Adding Up the Mileage & On Eating

Marathon training has been in full swing. I've completely impressed myself. I know that most of the success has been due to proper eating (farm foods) & cutting out things which make my stomach churn while I run (dairy, garlic, onions, peppers expect black pepper, as in salt & peppering each meal).

Strength training has been a huge help; I've managed to keep at it each day before I get going on my way out the door. It's typically the very first thing I do; sometimes I get caught up grabbing at other to-dos first & have to "undistract" myself because I know it's a very important process. I essentially use it as a warm-up in so that once I drive to wherever I plan to run that day, I'm able to simply turn on my tracking device (this is the one I ultimately selected, & am super glad that I did), lather up some of this on my face (the one with titanium dioxide & zinc oxide, the two most important ingredients!) as the sun still shines down even when the day's high is thirty degrees, & strap on the scarf that I wrap around my head for ear-warmers underneath my hat that keeps the heat in. I also wrap an infinity scarf around my forearm for whenever my nose runs & I need to clear it.

I have at least 20 ounces of this, typically 40 ounces, before I head out; between the medicinal properties & the general hydration, it's a win-win. I've been focusing on my proteins & typically have some sort of grass-fed beef and/or hand-prepped salt & peppered chicken bites with a couple of over-easy eggs. This is overtop some cucumber slices, mushrooms, pecan & walnut pieces, & dried tomato chunks with a bed of cabbage, or spinach, or mixed greens, or a mixture of any of these greens on the bottom. Turmeric (link), salt (link) & pepper, dill weed, & parsley dashed throughout. Ezekiel bread with avocado spread atop both slices. One & a half apples (which have happened to be Gala) diced up with cinnamon (link) & walnuts (link) sprinkled atop. Sometimes with cocoa pieces and/or coconut (link) too. Then into the microwave for a one to two minute warm-up (which also "softens" the walnuts well). If hunger tingles prior to the beginning of the run, then a banana is nearby as my "pre-run" food. When I'm in the mood for citrus or sugar, I've an orange. A bowl of oatmeal (link) with cinnamon & typically cranberries (since I stowed quite a few bags in the freezer before the season ended); oatmeal is super filling & simple at the same time.

I've had cravings too. There are pita chips with light sea salt which I typically find myself craving & eating all too often. I also dive into the pecan (link) & walnut bags for a  quick handful more often than I should. This too with almonds (link), though I don't top anything else with almonds, so it's not so much the same "overdose". All of the nuts are always raw, not roasted, & most often organic as well.

My mileage is what's impressed me the most. I've managed to increase my mileage by one mile every other day; I've successfully been able to get myself where I needed to be to get started, & then actually run quickly enough, without pain, or other nemesis, before I needed to carry on otherwise with my day. I'm excited because I'll actually be able to get my mileage up, closer to the 26.2 end result more than I've ever managed in the past, and have a week or so of tapering off - where I'm thinking, even if I don't intend to, that I'll unconsciously be working on my speed & quickening of my pace.

If all goes as planned, I'll be running 20 miles before I sleep this Sunday. This is also in great part because of the invention of this (&, of course, its proper application!). I couldn't manage my knees, at all; I could barely run two miles on a red turf track, which is how I'd started out my training. I knew that the terrain of a sidewalk is the worst for my joints. Ironic, huh? Considering that these are the exact surfaces specifically designed for walking. Reminds me of how whenever a consumer walks into any random pharmacy, rather than seeing what's important, like a farmer's market, the consumer is met with industrialized products in the form of snacks & candy. I digress. I also know that wooded areas in the form of trails & dirt paths are best for our joints. Black tops are somewhere in between. They are where I try to stick to running. And knowing that these marathons are relatively flat courses (apparently the hills aren't much more in size than on & off ramps), I'm sticking to fairly flat black tops, most often in the form of residential streets.

