Life and Workouts

This is a constant theme for my friend Cathy and me:  life getting in the way of workouts.

My daughter had her wisdom teeth out yesterday. I had hoped that she would feel well enough that I could sneak out to run a powerline loop with my friend Carrie and her group. But my girl didn’t feel up to me not being around, so I didn’t go.

I had tentatively scheduled a bike ride for this morning with a friend who was going to introduce me to Bee Caves,  but my girl hadn’t woken up yet and I didn’t want to leave without knowing how she felt, whether she had issues with her pain, if she understood how to take her medicines, etc. So no ride.

Hubby gets back in town tonight, so I am very hopeful that I will be able to get out to run Ken’s Loop with a friend this evening. We’ll see. Right now, the only given is walking the dog (I may see if he’s up to a run today; even though he’s a young dog, he’s not really a runner. He’s a major sprinter. What he likes is to run at TOP SPEED for about 30 seconds, then amble around, and then sprint some more. The slow-for-him and steady running that I do is just not his cup of tea. Now, we work well together on a trail; he zooms ahead, waits for me, zooms again. But there are very few places where I feel comfortable with him off lead like that…and after what happened to Rick, I’m gun shy about being off by myself, deep on a trail).

Back to life intruding:  I wouldn’t do anything differently…and it’s my choice to structure my day the way I do. It’s just that every now and then I wish others’ needs could not play such a large part in what I can and can’t do. In four years, I’ll have no kids at home and so my time will be my own again. It’s just it’s been 19 years since I came first. Sometimes people don’t understand what a luxury it is to just pick up and say, “I’m going to do this” and just do it.

Am I whining? God, I hope not — I hate a whiner.

BTW, I saw my beloved coach Andreas on the trail Monday. He always said, “A workout missed is a workout missed.” You’re right Andreas, and I’ll shut up about what I can’t do and just focus on what I can.

Later — So I took Boo for his walk and decided that he would just have to do a little running in there. We walked for about 1-1.5 miles and then we jogged (and I purposefully use the word “jog” because it was nowhere near a run for old, slow me) for 20 minutes. 

You’d have thought I was setting world record pace by his reaction:  lag behind, amble along, resist picking up the pace even on a DOWNHILL. We certainly didn’t cover 2 miles in that time. Then we finished our walk back home with another mile. He’s used to long walks and quite a few miles, so it’s not the distance. I think I’m going to do that little run in the middle of our walks from now on and gradually get him comfortable. Plus it will give me plenty of time in my easy heart rate zone!!