Treadmill

Not much is happening at the moment.  We're finishing up a round of antibiotics (and by "we," I mean Emmy).  We had dinner with Weez and the D (and mini-weez) on Saturday.  Dad has finished the toy chest construction, for the most part, and we are now on to lacquering (I think "lacquering" is the correct way to verb that word). 

I have been educated somewhat about the difference between lacquer and stain during this process.  Dad chose lacquer because (and he can explain it much better, and might cringe at my explanation, but I digress) it won't damage the wood grain to remove it.  Apparently stain is much harder to remove if you wanted to change the color.  Dad was a little peeved that we wanted the wood to be dark to match the rest of our furniture.  Dad's aesthetic is much more natural wood grain and choosing colors based on how best to feature the natural wood.

Our aesthetic (mine and Tom's) is that we (as newly minted adults) want all of our furniture to look like it goes together instead of looking like a garage sale hodge-podge.

All of that being said, the toy chest is gorgeous.  I really think Emmy will love it.  Especially once she develops the upper arm strength to lift the lid.  But that's the downside of solid wood construction.

And now, back to the title of the post, which was my intended subject.  On Saturday, Sears delivered our new treadmill.  I'm so pleased with it, and the deal we got on it by buying it from the Sears Outlet.

As I've mentioned previously, my goal is to run the 1/2 marathon (as opposed to walking it, which I did last year).  So, I've run three nights in a row now, running the whole time, though at a moderate pace (4.5 mph or around a 13.2 minute mile).  After my run last night, I came in and proudly announced that I had increased my run from 35 minutes to 40 minutes, and was shocked when Tom, not only not enthusiastic, chided me for pushing myself too far, too fast.

And I realized that I have no idea how to train for the race.  None whatsoever.  I have no idea how to gradually build up my skill so that running the half won't be the misery that it was last year.  I have tried to block it out, but I was miserable during the race last year.  I don't even think I made it to the halfway point before I started whining at Tom.  "Why do people do this to themselves?"  The only reason I didn't quit was that I knew I had to make it back to the car anyway, and if I left the race course, I'd have to navigate back to the car myself (as opposed to following the course and knowing that it would take me back to the parking lot eventually).

I'm also not a very patient person.  The things that I'm good at have always come easily, and I find that I get frustrated very quickly with things that require more effort.  That's why I struggled so much with weight loss.  I'm still not at my ideal weight, but I'm much closer to the size I was when I started college.  Anyway, getting back to my point, I have this idea in my head that anything short of this *drawing an imaginary line* is laziness, or a cop-out.  So, I get an idea of where I should be and I try to push for that.  I've looked at some training schedules, but none of them seem to be what I'm looking for.  Tom's worried that if I try to get to being able to run continuously for 13 miles too quickly, I'll burn out and quit.  And since he knows me better than pretty much anyone, I'd say he's right to worry.

So, I'm willing to back off, but now I've lost my confidence that I knew what I was doing.  I don't know what's too much and what's not enough.  And I don't know what I'm aiming for tonight on my run.