’t noticed, the blogging is just supposed to happen after I’ve run. However, I’m sure you all miss me anyway and want to hear about my life, even if it hasn’t involved running. I also decided to write for a minute just now because I have tons of crap in my car to unload into my apartment, and I was going to do that, but this creepy looking car has just been idling in the parking lot right by my car for about ten minutes and when I walked by it somebody was spying on me out their window with a flashlight. I decided to not unload my car right then, because it would involve lots of walking by this spooky car. That totally ruined my scheduled activity for 11:15PM to 11:25PM, so I needed something else to do. You should remember from last time that I’m not running because I’m trying to heal my shin splints before my marathon. If you don’t remember that, press pause and go read the last entry. Since I haven’t been running, I’ve had to find other ways to work out. So far this has included the stationary bike, lifting weights (only a little bit), yoga, and soccer. This doesn’t sound that impressive, but it at least doubles the number of different kinds of athletic activities I’ve done this year. I’m most impressed with myself for doing yoga. As a massage therapist I’m always recommending that people practice yoga, and I’m always hearing that it’s good for running, but I almost never do it. I kind of hate it. My senior year of college I took a yoga class that happened twice a week at 8AM and the teacher specifically told us, “if you don’t feel like coming, I don’t want you to come – I won’t be taking attendance.” It turned out that I only felt like coming about five times that semester. 8AM is early when you’re in college, and most of the time even when you’re (I’m) not. Yoga is also really hard for me, because like most runners, I’m extremely inflexible (except in my shoulders, which is surprisingly unhelpful in almost all areas of life). I don’t really think of myself as a competitive person, but when I’m doing anything athletic I realize that secretly I am. So when everyone else is getting their pretzel on and I can’t even touch my toes, I get angry. I hate how there are levels, so they’re always saying things like, “now get into the graceful lemur pose. If you’re level one, stay there. But if you’re level 3 like me, turn your legs inside out and twist them around your sacrum.” I used to always try to do the hardest poses even though they’re pretty much impossible for me, and then I would feel like an asshole for coming to one yoga class a year and then assuming I could do all the hard moves that the people who go every week can do. So now I just sit there in stupid level 1 and am jealous of everyone else. It never helps that the yoga instructor is always reminding you to focus on yourself, this isn’t a competition, go at your own pace, blah blah blah. That makes me angry too, because then I feel so predictable. These are all issues I’m trying to overcome, because I think that yoga can be very helpful, and maybe if I went more than once a year I would actually be able to keep up with everyone else. Our instructor also showed us this cool floating thing that was kind of like this: Not quite that awesome, but close. I mostly like this video because the guy is wearing a baseball hat. Who wears a baseball hat while they do yoga? We’ll see if I can handle any more yoga. Yoga + me is a pretty unpredictable combination, so I really can’t tell you. One earlier point needs to be clarified: I said I haven’t been running, but that’s not one hundred percent true. I have run several times in the last week, in the following situations:

• A couple times from the gym to my car after I workout. Because I’m wearing workout clothes after I work out, and somehow they’re not suited for mid-May weather. Because mid-May weather apparently involves non-stop rain/hail/thunder.
• Friday night I ran from Joe’s Cellar to Gypsy. If you run between bars you decrease the time spent without drink in hand. Also it was raining again.
• Saturday at my soccer game I ran a lot. I figured indoor soccer field turf wouldn’t be too hard on my shins. It wasn’t, and we won.
• Today I couldn’t park in the parking garage where I work for some boring reasons, so I had to run from the building to my car with my massage table, which is much harder than running without a massage table. Again, it was raining unreasonably hard.

It’s interesting (to me) how when I’m injured most of my running is inspired by the rain, but when I’m not injured, the rain is what keeps me from running. I guess it’s not that interesting, there’s a very simple and logical explanation for it… but I still just want to give a big “screw you” to rain right now, for making me run when I don’t want to and not run when I do want to. Screw you, rain. I’m going to go check on the status of that creepy car with the flashlight now.