Hi everyone, sorry I haven't been responding; it has been a busy week.  I have been on the road the last couple of days so I only got one 3 mile run in on Monday morning.  I had every intention of doing a second run this morning since I missed yesterday because I was literally driving yesterday morning at 4:30am, but when my alarm went off at 4:45am this morning it was pouring outside.  We had a pretty good thunderstorm which we need because we have been baking in drought, but now I suppose I'll just go out and do a run tomorrow morning.  I still refuse to do one in the evening because it is still ~100F at 9pm here.  Don't know how all of you that run evenings do it!  I am still going to focus on maintaining my 3 mile runs for awhile and then will entertain the idea of going longer.  As it is now, I am pushing getting out the door in time for work, and that is with getting up at 4:45am!  Don't really know how I am going to fit a 50-60 minute run in the morning.  Not to mention it is pitch black when I start my run and about halfway through, a little light starts peaking up in the east.  If I went any earlier, I'd need to get nightvision goggles!

Congrats to everyone by the way.  Mom2 and mb, sounds like you are doing awesome.  Glad your daughter is enjoying it as well.  Very cool to have that bonding time.  Geo, keep it up, you have got to be the most determined person here; I know you will succeed!

Keep the updates coming; I will linger here as long as others do!

Hi everyone. Missed another run. My little one is sick with a cold (I've been up all night worried about him because his nose keeps stuffing up.) I just didn't feel very well when I was supposed to go, likely because I didn't sleep well the night before either, but he wasn't stuffed up then just restless and saying his throat hurt. The doctor said it's a cold and a few hours later his little nose let loose. Poor baby. But please God don't let me get it. The last one took me almost a month to fight off and we are supposed to head to Florida in about a week. I had dental work done on Wed and I'm still having some pain from that. Thankfully my eye is better. Next time I'm wearing safety goggles. I'll bet you are thinking you missed something. Nope the dentist fumbled a tool and it fell on my eye. I was worried I was going to be going to the ER for about 10 minutes after it happened. Still wasn't sure until I woke up yesterday that I wasn't going to need to see an eye doctor. If you've ever been thumped in the eyeball I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. My gums are sore from the shots but that always happens. I have a high pain tolerance everywhere but my gums. Go figure. It was a really long day and we got home late, and, and, and….  But this one is all on me.  I was really tired and I thought I was bound for sleep as soon as the little man was out but it didn’t work out that well.  Hearing your poor little guy grunting and stuffy makes it impossible to sleep.  I have him propped up in the recliner so he can breathe.  Thinking about parents who are watching their child go thru worse than a cold.  Praying that I never have to.  Hoping that I can find the time and energy to jog sometime today.  The heat has been brutal the last few days.  It’s almost 5 am and it’s just now gotten down to 75 with the humidity at 92%.  I guess the 81 it was at midnight was part of what kept me from heading out.  It was feeling like at least 90 and the humidity was even higher.  Maybe my husband will sit up with Daniel and I can jog at dawn.  Not likely. 

Hi everyone. You are all doing so great. I actually love jogging so much that I really miss it on the days I don't go. That is outside of feeling guilty. But I'm still in a holding pattern. I worked on cleaning out both freezers yesterday and I caulked the tub when I was up with Daniel in the wee hours the night before last. I figured I was so exhausted I'd sleep great last night and it just didn't happen. I think I'm getting Daniel's cold. I have an ear ache and a stuffy nose. But it might be that I'm just beyond exhausted and I feel like crying because of it.

I’m supposed to be at a concealed weapons class right now but I’m so exhausted. Daniel didn’t sleep well for the 2^nd night in a row. He was OK as long as he stayed on the pillows I have propped up, but he kept getting off them and then his nose would stop up and he’d start snorting and groaning and it would wake me up. I woke up intending to go, but Joe saw how awful I was doing and he called and canceled.  I should have just fell back into bed to sleep, but I feel bad about it. It will be months before I can take the class now and he didn’t ask how much it will cost.  (My neighbor just got certified and he was giving his first class free to some friends) Now I’m worried about rather he will charge me and I can’t afford the class and the money the state wants for the license.  Joe says he doesn’t think he will charge me, but I’m peeved at him because I told him to ask and if he said it was going to be over $100 I’d just drag myself over no matter how awful I feel.  Plus I was looking forward to this for weeks and I wanted to go.  Maybe I can feel better about missing it this time if I find someone who wants to take the class with me next time.  I think it will be around Nov. before he gets another one together.  

