Trick or Treat!

Today is Halloween! I don't know how many little kids are in my apartment building but I'm going to go out and buy some candy anyway. For them. Obviously.

Friday night was the law school's big halloween party and it was a LOT of fun. The costumes were hilarious and pretty spot-on (including MJ, Whoopi from Sister Act, MK&A, some fabulous law school personalities, the Spice Girls...the list goes on and on). It was open bar (pre-paid but that's fine I guess) so of course everyone was double fisting drinks.

A Quick Guide to Little Gypsy Drunkenness:
Depending on what I'm drinking, it's pretty clear (at least to me) what kind of night is going down.
Gin & Tonic - keeping it classy. Not getting too drunk if at all. Probably driving somewhere later.
Vodka Tonic - a good middle ground. Keeping a buzz going, but nothing out of control.
Tequila of any kind - drunk.
Rum & Coke - fuck it. It's now or never.

So, as I was saying. I started off with some excellent tequila mixture (tequila, sprite, oj) at the law school happy hour and quickly switched to rum & coke as soon as we got to the bar.

Danced.All.Night. My favorite thing to do. In costume. Even.Better. With fabulous new friends. I feel like that's the kind of thing that can only bring people closer.

Because I don't have the time or memory to recap the whole night, here's an abbreviated version:

Drink, dance, laugh, drink, get on a school bus to go from school to the club, drink, dance, dance, drink, laugh, drink, dance, laugh, wander around, flirt, dance, laugh, dance, cab.

I think that's pretty accurate. And I was home by 2am I think. The law school goes hard but STL closes early.

So all that drinking and dancing must have destroyed my run, right? WRONG!

I stayed in bed literally the entire day on Saturday, watching TV on Netflix. At 2pm, I got my butt in gear and went to the gym for my run, dreading it. The weird thing is, the run felt good. It was 3x3 for 30 minutes and the first half felt good. Even easy. I was definitely in The Zone. Unfortunately when I reached for my water bottle I hit the emergency STOP button on the treadmill. And that shattered my Zone. I tried to keep going but I just didn't have the willpower for it. Ugh. My knee started hurting, my hangover came back, and my mentality was all screwed up. Oh well. If I can gather up the courage I want to run outside today. I'm not sure why that scares me but it does! We'll see.

Happy Halloween!

Just a Quick Update

My run yesterday felt good! Definitely hard but in the best way. On another note, you know how it's time to go grocery shopping? When you find yourself eating leftover instant mashed potatoes for breakfast. And using sunscreen because you're out of lotion. And when the huge bottle of laundry detergent is gone. So good thing I'm going to Target today (to finalize and by finalize i mean get the whole thing) my halloween costume!! Which I am BEYOND excited for. Apparently starting November 2 everyone in law school locks themselves away in a cubicle and doesn't come out until after finals, so this is the last night to really really whip my hair back and forth. (Notice that November 1 will be used as a recovery day.)

Other things on my mind:
1. Potentially doing a No-Meat November. Problems with this include my dislike of tofu, and the whole Thanksgiving/turkey thing.
2. How essential is the pony mask to a My Little Pony costume? Could I get away with face paint?
3. So awkward that my alarm didn't go off this morning. I missed yoga (booo!) and have to bounce now to get to school.
4. EventhoughtheYankeesaren'tplayingandsowhoreallycares, go Giants! (That's for you, Wifey.)
5. CANNOT WAIT FOR GYPSY REUNION.

More to come on all these things later.

Law School = Time Sink

So, I've been slacking on my writing. But NOT on my running!

Monday I upped from 2mins running, 4mins walking for 30 minutes to 3x3. I missed a run this weekend due do drunken debauchery, and was pity party-ing until my friend Hali told me, basically, to step my game up. "You have to prioritize...if you really want it."

I DO want it. And so this week I've prioritized. Monday and Wednesday are my longest school days, but they are also running days. So I wrote out a detailed plan for each day, including class time, food time, running time, and the requisite 4+ hours of library time. Oh yeah, plus time spent cleaning my apartment and getting my halloween costume together. Today is only Wednesday but I'm doing well so far.

Monday's run was hard, but good hard. It was exciting to feel like upping my minutes was doable, and I felt like a rockstar at the end of the run. It gave me a boost to realize that however great I feel now, I'm going to feel about a billion times better after running 13.1 miles!

Money In The Bank

I had to make up yesterday's run by doing it today, due to unforeseen circumstances. Well. Not really that unforeseen...I spent three hours watching baseball and then realized I had done no work, so spent four hours in the library. Time management fail. I told this to my friend Kirsten and said I planned to make up the run today. Her response? "YOU NEED TO!" And she was totally right, and I did.

She explained to me the concept that the Vassar Cross-Country team follows: running is like money in the bank. If you don't put it in, you wont have it when you need it. Notwithstanding the fact that I am terrible with money, the girl's got a point. So today, after 3 classes and a short field trip to the school bookstore to buy my first piece of Washington University School of Law apparel, I hit the gym for my run. And I'm glad I did. I feel awesome now. Sidebar: my gym on a Thursday afternoon is dead empty. I was the only person around for the good 45 minutes to an hour I was there, except for the 3 guys who work there. Hilarious. Also, the owner now recognizes me because I'm in there every day. In fact my run was my second time today since I did yoga this morning. We're pretty much best friends.

