Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Dessert for Dinner

I think over the years, with more and more bad marathon weather days under my belt, including of course Chicago 2007, I've come to realize that if I put my whole life into training for a PR for months leading up to the race and then I encounter bad racing conditions, I am overwhelmingly bummed.  Instead of looking at the fun I had while training or how much stronger I got or something, I'm disappointed not to have a new race PR to show for my efforts (plus I'm usually pissed to have spent vacation time and money traveling to the race).  So my solution is to avoid feeling like training is taking over my life as much as possible.  Sure, I'm not going to go out on a Saturday night when I have to run 18 or 20 miles at the crack o' dawn on Sunday.  But I still want to do fun things! 

So last night we went to the Dallas Wind Symphony with one of my best friends and her husband in their box.  The performance was Feste Romane, and with our love of all things Italian, it was particularly great!  Two downsides -- dinner and bedtime.


Dinner was my bad.  I got stuck at work and had to go straight to the concert and meet hubby and friends there.  I should have thought to heat up my emergency can of spaghettios before leaving work, but I didn't.  So I got to the concert and was famished by the first intermission.  I got in line for food and then realized my choices were limited to say the least.  Tons of alcohol and coffee choices.  For food, my choices were two kinds of cake (Italian cream, which probably had nuts, and chocolate, which I actually don't love in cake), brownies, cookies, or bread pudding.  Not exactly what I had in mind for dinner.

I chose bread pudding.  At least it was raisins and bread... So that was my dinner.  Not good fuel for an easy 6 miles this morning.  But I really don't want to complain about it.  I try to remember all those years when all I wanted for dinner was dessert.  Nights when I'd beg my folks to let me skip the meal and just have ice cream.  I was convinced that when I grew up, I'd eat dessert for all my meals and never have to eat anything else.  Oh, growing up isn't much fun.  Now that I actually want good food for dinner and not just sweets, when I'm stuck eating just sweets for dinner (which is thankfully rare), I try to look at it as a concession to younger me.  Just living the dream!

And then there was the timing issue.  Usually on M/W/F, we go to boot camp.  Class starts at 5:30, so I get up at 5 and move quickly.  On Tu/Th, I run and we start at 5:15 and it's further away, so I get up at 4:40.  And that's just me.  Hubby has to be up even earlier because he needs extra time to get ready.  So basically, on any weekday, the first alarm in our house goes off at 4:30 at the latest, sometimes earlier.  Because we like our sleep, and I suppose since we haven't been married that long, we go to bed early, early, early.  I'd say on any weeknight, I'm always asleep before 10, usually closer to 9.

Well, last night at 10:30, the symphony was just ending (and it took us a long time to get home b/c of a lost purse issue I had (don't ask, I have it now)).  It was after 11 before I got to sleep.  Not good for an alarm going off at 5, particularly since I'm used to solid sleep. 

So we decided to skip boot camp this morning.  I had 6 miles on the schedule anyway, so I think this is going to happen more and more frequently in the next few months.  It just seems like a lot to do boot camp for an hour and then run 6 miles.  I'd say 90 minutes is really the longest I like to exercise before work.  Sure, I can stretch it to an hour and 45 minutes sometimes, but that just feels like a lot before work. 

With this new schedule, on Wednesdays, there are lots of weeks where we're supposed to get in 5-8 miles, so I might have to skip camp those days. 

Anyway, I slept in until just after 6 and then ran from home.  I thought about grabbing my ipod and just running the trail, but thought it might be a little more interesting to run on the streets to downtown, and then run back on the trail.  So no music, since it doesn't seem safe to me to listen when there are cars around.  But in my mind, alarm bells are starting to go off when I think about my attitude this morning toward running on the trail.  It's way too early in the season to be getting bored with the trail by our house.  I guess that's the downside of going from fall marathon training straight into spring marathon training...

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