Monday, June 20, 2011

Probably One of Those Face-Suckers from "Alien"

Sometimes I have just a touch of hypochondria.

I usually figure out pretty quickly that I am, in fact, fine (or mostly fine) and just a drama queen, but the fact remains that for several minutes to a few hours I often freak out and get pretty convinced I'm dying.

This happened to me several times over the past week or so.

The best was on either Thursday or Friday. I was just finishing up in the restroom and as I buttoned my pants I felt something. Something hard.

I didn't have a large lunch and things have been moving pretty smoothly down there, so it's not a food baby.....

I just got over-paranoid that I was pregnant 2 days ago and took a pregnancy test even though there was no actual reason to believe I might be pregnant other than finding out that someone I KNOW is pregnant, on purpose, and therefore panicking that I was growing an unexpected fetus while drinking a cuba libre, so it's not a real baby...

Oh god it's a giant tumor and I'm dying of cancer.

Poke poke poke....

A huge, uniform tumor that fills like my whole stomach....

So, okay, not a tumor. It's probably going to be one of the worm-offspring-things that come from the face-suckers in Alien and it's going to burst through my chest and prance down the diner counter singing show-tunes. I'm definitely dying, and now I'm also going to be responsible for an alien outbreak in CA and everyone is going to curse my memory up until the inevitible take-over and apocalypse type ending to American society.



Damnit.

Somehow I alwyas knew it would come to this!!!




So, long story short, after jabbing at myself for several minutes and coming up with really strange possibilities, I sneezed. At which point I discovered what I was actually poking were abdominal muscles under a rather plush layer of squishy fat.

Woops!

I also became pretty convinced I was going to die all because BETTERJULIA doesn't know better than to link me to things I could potentially do that involve fire. Or mud, and this included BOTH.

"Would you do a Warrior Dash with me?" She so innocently asked.
"Well it certainly has the kind of spiffy name that appeals to me... What is it?"
"What is it?" she laughs, "you'll have to google it"

And then I saw this:

http://warriordash.com/

It's like all my Ninja Warrior dreams come true! Only you get to keep going even if you fall off the obstacles! And there's BEER!!!

So of course I said yes.

I'm sure it seems pretty harmless (I mean, aside from the flames and barbed wire), but what you may or may not know is I have the lamest knees ever. Of all time. I have no ACL, not even ONE!! I have only the most tenuous connections of most of my other major knee ligaments. My knees will randomly up and decide to bend in a direction nature never intended for humans at a moments notice while doing nothing more strenuous than standing still, or trying to scratch my leg with my toe while laying in bed, and cause excrutiating pain.

I am that person in all my aerobics classes who has to do the low impact moves.

But here I was again, thinking running sounded like something I can do and do well. I mean, so many of my spark buddies do it... And, no offense meant, their knees are taking just as much pressure from excess weight... I have 4 months... I'll start slow... It'll all be okay.

I had so many daydreams of prancing like a gazelle through the mud, leaping over those obstacles like some sort of super hero, and then consuming a beer covered in mud and surrounded by friends.



And then I actually did week 1 day 1 of the Spark People rookie runner 5k program.

All the treadmills in my gym have been replaced since the last time I used one, so right away I was out of my comfort zone.

Where the hell is quick start? Who thought it was a good idea to put this many buttons on something that only does 2 things?

Oh. There's a giant green one right in the middle that says "go," that's not so bad...

I can walk for 4 minutes at a time, that's not even challenging, I mean, if I can handle so much in my cardio classes this is going to be a joke. I'm going to be totally advanced and end up just skipping ahead to like week 3 and then doing iron-man style triathalons in a month, 3.15 miles of mud with obstacles will be a joke. I'll make that run my b*%@ch!

And then the running part happened.

And once again I was pretty sure I was dying.

Why the hell did I think I could run? This sucks more than anything has sucked ever in the history of sucking!


As the treadmill counted down the seconds to each running interval I glared at it so hard I was pretty convinced lasers whould shoot from my eyes into the control panel, blinding me in the process.



The mysterious burning in my shins is shin splints already, I just know it. I'm going to cripple myself for life all because I was deterimend to finish this stupid work out rather than quitting like a responsible fat person and making excuses to go do something more fun and lower impact and possibly eat a cheeseburger to reward myself.

But I didn't die, and my shins were fine after an hour of zumba.

But I hadn't forgotten how bad Thursday sucked when Saturday rolled around. I knew I needed to run first thing or I wouldn't get to it. So I 'slept' for another 2 hours after I initially woke up (the book doesn't count, I was in bed, therefore sleeping).

Then I HAD to eat something first, right? Can't exercise on an empty stomach.

And then I had to let that digest. FOR AN HOUR. I mean, that piece of whole wheat toast might make me feel like I'm going to barf, I better watch 2 on demand episodes of a bad reality television show to prepare myself.

Oh but I have so much planned for today... Can I really justify taking ALLL that time to do the running work out? I don't think so, I better just skip it. I shouldn't run anyway, I have bad knees.

But I went.



And if I thought I was going to shoot lasers at that treadmill on Thursday, I was pretty sure ti would be more like space aged anti-aircraft weopans from a sci fi movie on Saturday.

Here we go treadmill.
You and me.
Wo-mano a machine-o.
You can't beat me.
I'm gonna kick you in your stupid face.
I'm going to run, and I'm going to be craceful as some sort of African planes animal with really pretty fur, and you're going to lose, and it's going to be awesome.
I'm even going to do the running parts at 5.TWO instead of 5.0 today.
That's how confident I am that you are going down.

I was pretty sure I was going to die. I had a huge trash-talking session with the treadmill before every running interval, and I almost stopped and got off the treadmill at least 10 times in that 20 minutes.... But I didn't. I finished the work out, I kept the speed where I told myself I would, and

I ran

1 comment:

  1. Hol-y cow. You know my brain! I snorted my ever so lightly sugared tea outta my nose. I love this!

    I need to Mope my way to the gym, sigh...BTW, running on pavement is totally different than on a treadmill. Way more fun! You get chased by things....like cars, and dogs, and scary vans.

    Have fun!

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