As previously mentioned...

I suck at keeping up with this blog. I don't feel as creative as most of you gals, but I shall try my damndest. I'll jump on the bandwagon and talk about training for the half marathon coming up!

My sister/roommate and I decided to run the half marathon relay at the end of January, because it would give us a good reason to go out and run a few times every week. This is not our first attempt at a half. In the summer of 2005, right after I moved back from Nebraska and was in the best shape of my life, we signed up to train with the local chapter of USA Fit. My mom joined us in this attempt. She only lasted two weeks. C., my sister, lasted about a month. And me? Four whole months. I got up to running 9 miles at a time, woke up every Saturday morning around 4:00 am and did all of the weekly training runs by myself. Unfortunately, I sustained an injury to my hip flexor area and had to drop out of the training, and never actually got to run the actual race itself.

But this time I intend to do the whole thing. So far my long run is only up to around 3 miles, but I plan to start stretching them out to around 5 miles in the next week or two. I also am combining my running with twice-weekly strength sessions at the gym. And eating a healthy balanced diet.

So far I haven't lost any weight. Sucks.

Weekend recap

This weekend was a nice mix of being busy and relaxing. Too often I spend the entire weekend relaxing and accomplish nothing, or I am busy the whole time and feel like I didn't get to rest enough. But not this one.

Friday afternoon was happy hour at Jovita's on South 1st, next door to Freddie's Place. My good friends Phil and Danny (1/3 of Flatcar Rattlers) play there together during happy hour occasionally. It's usually fairly empty that time of day, but they have half price margaritas and chips and salsa, so it is totally worth going.

Saturday, my roommate/sister woke me up at 11:00 begging me to go do stuff with her. It was pouring down rain, but I did anyway. We went to get pedicures/waxed. I got a very dark purple color that looks almost black and she got bright tomato red. Totally suits both of us. We then ran through the rain to Target next door. I purchased necessary toiletries and a couple of C9 Champion dry-fit shirts for the gym. Because I am going to force myself to go to the gym at least twice this week. We then headed to Central Market for lunch from the cafe. They have the best French Onion Soup ever and a damn good antipasto panini. A trip to Whole Earth rounded out the afternoon before I headed home to watch college football for a few hours while it continued to pour down rain. Saturday night was another trip to Jovita's to see all of Flatcar Rattlers play. Greatest show ever. I may or may not have spent $48 on margaritas and shots and a bluegrass band may or may not have broken out into an impromtu Snoop Dogg song, complete with fiddle and banjo...

Yesterday was the epitome of a lazy Sunday. Didn't wake up until 12:00. Didn't change out of my pajamas until 5:00. Went to N.'s house to watch NFL football and eat pizza and drink pinot grigio last night. Pretty good ending to the weekend.

All in all, I:

• drank a lot of booze
• spent a lot of money
• watched a lot of live music
• watched a lot of football
• slept a lot

Perfect.

Sad little story

I'm a terrible blogger. Sometimes I just don't feel up to coming up with an exciting post. Other times, I feel like I don't have one interesting thing to say. I kind of feel that way today. So I'm going to tell everyone a story.

This story is about a boy named N. N. and I met in June 2007 on Craigslist (because I had just learned you can shop for people on there, too) and met for Brazilian food. Sparks flew. We were officially a couple within three days.

N. is a mechanic by day and a musician by night. Nothing even close to the type of person I would fall madly in love with but I did. He had his flaws, some of them very, very big, but I looked past them and saw the person I wanted to marry. This freaked him out a little bit, but he eventually woke up and decided that I, too, was the person he wanted to marry, but there was no official proposal. (I then immediately joined the knot, which is how I came to follow most of your blogs.) We picked a date for me to move into his house, an approximate timeframe for marriage and how many kids would be in our future. I was walking on clouds and couldn't stop smiling. He felt the same way.

In late April of this year, just six weeks before we would be celebrating our two year dating anniversary and two months before I would be moving into his house, we broke up with the understanding that we would be back together in the future. I'll spare you the sordid details of that, but my life literally fell apart. I spent the next month going through the motions without really feeling anything but pain. I almost failed a course and jeopardized my graduation from UT. I wasn't performing well at my job. I cried every single day and went through several periods of not being able to eat for days at a time.

The 26th of this month will mark the five month mark of our breakup. I have been in counseling for close to three months and haven't managed to accomplish much. I feel like my life is still so imcomplete without him.

Not sure what I was hoping for by telling you all of this, other than to let everyone know what is going on in my life. My problems seem so insignificant compared to others', but this is real for me. At the age of 24, this is the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life and I'm not sure where to go from here.

what i need...

...is some motivation. Badly.

Yesterday was supposed to be my "it's the first day of september and the first day of my new habits and the first day of the new me" day. I planned to get off work and go straight to the gym and then to the grocery store and then cook a yummy healthy dinner. Sounded good to me.

Then real life happened. I got off work, went home and fell asleep. Not sure if I'm still wiped out from my three day weekend in Houston playing with nieces and nephews or if I'm coming down with something, but I wasn't waking up for anything yesterday. I slept from around 5:00 until 9:30. Then took a shower, checked some emails, and went back to sleep around 10:45 and didn't wake up until 8:30 this morning. And yes, I still feel like I could sleep.

So day one went not so great. Day two needs to be better. If I had the funds in my checking account, I would totally head out for some new workout clothes to motivate me. Saw some super cute, dry-wick t-shirts in beautiful colors at Target for only $10 each. I want.

My question to all of you working-out girls: what is your motivation and can you send some my way?