I Ran a 5K! How Cute!

Hello, all. It's been a while. I took a couple months off in order to start my new job writing articles for search engine optimization (you know, that information that pops up when you do a Google search) and live some amazing life in between. I am assigned an article to write and given keywords that must be included in the body of the article. Right now, I'm bogged down on an article that must be 1000 words about some aspect of nuclear medicine. Everyone say it with me: noo-klee-ur. Thank you. We'll have no "nuculars" on this blog.

Okay. Quick news update about what's going on in the family: The kids are out of school and bouncing between extreme boredom and planning too many activities for me to keep up. Hubby also finished the school year and has 6 weeks off. He hasn't had much in the way of vacation time the last few years because he has been teaching multiple tracks in his year-round school. This next year he will only have one track, so he will go on and off track with his class. That's bad for the finances (he gets paid more for multiple tracks), but good for his writing career.

I ran in my first ever 5K on July 3rd. I've been walking and running 6 days a week for 2 1/2 months now, and a friend encouraged me to just make the leap and sign up for a 5K. It's only 3.1 miles, after all, right? Fortunately, it was mostly downhill, and since we ran on the parade route, people were all lined up cheering us on while waiting for the parade. There were little pockets of people I know, but they were mostly toward the end of the route, when I had to take a few 60-second breathers and just walk. They were good about motivating me to keep going. What that translates into is that they were good about heckling me about walking ("Hey, aren't you supposed to be running") and I was breathing too hard to shout back what I would like to have said, so I just smiled and waved. No, it was good to have cheering sections, actually, and I loved seeing my friends along the route. Linnea got me to sprint the last 50 yards by coming back for me and running with me. At least I finished running hard, even if I'm still paying for that last sprint.

Yes, I know 5K is nothing to all you folks out there who run, but I hate running. I HATE running. I run three times a week and walk the other three times, but I only love the exhilaration of moving my body through the cool morning air, meeting Mr. and Mrs. Goosey-Goosey Gander near the corn patch (they tell me off about it, too. Every. Single. Morning. Honk, honk, honk!), and hitting that part of the route where one of those flowering trees scents the air with such a delicious odor I start hyperventilating trying to get my fill. I relish those few minutes alone, too, and I have time to think a thought all the way from inception to completion. I've come up with a great short story idea.

I also love how I feel. While I've only really lost four pounds, I've dropped a lot of inches and I am fitting into clothes two sizes smaller. That's a good feeling. I did quickly notice the return of some of those pesky iron-deficiency feelings (glancing longingly at piles of dirt, having a crazy desire to put the piece of chalk in my mouth when I'm writing the music numbers on the chalkboard at church, thinking about how delicious the scent of water on cement is) and I'm taking my favorite iron supplement.

This post is a warm-up. Now that I'm back in the blogging game, I'm hoping to post much more often. I got distracted for a while there.


Before the race, outside my house. Yes, I'll get better sunglasses for running, but that's what I had.