I am fully converted, ladies and gentlemen. I LOVE running on trails rather than the road. In fact the part of my route that I did yesterday required that I jog from the park, to my house, a little less than half a kilometer…and I hated it! Don’t get me wrong, I love jogging but after having jogged on the trail yesterday, the road seemed unforgiving and hard and bleak.
So the trail. Ray and the dog walked me to the park (about three blocks from our house) and there I took off down the road for a ways until I got to the turn off to enter the park. The first thing I noticed was how spongey the ground was. Granted, it’s been raining for 3 months so that might have something to do with it. It’s so soft and forgiving compared to the pavement. So springy it was that I noticed myself running much faster than I do on the road….which wasn’t really that great of a thing, I had to stop more often to catch my ‘still building back my cardio endurance’ breath. But it smelled good in there, there were no cars whizzing by, it was damp and cool and quiet. Yep, definitely a trail convert.
Now I’m trying to pace myself as far as wanting to do it every day. Increasing distance from 13.5km/week to over 20 in the space of one week is a recipe for disaster…for me anyway. I’ve finally got my ball rolling again and this time I’m taking it simply in order to avoid injury.
After the jog I came home, good and sweaty (don’t you just LOVE being sweaty?!) and feeling fantastic, got in the bath with some sweet smelling soap and then had dinner which was prepared by Ray while I was out being nice to myself. We darted out to the mall after dinner where I bought a totally cute new summer dress (not work appropriate) and a handkerchief skirt (only $10 and quite cute!), two new nail polishes, a refill of my rosemary mint shampoo…..and an ice cream bar from Purdy’s….vanilla ice cream dipped in white chocolate, rolled in sprinkles. Yep.
In so much as doing this simply this time, as mentioned above…..well…..I’ve had a hard couple of years trying to find my way for taking care of myself inside of my relationship. When I originally lost all my weight and found exercise etc, I was single and the only person whose needs or desires I had to be converned with were mine. Obviously that changes in a relationship and I have struggled to find the balance between together-time, selfcare-time and relaxy-time. I think I’ve found a happy medium this time, working everything in where it fits rather than trying to cram my square peg from a few years ago, into my life the way it is now. That means exercise is important and should be considered a requirement, meals are healthier and I’m using proper portion control and treats are a part of life that, when completely eliminated, take some of the fun away. Seems to be working. I was just thinking this morning as I was eating my cereal and banana….if I switched from cereal to an egg, that would cut the calories and starch a little…and if I cut out the cream cheese from my wrap, that would eliminate 80 calories. And then I stopped myself and shook my head and thought….sure, I could be doing better, of course I could….but do I want to? Not really. I’m ticking along just fine and this isn’t hard and it’s not a sacrifice for the most part. Better is out there….but sometimes good enough really is good enough. I choose to choose my battles and cream cheese isn’t one of them.
Fitty vs Fatty 