Pile It On.

..Oh hey, Boss - What's up?

You've got something else you'd like me to do?

Is that before or after I:

a) Finish learning the new department you want me to run, while b) still running my regular department and c) doing my everyday assistant manager duties?

Should I make room for it between:

d) Maintaining, updating and tweaking the company website, e) setting up the social media (Twitter, Facebook) and f) running that as well?

Maybe I can fit it in between my:

g) training for a Marathon that HAPPENS IN A WEEK AND A HALF, and h) juggling my regular family responsibilities.

Yeah - sure, why not.

Whatcha' got?

Later.

Invading My Inner Sanctum.

I have an annoyance.

It's not an earth-shattering annoyance or anything, but it's just a slight change in my regular routine that's bugging me.

You see, there's this girl who works at my gym - extremely pleasant, great personality, and has that outlook on life that you need when you're dealing with people at 5:30am.

I can understand that working part-time at a tiny local gym isn't where the big bucks are, and I'd be kidding myself if I said I was surprised to see that she had picked up a second job.

It's where here second job IS - that's where the annoyance comes in.

You see, she now works for the same company I do.

I don't work directly with her (she's in the other location) but now everytime I see her at the gym, the talk has gone from pleasant chit-chat to "work" talk - customers, things that happen, etc - our common ground has increased immensely.

And there's my annoyance - I go to the gym to not only better myself, but to get AWAY from talking about work. (The Wife and I work for the same company as well, so the goings-on of the business are a big subject at home.) It's my time and area to not think about what I do for 40+ hours a week. I could ask the Wife not to talk about work, but explaining that I want her to stop doing it so that some other girl can would go over about as well as you'd expect it to.

Yet I don't want to be rude and not talk to the girl at the gym - I just don't know how to break it to her that I don't want to talk about the job - maybe if I keep changing the subject, she'll get the hint.

Either that, or I'll have to duck out of the gym when she goes to clean the bathrooms...

Yeah - maybe I'll try that first.

Later.

Headwind.

It must be Fall again.

I don't care what the calendar says, to me, fall is when the soft breezes of summer give way to the chilly wind of winter.

I encountered them this morning on my run.

When you're sweating away in the midst of a 8 miler (and running waaay faster than you should be), a cold breeze coming up behind you is actually a welcome relief. (Contrary to popular opinion down south, there was no smell of Moose in the air - just the crisp, clean scent of the ocean.)

But turning around is a bitch.

As I rounded my halfway point and headed back, the cold breeze went from welcome relief to incessant pain-in-the-ass, as the wind kicked up and turned a rewarding experience into something much less fun.

I actually had to lean into it, people. That's how strong the wind was.

It sucked.

There's nothing pleasant about a headwind - you never hear any runner say "Right on - the wind's blowing right at us!"

It slows you down, makes it harder to run, and just generally sucks balls.

As I get closer to my Fall Marathon (28 days!) I just hope that the day of the race is a calm and cool, and that the breeze somehow magically stays at my back.

Either that or I somehow find a really fast fat guy to run behind - drafting isn't only for NASCAR, people.

Later.

Dear Newsweek:



Thank you for making any attempt to eat asparagus, from now until the end of time, incredibly awkward.




I could watch this woman eat all day.

I will admit your cover did get my attention, so good job at that.
 

But seeing those luscious lips preparing to do dirty, dirty things to those asparagus spears has forever scarred me. Maybe it just shows that my mind, like many others, resides in the gutter 90% of the time.

 

Later.
 

Funk.

Hello people.

Don't attempt to adjust your monitor - turning it off and on wont do any good, it's actually me.

I know most of you thought that I abandoned this place, and I'll admit, I thought so too. It's hard to explain what's been going on in my head for the past month.

Somewhere along the line, I just stopped life.

I was living, but not really being a part of anything. I worked, and if you were working with me, you'd be hard-pressed to say that anything was wrong. I had fun with the kids, enjoyed time with my family, but I just stopped anything to do with just me.

Running felt like a chore, going to the gym was an exercise in futility. I didn't feel like doing anything. I had no motivation. I ran over 130 miles in July and barely 50 in August.

Worst of all, I could see what was going on. I could see the missed runs on the calendar, feel the lack of energy in my body, and no matter how much I said "I'll get back on track tomorrow/Monday/whenever.", when that day would come, I'd actually talk myself out of doing it - finding some reason to not run or hit the weights.

And my family isn't going to complain - if I'm not at the gym or on the road, I'm home. And who doesn't want Daddy around more, right? And when it came down to it, I'd feel better that I stayed and had a couple hours with the kids before work.

Until I'd see a runner on my drive.

Someone out there doing what I should be doing - someone who probably has the same goals/plans/problems that I do, but with one difference - they were out there doing it, and I wasn't.

I thought about this place alot, to be honest, but my creative energy and motivation was in the same place as my physical - completely fucking absent.

You have no idea how much this sucks.

I had a small epiphany the other night, though, and I'm trying to follow through on what I realized:

I'm happiest when I'm doing something for myself. When I'm running, when I'm writing, and when I've looked after me before I've looked after everyone else. I know it sounds selfish, and I'm totally not phrasing it right at all, but trust me, in my mind, it works.

I have one month and one day until the Royal Victoria Marathon. That's 4 weeks to get my shit together and do what I should have been doing all summer. Will I qualify for Boston? Hell no - but I am going to do it, run it, and finish it.

Sunday I did 10 miles. Today I hit the weights, ran 3.1 (5km) and tomorrow is an 8 miler. I have a big run this weekend to get back on my training program, but I'm looking forward to it more than I'm dreading it.

I'm hoping that's a good sign. (Hurdling a moose would be a better one.)

I hope to be around here more often as well. It might not be the everyday occurrence it once was, but it'll be more than it has been, that's for sure.

Damn it feels good to get that off my chest.

Thanks, people.

Later.