And, of the Tape's color options, I'd most recommend the nude/beige; after all, unless your knees are most often covered (yes, it's quite possible, I know...people do wear jeans 24/7 😂), so as to not have their evidence glaring off your skin.

So I ran 17 miles on Monday, 18 miles on Wednesday, & 19 miles on Friday. I've an upcoming scheduling conflict, so I'll be having a mini-tapering this Tuesday with just about 10 miles, maybe 15 miles. Then I'll run 22 miles on Thursday. I've been running Monday, Wednesday, Friday, with a shortened Saturday run of half my Friday run since my upcoming marathons are two in a row (Saturday & Sunday). I'm still not sure if my pace is really adequate for my goal (which is to finish before my time isn't on the official clock anymore).

I'm certainly having a blast even though the preparation effort is taking up so much of my days, & therefore, also, my week. The accomplishment, & realizing that, yes, I can actually do that, will definitely be well worth it once I've crossed both of those finish lines.

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"No Better Life..."

"...Than the life we're living..." as well as the lyric just before this one, "No better you than the you that you are." Which are from this song of Alessia Cara's are those which pumped through my head during my semi-long run today.

Yesterday I'd thought it'd be this song since it's catchy, I'm familiar with it (the line "don't you know I'm human too"? as well as "I'm gonna marry her anyway") & I'd heard it shortly before beginning my car ride. ...Rather it was this song of Alicia Keys' which I found intriguing as I had to use my Sound Hound App once again while listening to it on the car ride to where I'd planned to begin my day's run. Although I've owned this song since the song's album first came out, I've not listened to it in, well, in about that much time. I'd like to say I think she sounds a bit like Pink at first listen - especially if, when the DJs putting on the next song, in your subconscious you're figuring that it's gonna be a more current tune. Though that's just me. 😂😜

On Wednesday, a song which I didn't particularly care for [read: avoided at all cost/judged poorly based on its video which I highly disliked with a severe passion at first watching it (now I just don't watch it, since I still don't care to)] by Maroon 5 danced through the subconscious of my eardrums for the few hours of mileage I endured. The song's significant lines being, "'Cause I really don't care where you are...I just wanna be there where you are..." I own several of the band's songs; I'm a fan of their work - including this song; it's just the video which catches me so poorly.

On Tuesday, like Thursday, which were my "rest days" from training for these upcoming marathons, I happened to be in a number of stores. One store had me distracted & I picked up on this song on the overhead. It stayed in my head for the remainder of the day in the same like fashion as these "running songs". I particularly enjoy, the up & down of the words within the lyric's lines...Yes, there's a musical term for this, which I cannot currently recall... Taylor sings, "Oh I knew you were trouble when you walked in...So shame on me now...Flew me to places I've never been, yeah...Now I'm lying on the cold hard ground..." And then the almost echoing, "call out" of the "Oh"s at the end of the lyric "Oh, oh, trouble, trouble, trouble...Oh, oh, trouble, trouble, trouble". So that's what I pleasantly had swaying through my mind on Tuesday.

Monday's tune came to my subconscious as this song, the last song on the car's radio before I got out to begin running. "Oh, oh, oh...oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh...oh, oh, oh...oh, oh, oh...oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh...oh, oh, oh...'Cause if you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it...If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it...Don't be mad once you see that he want it...If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it...oh, oh, oh..."

I think I heard the "oh"s of this song much in the same way I heard the "oh"s of Taylor's song. Completely differently, & justly relating to their own specific song, yet a defining "catch" lyric all their own within their song.

The final, or first song, depending on how it's looked at, would be this song. I heard it throughout my run last Saturday. And I realized while it was settling in among the thoughts of my subconscious that I'd heard it on my ride to where I was running. I think the song's lyrics, particularly the stream which ran through my mind: "My head's under water...But I'm breathing fine...You're crazy and I'm out of my mine...'Cause all of me...Loves all of you...All your curves and all your edges...All your perfect imperfections...Give your all to me...I'll give my all to you...You're my end and my beginning...Even when I lose I'm winning...", were the most unrelatable to the "theme" of my subconscious in each of the other songs which happened to play on my mind.

