Last week, I was at a baseball game for JJ. I’ve made no secret that baseball is my least favorite of all the sports my kids play. But JJ enjoys it, and he especially loves playing catcher, so I go and I watch, and usually take pictures. There just aren’t that many exciting pictures in baseball, but sometimes they turn out okay.
The above two pictures show him making a throw to first to get the runner out. Good job, JJ!
JJ tags out a runner trying to make it to second. The other team was a different grade from his same school, so he enjoyed being able to make a play on a kid he knew. 😉
On Thursday, however, the weather was not very accommodating. It was cold and that kind of misty rain that does harm to cameras, so I decided to leave in the car and just sit and chat with some of the moms while we waited for six innings to finish. One of the moms is my friend Carrie, whom I’ve written about on my blog previously. Carrie lost a significant amount of weight (over 100 pounds) hand also became a runner in her weight loss journey. She ran her first marathon a few years ago, which I spectated. Since then, she’s had some challenges in her life, and she has gained back a little bit of weight as her running has gone by the wayside. She’s working on getting back into it, though, and we enjoyed talking about running while we watched the ball game.
While we were chatting, another mom, Dana, heard us and asked us how fast we run. This is kind of a funny question, usually coming from someone who either doesn’t run or who just started running, because they have a hard time getting their mind around the concept of running and have no idea what an average pace would be–for anyone! Carrie and I gave a general estimate of our paces, and then Dana looked very dejected. It turns out that she had recently started running, just a mile at a time, and compared to our paces (which are so not fast, ha ha!), she felt quite slow.
Meanwhile, it was almost comical to watch the transformation in Carrie and me. You can tell a true runner by how they react when someone else admits that they run, too. We both got so excited that we were almost talking over each other, asking Dana questions and encouraging her in her endeavors. We gave her lots of positive reinforcement, and assured her that any amount of running, no matter how short or how slow, was fantastic, and that if she just kept at it, she would improve every day.
The two of us (Carrie and I) practically rhapsodized about how awesome running is and how good it makes us feel and what great benefits it’s given us. By the time we were done, Dana seemed more excited, and she vowed that she would keep working at it.
At the same time, Carrie and I were completely re-energized for our own training plans. As often happens with runners, we began to discuss upcoming races, and we were excited to discover we’d both registered for the Detroit Free Press Half Marathon later this year. Racing is always more fun when someone else you know is running the race, too!
I actually signed up for this race a few weeks back, after one of my Saturday morning runs with the girls. Toddra had made a comment that she needed to get in better shape, and then she said that’d she had registered for the Detroit Half. Jen and I were both surprised that she had registered, since she seemed to have slowed down in her training some this year. She admitted that she had done it on New Year’s Day, after a little bit too much celebrating. 😉 She seemed like she might be regretting it, so a little later that day, I texted her and asked if she was running the US-only or international half, and when she replied that it was the international, I texted her back and told her that I was going to join her for the run. She was really excited, because, like I said…running a race is always more fun with a friend!
When I was signing up, I had to pick a pace to be assigned to the appropriate coral. I asked Toddra what her goal finish time was, and she said it was a 2:30. That was pretty much perfect for me, because I really only wanted to run it more for enjoyment and not to get another PR. I feel like my 2:07 finish in March was a great accomplishment for one racing season, and I don’t want to burn myself out by pushing myself that hard for that distance again this year. At the same time, I’ve always wanted to run “the Freep,” as it’s affectionately known to runners around here, and the half marathon seemed like the perfect distance (someday I hope to do the full, but not this year!). I was especially interested in doing the international half, because everyone who runs that race (either the international half or the full) rhapsodizes about going over the Ambassador Bridge as the sun comes up, and I’ve been longing to experience that for years, ever since I ran the last leg of the relay in 2013.
So Toddra’s need for a partner (I don’t want to say pacer, because I’m not really sure that I am fit to “pace” somebody to a 2:30 finish. Maybe a 3:30 finish, ha ha!) seemed tailor-made for me this year. So, I signed up, and just yesterday, Ann and Jen signed up as well. Now they are all looking to me for a training plan, ha ha! I guess my type A personality, which requires some sort of plan for pretty much everything, comes in handy. 😉
But, back to my other friends, Carrie and Dana. Early the following morning (after we talked at the baseball game), I had an excited text from Dana, which she’d sent to Carrie, also. She had gotten up that morning and run a mile, and she was so excited because she took our advice and pushed herself a little harder, and ending up cutting a minute and a half off her previous mile time! She even posted on Facebook about it and tagged both Carrie and me. She was texting us at six in the morning, and it was pretty clear that she was experiencing her first “runner’s high.” 😉 Things like that get me excited about running, too. I was so happy for her, and it felt good knowing that I had helped encourage her to that great feeling. I really do think I missed out on my true calling in life: I really think I should’ve been a cheerleader in high school. :p
Carrie and I are now working on Dana to register for her first 5K so that we can join her. Just another thing I love about running: Real runners are never critical, and they are so encouraging to anyone who gets bitten by the bug. It truly is an awesome sport! I mean, yes, it’s a sport that makes me get up at stupid o’clock on Saturday mornings to have “girl time” with my friends, but that’s my choice, right? And hey, I think it’s a pretty good choice when it offers views like this:
I do love that I have three friends who are as crazy as me and are happy to forego sleep on a Saturday morning to go run eight miles. 🙂
Some other fun pictures from the week…
Since Monday was a holiday, I decided to use the extra time to run an extra mile. And it turned out to be a great five-mile run for me! And then later in the day, I went for an 8-mile bike ride:
I got rained on for a while. You can’t really tell in that picture, but the rain was coming down hard at that moment, and yet, the sun was fully out and shining brightly at the same time. It was cool. I missed the rainbow, though! 🙁
And finally, I can’t forget to report my weight for the week…
Oh my gosh, hooray! It feels good to be back below 125, although I’m still five pounds above goal. But that’s better than 7 pounds, right? 😛 I’m sure all that running helped, but I also watched what I ate and didn’t have any special meals to fit into my normal routine last week. Now, granted, I did have a big hamburger with salt and vinegar crispy potatoes for Memorial Day (after my weigh-in), as well as some angel food cake, but it was all homemade using lower-fat and lower-calorie ingredients (mostly), so I’m hopeful that won’t set me back for next week’s weigh-in.
Summer is finally here, which is great, but it also means the beginning of summer water weight gain. :/ Maybe it won’t happen this year, though–I’m going to try really hard to actually lose weight this summer instead of gaining. Won’t that be novel, ha ha! 😉
Thanks for reading!