So now I’m failing on everything I had planned for this week.  The fridge half isn’t cleaned.  I have a dishwasher sitting in my living room that needs to be installed.  The van still needs to be cleaned out and taken to get the window fixed for our trip.  I need to rent a carpet cleaner and do those now that the dog is (please God) house broken. And about a 100 other things including packing for our trip.  But yeah I have to find 2 suitcases to replace the ones that are broken.  (The puppy chewed the zipper on one back in Feb and the other is just old.)  Plus I still haven’t jogged.  It took way longer to defrost the deep freezer than I thought it would and by the time that was done it was too late to cook and nothing near us was open to pick up something to eat.  (No way was I cooking.)  We made the long drive into town to get a bite and by the time we got back it was almost midnight and I was zoning out.  Then my sister called and we talked for about an hour.   Much as I wanted to jog I knew it wasn’t safe for me to try.  If I had fallen asleep right away instead of having this list of everything I needed to do and the whole watching Daniel breath to make sure he was OK keeping me up, I was thinking I’d get up and go before the class this morning.   It would have been much cooler then. 

I’m hoping I can go back to sleep now and if I can breathe at all once it cools off tonight I’m going. “For me.  For my son.  For my health and sanity.”  Ooo maybe I should have that put on a T-shirt.  LOL  It might sound crazy when I read it once I’m actually rested.  I let you know what happens.  Anyone else still working toward 5K?  Where are you week and mileage wise.   OK I’m gone…  Zzzzzzzzzz 

Yadyad: You can certainly do that 20 minute jog. Just slow down a bit if you start to get tired and focus on doing just a little bit more if you get to where you feel like stopping. At least that's how I did it. Pick a spot up ahead that I can make it that much further and when I get there pick another one and keep doing that as many times as you can.  Do you belong to the July group too?   Love having you here so don't think I'm suggesting you leave.  LOL 

I did W7D3 tonight. I actually added a little extra time to my jog, but I'm not sure how long. Somewhere between 1 and 3 minutes I'd guess. I cannot jog and work that screen properly to save my life.  LOL   I locked the screen until it said walk and then because I wanted to see how much further I could comfortably go and I didn’t want to mess up and miss my cool down distance I unlocked it and hit the back button planning to hit forward when I got tired.  Somehow I hit the pause button when I put it away.  I didn’t realize that until Joe called out and said “how much longer?”  It must have been more than 25 minutes.  I pulled out the phone and it read 24:54 or :45 and I thought oh crud (ok maybe it was a bit more colorful) I paused the app.  I un paused it deciding to go ahead and cool down and I must have hit the forward button twice and skipped over that.  The distance I had on the app was 1.98 miles.  Looking at the map I’d say between a ¼ and maybe 3/8 more.  The thing is I’m not sure the app wasn’t adding distance while it was paused because I was just barely past the 1 mile mark when it said ½ way. (Including warm up.) and yet I was almost at 2 miles without the cool down.  So confusing.  I’m actually looking forward to my next 2 weeks.  I was feeling pretty good this time.  I didn’t start out too fast.  I did have some leg cramps before the ½ way point but I ran on my toes a few seconds about 3 times and worked them out.  I felt like my foot was getting numb a little later and I remembered that I’d read that it could be caused by your feet swelling making your laces too tight so I paused long enough to loosen the Velcro straps (I think I said before that I wear barefoot running shoes) and then I did a couple more reps of toe running.  Each time I thought I might be feeling any numbness I did a short toe run. (Maybe 3 more.)  Worked great.  My breathing stayed good until the end and even then it wasn’t awful.  If Joe hadn’t butted in I know I could have made it another minute or 2 without having to pick spots that I could make it to. 