Aaaanyway. The plan for the next few days? Well right now I'm going to take a well-deserved shower. Then I'm going to hit the library. Potentially go out for a couple hours...depending on my level of productivity. Tomorrow: getting up early to get my run in before class. Then a practice midterm in the afternoon! Baseball at night. Saturday: run, study, clean apartment, potluck dinner. Sunday: brunch, study, study, catch up on TV.

Loving it.

That Monday Feeling

Today's run was good. I felt stronger and it took noticeably longer for me to get tired and wish I was done. Positive! It was also (slash, still is) a busy day for me, so getting the run in felt like an accomplishment. Three classes, a Chinese tutoring session, and a baseball game are no joke.

This week I'm running four times, and doing this:

Run 2 minutes, walk 4 minutes, repeat 5 times (total of 30 mins)

Simple, right? A perfect place to start for someone with nooooo running experience. Especially since I haven't done anything super strenuous since freshman year of college. Five years ago. OMG I'm so old. Panicccccc. Whew. Regroup. Anyway.

I'll be building on that each week and in 10 weeks time, I'll be running 30 minutes solid. When that's accomplished I'll move to the next phase - training in miles, not minutes.

I need to figure out where to run outdoors...I'm pretty sure there's a high school track a few blocks from me. If not, maybe the track at school would be a good idea. I need to invest in an ipod armband.

Happy Monday!

A Crazy Idea

I'm going to run a half-marathon.

There. I said it. Out loud. In print. I chiseled it into a piece of virtual stone.

I decided to do it last week, on a whim. Unrealistic, right? But all my best ideas came from acting on a whim. Seriously, all of them. For example: Join the cheerleading team. Join the rowing team. Apply to Vassar. Apply to Wash U. Go to law school. Be a Yankees fan. See?

I talked to a few friends about it last week - a childhood friend who coerced me into running track in high school (and by running track i mean doing shot put and discus and struggling through the 2 lap warm up/cool downs). a college friend who was the captain of the cross-country team and recently came in 3rd out of 500 women in a 5k race. and a (new!) law school friend who was recently sidelined from her marathon training by an achilles tendon with an attitude problem. Of course all three of them were super supportive. Then again, all of them can also run a mile. Not me.

I'm pretty much the anti-runner. But that's part of the reason I want to actually accomplish this. I don't like the idea that there is something out there that I cant do. I'm not saying my next step is going to be the NBA or that I'm going to quit law school and sign up to be an astronaut. I just think that 13.1 miles sounds just out-of-reach enough to make me want to do it.

Also...law school is hard. It's stressful. It takes up a lot of time, and a LOT of thought. I need a hobby, something to take my mind off school. And while I love my yoga class, its more of a relaxing stress reliever. I need something that's going to kick my ass.

I've made a few forays into running before, most recently this summer. I invested in a sweet pair of Brooks running shoes and some hawt running socks. My plans went well for a month or so, then it was time to move to St. Louis and in all the excitement, running fell by the wayside.Before this summer, I did a 10-week running plan in college. I made it 9 weeks...and then went home for winter break and running fell by the wayside.

This time I'm doing a few things differently. First of all, I have a goal that's not just "be a runner"...its "run 13.1 miles without dying". Second, I've told people about it. Not everyone, but enough people that I am always just a phone call away from encouragement. Or a stern talking-to. Whatever. As I progress and get more comfortable I'll tell more people. It will come up in conversation. Whatevz. I have a weird paranoia that if I talk about things I want too much, they wont happen. So. We'll see.

The half-marathon I want to run is in April, so I have six months to train. Six months to go from zero to 13.1. I scoured the Runnersworld website and found a 10-week program to get me from 0 to 30 minutes of running. Then, there's a 14 week program to go from there to a half marathon. I've got about a week of cushion time built in there. I showed it to my three runnerfriends and they all approved, so that's good.

I started officially on Thursday, and I ran again today (Saturday). Two runs down, 108 to go! I'm going to use the blog to keep track of myself from now on, partly for anyone who reads it (if anyone reads it) but mostly for myself. Whew. More later!

Life is for Happiness

Things are going really well for a lot of people close to me, and it makes me happy in my soul. In honor of that, I want to post about some of the things that are making me happy right this second.

Things I Like (in no particular order):
1. Making lists
2. Sunday study sessions at Starbucks
3. Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine
4. Seasonal food and drink
5. Hearing how happy friends are
6. Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine
7. Yankee's sweeping the Twins
8. Gchat
9. Free concerts (even when I'm sober because it never occurred to me that an undergraduate institution would not serve alcohol...thanks Vassar for screwing with my perception of acceptable behavior.)
10. Verizon picking up the iphone (according to the nytimes. lets hope its true.)
11. Feeling content because of other people's happiness