Leida

I saw these photos (link below), and I was not only stunned by their beauty, there was also some sort of a thought nagging at me when I looked at it. I finally managed to formulate it, and it may have come out as a platitude, but here it is: 

A Grain of Sand Doesn’t Need to Become a Pearl to be Beautiful

Link: http://geology.com/articles/sand-grains.shtml

I (blush) made myself a motivational poster with it. I feel that I need that reminder, because I tend to lose the sight of the most important thing chasing perfection and numbers sometimes. And the most important thing is that being fit is the best thing for the body you are in.

Other than that, it was my birthday today, and my husband woke up at 4 am to congratulate me and give me my gift - heart rate monitor! Are you surprised I left for work half an hour late?

Hope you all are having a MAGNIFICENT DAY!

Our new neighbors have teenage sons, and a hoop in the driveway of our new house. Every time I drive around it, my heart goes pounding! I want to start shooting that hoop. Gods, I haven’t play basketball sine I was a teen. That’s what, 20 years? More? Scary. But I wanna. I think I will crack up and buy a ball one of this trips to super-market.

It was a glorious weekend. I went to the Fitness Theory course to start my fitness instructor certification process; really good information, awsome tips for my own workouts, lots of things I felt intuitevly explained… great!

My mood was dampened a bit by the second course’s cancellation, so I don’t know when I can re-schedule with our busy life, but I am determined to do it!

I had a couple beautiful runs. Weather tuned to autumn, and boy, is it perfect for running. Crips air, golden leaves, huge sunrises… Aww, nature wants us to be outdoors!

I took my toddler shopping for groceries yesterday night, after the course. Normally I dislike that, but this time I involved her into finding foods in our ever-changing Superstore layout, so we chanted together: Where are the Chickpeas?! Chickpeas, chickpeas!  Now, where is the pasta hiding?! and so on… so it was one giant Easter egg hunt. I stopped feeling tired half-way through it.

On top of it, I was not abnormally hungry yesterday. An awsome day… too bad it’s back to work today, after a whole weekend at an intensive course. But, I have a newfound mantra (got it during running hills): I am strong. I will prevail!

And now I want to play basketball.

… but did I pick a wrong day to have low-energy, slumlpy look and a bloat. A crisp good-looking male just made me all the more aware of how pathetic I appear today. The morale: one should never let herself to have a bad hair day in public!

So, on Saturday, I did my first serious run, exploring the trails in my new neighborhood. I went a wee bit too late to see the sunrise over the hills, so next weekend I will try it 15 or so min earlier.

It’s not as spectacular as my old places, where at some point I ran out on the bluff above the river, and could run trails on the terrace, but it is a good trail, that winds between the houses for a while, and then cuts between the two parts of the private golf-course for a bit, so you can see alot of the suburbia, plains taking off in the distance, and, if someone got up earlier - a glorious sunrise.

There is quite a few possibilities to extend a run (I was aiming for 30 min, but when it came close to 40, I did a couple of loops around our cul-de-sack to add it to 45).

All and all, I think it will be very nice, and I am looking forwrad to exploring it!

In the weightloss news, this month is shaping up as rather tough for keeping food on track. Housewarming party for 40 people or so on the 12th, United Way Bake Sale on the 15th (that’s where the leftover cookies from the HW party go, thankfully!), United Way Taste Of on the 6th of October and my daughter’s 3rd birthday party on the 10th.

So, I am putting my plans on hold for the moment, and will restart with a stricter diet in mid-October. Meanwhile, I will just try to stay under 120. I am having my doubts about it being wise to go lower than 117 anyway, since I am just not at my best that low. We’ll see.

Okay, that was not long, strenous, or major calorie-burning run… and my foot is still hurting a bit.

But my story (and I am darn sticking to it!) is that I was late for my precious first bus downtown. So, seeing it was 20 after 5 in the morning, stars out and nobody to witness, and I had my walk&run shoes on, I just went ahead and ran.

15 min instead of 22 min walking, both uphill and downhill, and yes, wearing a short red dress & a huge backpack with all the stuff I lag to and fro work (hey, I did that backpack bit before, running home). As I said - nobody to see me and appreciate any unintended comic side-effects.

For those result-oriented: I caught my bus! In fact I beat the sucker by 2 minutes (yeah, I did all sort of stretching at that bus-stop before, so I did it again).

And I got my runner’s high even from this short of a run.

I am thinking if I don’t get any noticeable aggravation to the annoying bunion, I will just leave my dress at work, put on a spare excersise gear for my going home, and repeat the run tomorrow morning. Too good to miss, before winter comes, and we have ice and snow… it’s unfortunately very close now.

Anyway, looking forward to my upper body workout at lunch Life’s good today!

And that FitDay journalling and logging site works out BEAUTIFULLY for me. I am not going back to the BS’s journal.