Yikes, you guys.

Wow. Turns out, a lot of you have actual opinions on my lifestyle. And I think that’s neat. My blog got 165 views yesterday, a big jump from average days, I think because people kept checking in on the 5k/10k/90210 poll.

The final results are in and of a surprising 20 votes, 17 of them were for the 10k. (Thank you for whomever voted for the 90210 re-run option. You’re my favorite.) So… guess training starts TODAY! I did 2 miles at the gym today… the first of many. So, so many.

Wish me luck, friends, and thank you for helping me decide. I’m pumped now and, as one really nice commentor said, even if I don’t meet or beat my previous 10k record, I can be proud of the attempt.

Onward and upward!

The distance

Guyyyysssssss! I need help deciding something! So, I thought I’d bring it to you all, the people who know me the best and love me the most random strangers who have almost no investment in my real life. Neutrality is a blessing, right?

Here’s the situation (or sitch, as kids these days totally say): my husband and dear friend have agreed to run/walk a 5k with me in the spring. I’m really excited about it, and not just because I’ve come to love running races; I’m also pumped that my husband has come to enjoy walking and that my friend has set an awesome lifestyle goal. (In my most private moments, I indulge in the idea that I was the driving force in both of their  fitness revolutions… but please don’t encourage that sort of megalomaniacal thinking.)

Anycrap, I’m totally down with the clown to run this with them. But… and here’s the problem!… the race we’ve chosen also features a 10k. More specifically, “the largest 10k in Minnesota.” And though I’m still in shock that I finished the 10k last fall –nonetheless at such a great (first-timer) pace– I’m tempted to sign up for the 10k instead of the 5k. My husband and friend surely wouldn’t mind, as the races are run nearly simultaneously (and I wouldn’t have actually run with them, anyway, because our paces are all wildly different), but I’m scared I won’t be able to do it. I’m scared that indoor training on a treadmill will not prepare me for the realities of a 6.2-mile road race. I’m scared that I won’t find the proper time to devote to such an endeavor.

Mostly, I’m terrified that I won’t be able to meet or exceed my 2011 10k time. And that would absolutely deflate me. I am most competitive with myself and losing is the worst feeling in the world.

Ah, but winning… winning is the best feeling in the world. Running is one of the only aspects my life that I allow myself to be proud of; I still choke up sometimes when talking about that 10k last fall. I think about how I felt to cross the finish line,  and about how race training got me into the best shape of my entire life (which did not go unnoticed by my husband, FYI. TMI. Yep.) and I think about how good it would feel to kick another 10k’s ass this spring… and I sort of want to do it.

But I’m weak and scared and indecisive.

That’s where you come in.

A graduation of the strangest kind

Like most people, I have my share of surreal dreams that don’t make much sense; a nightmare last week found me struggling through a countryside choked with fog; when I got to my destination, I coughed up a lungful of ash. Ick.

But I also have my share of completely sensical dreams, as well as recurring dreams. Sometimes, the two are the same. I’ve had one such dream every few months for the past year now, and last weekend it came to a bit of a head.

The dream always starts with me leaving my childhood home in my first car, knowing full well I will be late for school. When I arrive at my high school (just as I remember it from a decade ago),  I walk in to find the hallways empty and silent. I go to the front office and report my tardiness; the ladies at the front desk (who, yep, actually were my school’s front desk ladies) give me my slip of paper and instruct me to get to my first class, which is always algebra. I leave the office and start to walk to my locker to get my algebra book. Only then do I realize I have no idea where my locker is because it’s the first day of school and I was late, so I didn’t get my locker assignment.

The first time I had this dream, I just sat in the hallway until first period let out, then bugged my friends to help me find my locker.

But then things got strange. I kept having the same dream every few months, and time within the dream began progressing.

The second time I had the dream, everything started out the same except it wasn’t the first day of school anymore, it was early in the semester. After I checked in at the office, I wandered around the hallways, finally  picking a random locker and emptying all its contents to claim it as my own.

The next few times, I managed to find my locker, but then couldn’t find the algebra classroom, so I roamed the hallways snooping through the windows, trying to spot something that looked like an equation written on a chalkboard.

One time, I actually found the classroom and walked in, but I didn’t understand anything the teacher was saying because it was already halfway through the semester and I’d missed all those classes. The strange thing was, I knew I’d missed the classes. In the dream, I remembered previous dreams and thought, “If I’d been able to find my locker sooner all those times, I could’ve gotten to class earlier…” Inception, man. Dreams within dreams.

Saturday night, I had the dream again. I walked into the classroom just as the teacher was handing out study sheets for the semester’s final test. He pulled me aside and explained that I was probably going to fail the test since I hadn’t bothered showing up all semester, which meant that I was going to fail the whole class. I freaked out — an F on my report card? Unacceptable! I’d never gotten anything less than a B! I couldn’t fail algebra, and have to take it again next year! That would seriously screw up the timeline I’d plotted for my life!

Only after a few minutes of panic did I–still sleeping–realize this was a dream. I am an adult. I passed algebra a decade ago and never have to take another math class again. In the dream, I told my teacher this; he did not care and continued passing out sheets. I woke up.

I suspect this is not an uncommon dream — being late for high school — nor is it all that “deep.” (I’m assuming it deals with a subconscious worry that I missed something important early in life and now have to struggle to catch up.) But what weirded me out Sunday morning was the fact that time has progressed in this particular dream.  Over the past year, I’ve knowingly missed more and more of the semester (each time recognizing the situation and cursing myself for not paying better attention earlier) until eventually coming to the final test. In a sense, I’ve “graduated out” of this dream. I’ve never had that happen before and I have no idea what to make of it, nor what to expect next.

Frankly, it’s a bit off-putting. What does it all mean?

Maybe I’m finally getting over my high school glory days?

(Not likely.)

Florence + The Machine That Killed My Youth

It happened again, you guys: another Midlife Moment, another second in time during  which I truly felt like a 30-year-old, rather than a 16-year-old trapped in a (really hot) 27-year-old’s body.

My sister emailed yesterday to inform me that Florence + The Machine is playing a concert in Minneapolis at the end of April. My first reaction was: Oh, yay! She’s on my list of concerts I must see before I die! I absolutely must buy tickets when they become available!

It took me all of two minutes to completely reverse my train of thought and realize that, underneath it all, I’m just an old lady:

Ugh, the cheapest tickets are $50, plus tax and crazy Ticketmaster fees.  And then there’s parking, plus gas, plus $8 beers — this is shaping up to be a $250 night. And who would want to go with me? Adam certainly won’t and none of my friends seem to like her enough to pay $75 a seat. Besides, the concert is the night before the season’s first 5k, so I couldn’t even drink that much and should probably just stay home to get a good night’s rest…

And that’s how I talked myself out of fun. And out of youth, apparently.

It’s just that easy, folks.

Another one bites the dust

The news of Seal and Heidi Klum separating surprised and saddened me, but it also furthers my theory that the couples who make the biggest fuss about being happy are usually the unhappiest. Putting on a constant show of Being In Love  doesn’t leave much time for the hard work of actually being in love. Methinks those couples doth protest too much, you know?

Still, I was rooting for those two crazy kids. People that attractive deserve each other.