Uno, Dos, Tres...Cartorce?

I have a perfectly good reason for not blogging.

I've been reading.

No really.

I come home from work, make dinner, curl up on the couch and read.

For like HOURS.

It's AWESOME.

But I know you've been wondering.

And the answer is: YES.

YES, I have been running!

You can read all the gory details right over there --------->

in my little workout log.

After some dithering around, I finally settled on a half-mary training schedule. (As my friend LBTEPA is wont to say: All hail the schedule!)

Runners' World has a nifty little tool called SmartCoach (thanks for the tip, Adam!) You plug in all your numbers and out pops a training plan.

My training plan calls for three runs a week. (That's not enough, is it? Oh well, it's a start.)

The week of the 20th (one week after Nation's Tri) I put in 14 miles.

Last week, I ran 15 miles.

And so far this week I'm up to 9, with 7 on tap for Saturday.

I LOVE IT. I love having structure. I loves me a good plan! I am ever-so-gradually getting a teensy bit faster.

But mostly I'm trying to help myself learn to like running.

Cuz, you know what?

This s*** is hard!

Harder than cycling, where you're at least sitting down!

Harder than swimming (except for open water, nothing beats that for hard), where you get a wall every now and then!

Sheesh.

Who knew?

And speaking of swimming and hatred, I dragged myself back to American University for a structured swim class (sort of pre-Masters') on Sunday nights. This is led by the same evil swim coach that I had in the spring. (Remember "Can you FEEEEL the water?") Yes, Coach Tammy is happy to once more be kicking my ass.

So, I'm starting again, again.

I have many more adventures to tell you about, plus kind of a big story to tell. But that will have to wait.

First, I want to wish great good luck to Adventures-in-the-Thin-Trade-David, who is running the Hartford marathon on Sunday, and Now-the-Plan-Is-This-Allison who is running the Melbourne martathon, her first! Better you than me!

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with this video of my boyfriend, the awesome-if-egomaniacal Bono, who was in town to see me a few weeks ago, and who I dragged my friend Sandy to see at a nice intimate concert for 100,000 people at FedEx Field (rant about massive and overpriced, overproduced concerts held for future post) and she has the incriminating photos to prove it (so she says, anyway; ¿Dónde está?, Sandy??!):