I still have an earache and my tooth is still sensitive but I don’t seem to have a full blown cold, which I’m thankful for.  I am a bit stuffy and had to keep clearing my throat and nose, but not too bad.  I wish Daniel was doing as well.  He kept me up most of the night sniffling and snorting every time he moved so he wasn’t propped up.  By morning I was too exhausted to make my class and forget about jogging when I could barely stand.  It was late when I jogged and might even have been after 1 am when I left.  It’s just so hot and it’s not cooling down like it was.  Hoping for some late afternoon rain soon to give us some respite.  We are hoping to leave for FL at the end of next week if Daniel is feeling better.  It is no fun traveling when someone is ill so I don’t plan to start off that way.  I haven’t even asked what the weather is like there.  Man I can’t wait for fall and winter.  Wish me luck in week 8. 

Hey Tis and Geo, keep it up, you are doing great!  Can you believe you are almost done with the program?  It is a cool feeling.  I am actually glad I finished when I did because I have been really busy with work the last two weeks and had to miss a run on both Tuesdays.  I don't feel guilty though since I am not on a program at the moment.  I have been managing to run three miles on 35 minutes on Mondays and Fridays and I am happy with that.  Working on getting that down to 30 minutes, then I will start extending my distance too.  Need to start looking for some 5ks to participate in!  Keep it up!

Limited myself to two miles again today but not so much because of my knee, but because I accidentally overslept by 30 minutes and just didn't have enough time to add the extra mile.  Plus, my phone froze mid run and I had to restart it because I just can't run without music.  Well, not sure if anyone is coming to this board anymore, but I said I would keep posting till everyone finished.  Guess this'll be my last post unless anyone is still here. 

I'm still here. Sort of. I just realized it's been 10 days since I jogged. Or since I finished a jog, might be more fair. I also thought I'd done W8D2 but I can't find any record of it. Strange. I was thinking it was a week today and that was bad enough, now I'm down right depressed. Lots of excuses. Daniel was sick. Then I was so busy getting ready for our trip. Last week I started having all this pain in my joints and muscles and I have no idea what was causing it. Went to the Doctor on Monday and he did some blood tests and put me on Prednisone.  I still haven’t gotten the test results back and I can’t tell how my pain from that is doing because the next night Daniel accidently hurt my back.  It’s not awful like it was after the car accident, but I was doing last minute packing and didn’t give it a chance to rest, then I hopped into the van for a long drive and my sciatica (I think that’s the nerve I mean.) has been screaming pain down my flank.  It really has been off.  Tonight I decided to jog since I discovered the hotel has a treadmill and I figured it would be easy peasy lemon squeezy (as Daniel would say) inside, cool air, on even ground…  NOPE!  It was not good at all.   Didn’t even make it 10 minutes and I hated pretty much every second.  The “ground” felt unstable.  I was looking in a mirror at the person I least want to look at when I’m running.  (Totally ruins my image of myself when I can see what I really look like jogging)  I can’t even explain how odd it felt trying to run on the darn thing.  Almost backwards.  Instead of pushing forward with my foot to propel myself, it felt like I was having to stop myself from going off the back by lifting my foot with no forward motion.  Nope can’t explain it at all and I didn’t like the way it felt.  My legs were cramping the same way they were in the early weeks, by the time 5 minutes was up.  A couple of more minutes and I decided “This is for the birds, I’m going to try again when I can run outside where God intended me to do it.”  I tried out the bike thing which was broken and then some sort of machine that you move your feet up and down while you row or move these huge sticks back and forth.  Needless to say I had no idea how I was supposed to make that one move.  I tried it out and did it forward and then backward (or backward and then forward) for about 2 or 3 minutes and it helped my leg cramps but I just wasn’t into it.  So I jumped back onto the treadmill to see how long I could go this time.  HATED it even more so after about a minute I just hit the stop button and quit!  I wasn’t breathing heavy and hadn’t really even broken a sweat, but my legs were screaming at me.  I’m not sure if I’ll try to jog outside tomorrow or wait till I get to my parents the next day.  The weather was bad here in Mississippi today so even if I’d looked for a place outside I don’t think it would have been super safe.  Hoping I do better next time. 

I wish I had time to respond but I’m exhausted and we have to get up early to travel.  One reason I didn’t update sooner is I’ve been having troubling getting to the threads on this site.  I can open the lists under newbie café but not the posts.  I keep getting errors.  Once out of every 15 or 20 times I try it will suddenly open.  Keep up the good work even if you aren’t doing as well as you wish.  Thank you so much to anyone who is still here with me.