Many run-on sentences and some sentence fragments today.

• My training plan involves at least 2 5am 5k runs, as soon as I can get my crap together enough the night before to make up for the fact that practically as soon as I stop running I have to get in the car and go to work.

• I'm also planning on doing an afternoon run once a week, to get heat acclimated for BSLT 70.3 at the end of June.

• 2-3 times a week, I walk a couple miles with a coworker at lunch. She's training to racewalk a 5K, so she enjoys being with someone who can keep up, which is what it's all about: I can now keep up with a novice racewalker.

• I am intrigued by Crossfit, as it is the preferred training of Catra Corbit, who is someone I aspire to be like, although slightly less colorfull or naked. (Okay, maybe just as naked but only for Sweet Baboo.) AndraSue is also doing Crossfit, and so I'm curious about her experience.

• But I'm pretty sure I'm much too lazy to actually do it.

• I am lukewarm about my performance at Jay Benson. On the one hand, I'm slightly slower than the last time I did it, but on the other hand, I'm happy that although I'm heavier and haven't trained I didn' really do all that bad. There's always next year.

• Baboo and I are thinking more about how much we like being home now. There are no surly teenagers and we love the new crib (I just know Baboo will adore me calling it a "crib.") so we may start limiting our craziness to just one or two trips a year, and do more local events.

• I thought I would be depressed that this is the first summer since 1991 that I haven't had the summer off, but I'm excited to be able to do early runs in a T-shirt and shorts.

• I had houseguests here for 10 days, and they left yesterday, so now, I have 5 days to straighten up and prepare for all my grown children, who are descending on me like locusts (did I just say that out loud?) in honor of Mini-baboo's graduation. I'm getting increasingly old-lady-cranky: Don't touch my stuff. Don't sit there. GAA! What are you doing? Don't change the volume on that!

• I used to grumble about HS graduations (what are they so excited about) but I'm so excited about this event that I just can't put it into words.

• Today's post is in honor of people who gripe about bad grammar in social situations, and a good example of that griping is here (be sure to scroll down to read the third gripe - it's my favorite.) and in public speaking. (PE: RBR is not allowed to comment)

• I have mixed feelings about the order of the waves at Jay Benson: 1) All men, 2) Women up to 44, and then 3) Clydesdales, Athenas, Teams, and women over 44. It's like, we're going to let the real triathletes go first, and then you all can go. (And, it was mother's day.)

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So I started doing the 5 or 6 small meals a day thing, which helps me control my eating more. I'm less likely to eat impulsively if I have a small amount of food throughout the day, and my willpower is stronger. I know it's healthier, but I've never been able to pull it off because I'd be teaching classes all day, so it was HUGE breakfast, small fast midday meal, HUGE FATTENING and DESPERATELY LARGE AFTER WORK SNACK, and then supper. I could maintain this crappy eating style because I was on my feet all day. Now I'm on my butt all day.


So far, the scale hasn't budged. But I feel thinner. Maybe that's just hunger. Couple of things.

1) There are two required meetings that I go to each week and so far, everytime I've gone they've had some sort of food there. It's not, like, low-fat yogurt and granola. No, it's like muffins, or bagels and Shmear or birthday cake. Yikes. I've found that if I eat a quick snack before the meeting it's much easier to say, "No thanks," I'm tempted to say, if asked, for my birthday, I'd like a nice tofu salad and bowls so that everyone can share.

2) There are a distressing amount of people here with large bowls of candy on their desks. It's always a huge variety of candy, too, meaning that no matter how quickly I avert my eyes, they are bound to settle on something that I truly L-L-LOVE. Everytime I see one of these bowls, I want to throttle their owner.
DON'T YOU KNOW? Can't you tell? How poor my willpower is? PUT THIS AWAY!

Or, maybe I'll just put on my big girl panties and deal with it. It's temptation. When I'm not trying to cut 15 pounds for a 64K run I might try one now and then. Meanwhile, I have to learn that not everything that tastes good has to be eaten nowNOWNOW and, I can abstain.

3) The way the small meal thing works is that you don't skip the small meals. EVER. Yesterday I was to have lunch with a friend, and she was about an hour later than I expected. By the time she showed up, I was ready to gnaw on my arm. I felt sick and angry at the world and thinking to myself, Oh, so this is hunger. Hunger sucks.

4) I had SparkPeople to make a little quick strength routine for me, using my bodyweight. It includes exercises I have traditionally avoided, like lunges. So, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I shut the door for 15 minutes in the morning and again in the afternoon, and do them in my 6 x 12 office. Everything thinks the decorative rug I put down is just pretty, but what it is is very cushiony for doing floor exercises. I've arranged furniture to do this. The routine is simple, 2 sets of 12-15 reps:

• Pushups, Plank (60 seconds hold, not reps), back extension, crunches, and crunches with a twist (morning)
• Forward lunges, squats, Calf raises, then stretching (afternoon)

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I run during lunch. M-W-F I'm going to try to speedwalk during lunch. Sweet Baboo insists that I should be running more, but I'm also running Friday evenings and Sundays, so I'm okay, I think. Occasionally, I'll probably miss a workout, and once the days get longer and start heating up I'll have to switch running to the morning before work, I guess. For now, this works.

BTW, Sweet Baboo did get the promotion. Shhhhhh. It hasn't been formally announced yet.

I bought this new oatmeal that we found at the local grocery story, it's Kroger brand Active Lifestyle Oatmeal. It had a lot of fiber and was on sale and had enticing pictures on the front. Go ahead and skip it; it's fairly bland. I'll finish what we bought, but I like Quaker's Simple Harvest oatmeal much better.

I'm learning a lot about psychotic disorders and symptoms, and pretty soon they'll begin training me on doing neuropsychological assessment, which sounds very cool. Meanwhile, I accidentally left my door open about a foot today and SMILE! guy stopped and talked to me for nearly 20 minutes. Of all the skills I've learned so far, extricating myself from conversations for which I do not have time are not one of them. Need to study this.

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Ways to feel good again.

Okay, so I have some rotten students. But then I hear about the really, really, really good kids that I know are out there and then I feel better.

Have you heard about this girl who was carried around the bases by the opposing team after hitting a home run?

Be prepared to seriously sniffle:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/girls-sports-and-sportsmanship/

Also making me feel good today:

I mean, am I like the last person in the world to know about Quaker Chocolate Rice Cakes? They're 60 calories, about 1.2 WeightWatcher points each. I've already had four of them.

Okay. Maybe that's defeating the purpose of low-cal food to eat half the bag of it, but I needed some feel-good stuff.

Two more days of teaching left.

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