Step Away From the Cake

That's how far I went today and I am so stinking proud of myself I could burst.  A little backstory here. A few years back when I was in such awesome shape , one of the things I did every Saturday was walk/run this 6 mile loop in Kailua. It became so it was just a habit. Initially I started with walking it but as I got fitter I took to running it. So while during the week I would only run for 30 minutes or so, every Saturday I covered at least 6 miles. I think that was part of the reason 10k's were so easy for me...6 miles was just a Saturday run. Flash forward to Wednesday when I thought about that 6 mile run. I have not done it in years but I want to do a 10k on New Years Day. It seemed like a good idea to do that loop and just see how I felt after covering 6 miles on foot. So this morning, in spite of being kept awake for 2 hours at midnight and the hours of pre-dawn rain, I got up and headed into Kailua. I parked my car, got the shoes on, grabbed my ipod nano

So I had a little hip pain but that has gone away. Actually, I'm glad I wrote about it because I was thinking the pain was from running - but it started on Sunday before I had done any real running. Good to know. So I got up Monday morning, in the freezing cold, and ran for 30 minutes. I didn't get far and it was painful but I did it. I did not get out of bed this morning, I wasn't planning on running and it was too damn cold. Tomorrow I run again. I need a plan for my running. I now have the following race schedule for 2011: January 1 - Bosetti 10k February 21 - Great Aloha Run March 6 - Straub Women's 10K April 17 - Wahine half marathon May 1 - North Shore Marathon I went from someone who struggled to get my workouts in to someone who is planning a racing calendar.. Wow, how quickly things change.  But I do need a solid plan so I'm ready for all these without injury.  I should probably check into some  term life insurance too, because lord knows

I whine and moan about my weight, how the scales seem to hate me, about my aches and pains from working out and other nonsense. I seem to forget how extremely lucky I am. I have the house of my dreams - and I own it - I have a job I really love, I have my animals (though some of them are questionable sometimes) and I have my health. That is so important I can not even put it into words. There is a teacher at work who was fine one day and the next in the hospital for ovarian cancer (I think). At this point she will not be back this semester and next semester is up in the air. A friend of ours had back surgery 10 years ago and pretty much lives in constant pain. There are times he has to make trips to the hospital to get morphine because the pain is so bad. He takes large doses of vicodin and oxycontin like it's candy. Thankfully I am healthy. What led to this little gratitude moment you might ask? Well, I woke up this morning and my hip hurt. I was bemoaning the fact th