Goal #49 and Goal #19

Goal #49: Finish my 13-week walk-to-run program with the same diligence I began it.
I did this. I had a few stalls due to illness and injury, but I basically kept with the program. It wasn't with exactly the same diligence or enthusiasm that I started, mainly due to the fact that I started my training on the treadmill, and so felt bound to finish it there, and was really pretty bored by the end. As my final session, I went for a 5km run outside through the park/cemetary. It was sooo nice. I know that the actual goal of the walk-run program is to run a 10km race, but since my training had been spotty towards the end, and since running on a treadmill is a poor substitute for running outside, I decided that my first outdoor run was challenge enough. (And I'll be getting ready for a 10km in the fall.) Felt great doing it. Quads killing me today. Can't wait until I go for my next run, tomorrow!

As a personal reward, I swung by the New Balance store --since I saw they were having a sale-- and completed Goal #19: Get some really good running shoes that are good for my feet. After the kindly salesgirl watched my flat-footed walk around the store, and stood by while I hemmed and hawed and bounced on the spot and ran on the treadmill in the back, I am now the happy owner of a pair of New Balance W767s. Can't wait to take them for a spin.


p.s. This is my 100th post! (my one-year anniversary passed unnoticed a wee while ago)

I hate chipmunks

I have had it with these motherfucking squirrels on my motherfucking bike!!!

-Samuel M. Jackson in Squirrels on a Bike

In my past several weeks and months of bicycle commuting, I've been working up a good hate towards squirrels. I never used to have an issue with the fuzzy-tailed rodents; I know my father has long harboured hatred for them -- something about his daffodils and tulips. He immediately sided with our neighbourhood foxes when they chose squirrel as the snack du jour. He used to applaud with veritable glee whenever we discovered "squirrel jammies" in the back yard (the bottom half of a squirrel body, little feets and tail still on, but with the insides eaten out, thus resembling a set of infant's pajamas. So some other animal could, if it so desired, put on the cozy squirrel suit). I was kind of grossed out but mainly indifferent. Now, however, I'm all set to head up the Task Force on the Elimination of Squirrels and All Things Squirrel Related. (I do wish I could have made a cool acronym for that. Suggestions welcomed.)
Here's why: They are unforgivably stupid. After my own squirrel-bike encounter, I started to be more wary of the little fuckers, and now I see them everywhere, skippity-skipping out onto the road and then hanging out or indecisively changing directions. This way? That way? Which way did I come from? What's over there? Is that a car? I also dodge ample gory evidence that many of them make the wrong decision.
And then, yesterday, a chipmunk was the direct cause of bodily harm to my person. This I cannot tolerate.
I was having a great ride. It was a cool, damp day, but my legs weren't tired and I was flying along. I hit the entrance to the park portion of my ride and started cruising down the hill. So of course, out of the trees lining the path comes darting one little asshole chipmunk. I brake. I start sliding on the wet path. (I was prepared for this, due to another slippy near-encounter earlier this month with a jogger who couldn't decide which way to move over. Argh.) Chipmunk switches direction and goes back across the path (they're fast!). I brake harder. I skid out. Chipmunk is still in the path, and my bike goes over as I vainly try to swerve and brake to avoid it.
I'm pretty good at falling. I've had some practice. I remember one time in particular when a child bolted onto the trail in front of me and I had to brake so hard that I ended up vaulting over my handlebars and having my bike hit me instead of the kid. I then gave its mother a very stern talking-to (read: dirty look and a mumbled, "You should be more careful.") Not so this time. I crashed onto the path, my left elbow and hand taking most of the impact.
It was bound to happen. I ride every day, so a little upset of this type was expected. Still, I was all shaken up. It wasn't so much about the physical pain, which was substantial, but about the fact that I'd become confident again on my bike and on the roads, and here was something undermining my conviction. Something that really freakin' hurt. I sat despondently on the path, bike shoved off to the side, and cried. Pulled it together enough to tell a passing jogger that I was actually fine, thanks. Then I called my husband and cried to him. However, when he sleepily suggested that he could come get me and bring me home, it renewed what I like to think of as my plucky stubbornness, and I righted my bicycle. After all, it was one stupid fall, caused by one stupid chipmunk. I vocally warned the forest that if they came near me, I'd step on them. And that next time, no mercy! Chipmunks go crunch! But I know that's not going to happen. I've never actually killed anything, you see, and I would like to keep it that way. (Bugs don't count. Tough on my karma).
But I can hate. Can I ever hate.

Is this why they're so retarded?

Goal #36: Take a Belly Dancing Class

I have wanted to try belly dancing for over ten years. Seriously, even back in the day I thought to myself, well, I certainly have the belly... But back then I had very little income -- squandered mainly on afternoon-long coffee binges -- and all my spare time was taken up with trying to figure out which bars would serve us booze, or who looked the oldest and should thus go to the door when the Dial-A-Bottle guy arrived. (Shockingly enough, that was me on more than one occasion. Man, the booze-delivery guys must have had wobbly moral compasses. And for that we thank them.)
Shortly after compiling my "101 things" list, I realized that these days I am in charge of my own time, and I have an income that at least keeps me comfortably in coffee, and there was nothing stopping me from signing up for a class. This belly was ready to dance!
I'm only four classes in, and I love it. It is so much fun to just go move your body. There's no other motive -- I'm not trying to burn calories, or build strength, or achieve a personal best time -- I am there to have fun. And fun it is! The class is all women, obviously, and it is pure girlishness. We pretend we're princesses, and our hands are flowers. We play with prettily coloured silk scarves. We shake and shimmy our fleshy booties. The class has a wide range of ages in it, and women of very diverse ethnic heritage. We all giggle and smile at each other, united by figuring out the right way to shake your tits.
Belly dancing has to be sexy. It simply doesn't work if the moves aren't sexy, and there is something incredibly liberating about being "allowed" to move like that. You don't have to be strong. You don't have to be smart. You have to relax, and let your hips undulate.
I can see myself doing this for a long time.
Because don't I look awesome in the costume?