Becoming a runner

As much as my twitter user name tries to tell me differently, i am not SuperHot. I try occasionally, but mostly i'm SuperAverage with a dash of thunder thighs.  Term 2 was pretty shit. I was busy and stressed and i spent far too many nights writing reports and eating Roti bread. On the night before my reports were due i was tired and stressed and really needed a pick me up. What better pick me up than strange men telling me I'm pretty?! To the dating site i go! I picked OKCupid purely because everyone on twitter talked about it... I never intended to meet anyone or go on dates, it really was a superficial decision, i was stressed and that was it... 


But interestingly, i got some nice messages and started to take it more seriously. And then came the kicker of a question (which actually came from Date Boy in an initial conversation):
Besides work, what do you do? 


Oh. God. What do i do? Tweet? Go out to dinner with my friends? waste copious amounts of time online seemingly doing nothing? None of those are acceptable answers to that question, particularly when it was coming from someone who had just told me they run 7km three times a week, play pretty much any instrument and is thinking up taking up Ice Hockey. Knitting and lying around listening to music doesn't really compare, does it? So the thought 'maybe i should be exercising again' snuck into my brain. 


Once it was in there it forced me to take a more critical look at myself. I had put on weight, and if i'm blunt about it, i had gotten to the stage where i was heavier than i had been for quite a while, and definitely the heaviest I've been since I've had a set of scales handy. And while it's not heavy-heavy, it was heavier than i wanted to be. 


So i started C25K again (it's an app. look it up). I'd started it maybe three times and had never gotten beyond the 3rd week which was about 5 minute running intervals. Starting this time hurt, i think my fitness was worse than it had been before. The first run made me feel sick, my body ached and i wanted to cry.
But this time, i kept at it. And today i cracked 4km in less than half an hour. It took me 9 weeks to go from running 1.5 minutes and wanting to die and/or cry to focusing on pace time and getting under certain times. 


But the better thing than the weight loss or the PB's for running is how good i feel. Fitter, stronger, leaner, happier. I get to the end of a run and i can't stop smiling. I feel good for hours afterwards. I like that my body can accomplish things and that it can be strong and fit. The curves are leaner, my arse is firmer and naked i'm on my way to having a "runners body" (or so i'm told). It all just adds up to being a better, happier me. 


It's not always easy. I still put off runs, and when i realised last tuesday that i was so far away from hitting my goal of 5km by the end of this week, i was shattered. I felt like i failed not only myself, but all the people that i'd told that i'd be hitting this goal. Spent three days hating everything and it wasn't until i went out on my next run did i feel better about it. I know i'm slow, but i know i'll get faster. I just have to keep going, keep pushing myself to get the 4km quicker then move on to making the 5km faster. Be happy with the fact that i'm running and getting better at it and not hating it. 




So now, when people ask me what i do out side of work, i can add 'Run three times a week, i'm hoping to do a 5k fun run soon" 
That, from the girl who struggled through the Beep Test at High School, is something that makes me happier than any amount of weight loss. 

Only Sparrows

It's been a while since i've really, truly loved an album. I described it as falling 'whole soul' in love with it on twitter the other day, and i stand by that description. 
I've loved Josh Pyke since i first heard Middle of the Hill all those years ago, and all of his albums have been good, great even, but there's something about this one that has just captured me a bit more. I'm not sure why, i'm not sure why this album more than anything. it's just brilliant. 
Particularly i love Diet of worms ("i know we're not at the centre of anything circling, dark, cold... arrogant to think of us as anything but a happy coincidence...") and Punch in the Heart ("and i'd press you against the bonnet just to keep our heat"). Josh has always captured the spirit of summer in his songs, they always seem to shuffle into my ears when i am walking home in the sun after a day at work and they'd make me smile. Only Sparrows seems to have gone beyond that and etched itself into my brain all the time. I find myself itching for a spare period so i can go back to my office and put my headphones on and listen to the album from start to finish again and again. In order too, i don't want to shuffle it in with Boy and Bear or any of the other albums that i've liked recently. It's been headphones on, music loud, just lying there letting it be everything... A long time coming, a long time since an album has made me want to do that.


It's been some time since I've really loved songs like i love these songs. I really loved Adele, but i think for me her songs came a year too late for me to whole soul love them. Sure, i'll belt out Set Fire to the Rain, and the Islander kids in my year 8 classes have all heard me sing Rolling in the Deep, but they're good songs, not soul touching ones. Not for me. 


The other thing that Josh Pyke made me realise is how much i still like CD's and booklets and tangible music. I bought Eskimo Joe's album online and it came with a digital booklet. Something that i haven't looked at, same with Yellowcard's booklet when i bought that online. One of the first thing i did when i bought physically the CD was snap my headphones on and flick through the booklet of Pyke's album. Admired the artwork, read some lyrics. It makes the music experience different, better i think. Not that i could explain why it does either. 


I like music that i can get excited by. I like music that i can sit and listen to the whole album on repeat for days and days. Josh has given that to me in Only Sparrows, and for that i thank him.