Gah. I overslept. And I don’t think I feel great. Actually I know I don’t feel great. I think I’m sick. One and off the last few days I have felt fevery and just off. I say “felt fevery” cause it’s hard to know if I actually have a fever. Our thermometer seems to not be feeling well either. When I try to put it to use, it beeps at me with unhelpful numbers like 98.1, 97.2. I feel like I’d be dead if my temperature was 97.2. (Just googled it. Actually you can totally live with a 97 degree temperature. I still don’t trust the thermometer, though.)

 

You know what else sucks? My legs hurt. My shins hurt. I’ve got shin splints. I’ve been slowly, light post by light post, turning my morning walk into a jog and now I’ve got shin splints. Why does one get them? And how does one send them packing?

 

I started jogging ‘cause of a book I read. “Living with a Seal” – it’s about this guy, Jesse Itzler,  who’s pretty fit. He likes to do crazy stuff and run ultra marathons and those team runs – like where there’s 100 miles to cover and everyone trades off shifts of 6 miles. At one of these he sees a guy who does the entire thing by himself and thinks that guy is a badass. Jesse figures out who he is, cold calls him and gets him to come live in his house for a month and train him. The guy’s a retired Navy Seal and definitely, definitely qualifies as a badass. He pushes Jesse way farther than he ever thought he could go and it made me think – shoot I can do way more than I’m doing. I’m no where near my limits. I can’t even see them on the distant horizon. I should probably push myself harder.

 

I’ve never been a runner. There was a summer a few years ago when I’d gotten to the point that I could make it all the way around the track (a ⅓ mile track, mind you) and I was pretty stinkin impressed with myself. I think (although this might just be wishful remembering) that I even got it up to two times around by the end of that summer. DANG.

 

I had surgery on both of my knees when I was in high school and I’ve always kind of used that as my get out of jail/running free card. The physical therapists told me if I didn’t do particular strengthening exercises my whole life I’d always feel this crazy pain in my knees. And I don’t really do the exercises…so I probably shouldn’t do the running. It’s the responsible choice.

 

Plus, man does it suck. That totally out of breath feeling, that pounding, especially the pounding in my ears when I’ve got my ear buds in…uggh. No thank you. Feeling my hips and boobs bounce around – gross. Much more civilized to walk. I can walk fast.

 

And then this book. At the beginnings of the chapters of lots of books authors like to put quotes, something that sums up the chapter or idea, right? Jesse Itzler put quotes from this SEAL living with him (that’s what he calls him in the book, Seal). The one I remember?

 

“If it doesn’t suck we don’t do it.”

 

They’re out running in blizzards with 50 pound weight vests, and doing all kinds of true, badass suckery when he says this. It made me think, “well, that’s different. People do stuff even when it sucks. Sucking is not an instant “This should stop” excuse. Huh. I could choose to deal with the suckery that is jogging.”

 

So then I had to. At least give it a go.
So I did. I have been. A bit. Here and there. And now I have shin splints. Thanks a lot, SEAL.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hey, so I’ve heard about people signing up as Amazon affiliates and while I don’t exactly have a huge following, I do talk about books, a LOT, so I thought shoot why not. So now I get to include the following sentence at the end of my posts:

Sarah Budd is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.