Fuls

No, I didn't misspell that. Right now, I'm feeling two "ful"s.

Thankful.

Neglectful.

Let's start with the easy one. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday....for the same reason I love birthdays. I find it wonderful to take a minute to remember all of the reasons I'm grateful. It is amazing when you start counting your blessings...how many you find. Big ones...small ones. We all know it is easier to see what is wrong, but I find that when I start to look for things that are right, they become all I can see.

Well, the above statement now makes it easy for me to right about "the hard one". Neglectful. I have been sorely neglecting my swim,bike,whating life. After setting a great goal...I found myself challenged by life and rejecting anything extra...like running.

Which is such a wrong move. For me when I run I feel like life is clearer. With each breath I clean out the bad and breathe in the room for change. So when I get stressed and then stop running it compounds everything. Of course then I also start eating wrong...which then makes it even worse.

Whoa. Put on the brakes. I'm loosing focus of the good things. There are good things that come from neglect. Like this morning when I finally laced up my shoes and started out. I thought "oh, you'll be just fine. You went running a week ago on a tough course and pounded it out." Oh, cockiness. Such a fickle friend.

It became evident, pretty quickly, no, it wasn't going to be easy. But I did it. At one point in this journey I would have quit. But I didn't. And I'm so grateful to be at this point.

So now we head off to Thanksgiving weekend. To celebrate, I'm stopping at every moment I get to be thankful. And starting a new tradition....the Turkey Trot!

Hosted by Alisa HERE:

AM PM

When I was little my Uncle would take us to AM/PM a lot. To be honest I'm not sure what we got...but at some point, in the back of his white Toyota pick-up truck my cousins, brothers and I took it upon ourselves to make up an AM/PM song. Maybe it was the mix of ages, the close space or the Slurpees we'd devored...but we thought it was hilarious and it stuck with us for years. Even now it pops into my mind. (AM, PM, it's a mini-market, flying through the sky...*)

AM/PM has been a mental theme of mine today. Why? Well for two reasons:

(1) I stopped there about thirty minutes ago.

and

(2) I need to make a decision about when to schedule my run time.

In my uber-productive day I missed my big note to myself to make bread. Being a gluten-free family means that we make our own bread. Let's clarify. I make it. And I use a bread mix. Nothing hard - but it does mean that I have to take some extra time to do it. So I cannot just get up in the morning and run to buy some.

Which leads me to the stop at AM/PM...to provide enough caffeine for me to make it from now until 1.5 hours from now when the bread will be done.

Once in the store I stood for a long time before pushing that Diet Coke button. See, Diet Coke and I are frenemies. I love to hate Diet Coke. And I hate that I love Diet Coke. Last year I quit it completely. Like any other addiction (yes, I am addicted) once I have a little I want it all the time.

And it plays with my body. I cannot sleep right at night. I get hot and sweaty at weird times in the day when temperature isn't a factor. The caffeine high makes me unbelievably tired at the wrong moments. Of course that just begins the cycle again...

Oh AM/PM what do I do? Should I fill up my cup?

Here's where the other issue comes in...

I really want to change my runs from PM to AM. Both RunMan and I have been running at night. On the plus side that means we stretch together and it's cooler outside. On the other hand the boys are in bed which means we run at different times and, like tonight, when RunMan has a long run he's getting home at 11:00pm.

What to do...what to do...

I pushed the button. I filled up my drink. And I've been sitting here drinking it. Even with all these things going on in my head I can't reject it.

The benefit to all this is clarity. I know I need to run in the mornings. I tend to be more productive (meaning earlier bread making sessions!) and my day starts off, literally, on the right foot. RunMan can then run earlier in the evening and we can actually have time.

The other truth from AM running is that I crave things less. I tend to be more aware of what I put in my body because I've spent the morning running. At night I feel less aware of my nutrition through the day because as long as it doesn't effect my running...I don't care.

In the meantime AM/PM...you and I are going to see less of each other. Much less.

*the song is lacking when in black/white. Next time you're around me, have me sing it. It still probably won't make sense because, well, those are all the lyrics.