These are some of the reasons why I don't bother with hooking music up through an mp3 player, my smartphone, or another device, while I'm out-n-about. Considering what my subconscious finds in the back of its "attic" is all the more entertaining. The strength & "sass" of the song lines (other than this final one) which I unconsciously took for preference are an education on me all their own.

After running 15 miles last Friday, I ran 10 miles last Saturday (to train my body for the "Day 2 suck"). I then took off on Sunday, re-ran 15 miles again on Monday, took off on Tuesday (which is when I floated in & out of a few stores), ran 16 miles on Wednesday (even with the weather beating me up), took off on Thursday, & then finished out the week with 17 miles yesterday, which is what I'll re-run this coming Monday. Today I managed 8 miles. I meant to try for 9 miles, which would've been the "half of my previous day's run"...It just wasn't happening. A gal can only wipe her nose due to the weather so many times. I'd scheduled my day around the two hours the weather app reported would be the days' warmest; the high for the day, & I still only managed those eight sluggish miles. At the same time I "beam with pride" 😂; I did get them in!

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Into The Light

She wrote this song after taking a year to heal from the crash her family had been in where she was left with a broken vertebra. Check this link for more on that. She then titled her album "Into the Light" to reflect the positive, rather than the negative, of the overall situation. Today, most of the nation is also reflecting on the positive by gaining more daylight & adjusting our clocks (those which don't automatically adjust themselves).

We might've just lost one hour of sleep, though this time change is the easy one; at least for those of us who did have a clock or two to manually adjust. I keep one of these next to my bed, which is how I listen to the radio & jam a little whenever the DJ puts on a few good tunes.

Don't scrunch your nose or eyebrows, roll your eyes, or crinkle your forehead. 😂 I keep one of these battery-operated babies in the bathroom behind the sink's faucet, & leaning against the mirror. It's a simple one that helps keep me on-par whenever I'm in there cleaning, or combing [my hair], or brushing [my teeth], etc.

And then there's also my vehicle's clock. Which is sorta simple to adjust since it's just a push of the "set" button, a slight scroll to the "clock", & then the down/up arrow to the current/corrected hour before tapping the "set" button again to resume normal functioning. So, technically, as long as I know which buttons to tap & where to scroll, my vehicle's clock is a no-brainer no matter if it's the first Sunday of March or the first Sunday of November.

If you're in a similar situation to me & you're training for a few upcoming marathons, then you didn't lose any hours of sleep. Rather, you realized you were completely wiped out long before the average person your same age, despite it being that early in the evening AND on a Saturday. Whatever. 😏

I headed back to my bed because I needed oodles of rest & recuperation. (Though not before putting this movie on my laptop to watch/listen to [yes, again 😜] while I slept until I could convince myself my muscles & bones were ready to be upright again.

I'm running a double in less than two months &, to prepare, I ran 15 miles on Friday morning, then 10 miles on Saturday morning. This I did just before I began my brick & mortar store hunt for a replacement inverter because the awesome one I'd snagged from Amazon two years ago, well, I'd used the darn thing so dang much that it up & stopped being useable (& it's no longer available on their site). I've, what I call a throw-away phone, a generic flip phone like one of these, for those times when it's no one's beeswax what my number is, but I need to give them a way to contact me anyway, or to just be logged into their company's system. It beeps a special pattern whenever it's low on charge. I plugged it in to the inverter on which I've been charging my laptop, smartphone, the flip phone, & once or twice used my super-basic shredder (similar to this model). Not only did the inverter not light up to signify success, the flip phone continued the "give me juice" beeping. Dang it.

I'd been lucky because I drive a compact hatchback vehicle. The SUV I used to drive had ports which charged without the vehicle's battery being on; it was an SUV after all. This tiny compact hatchback is, well, tiny. It came with a USB charging port aside from the adapter slot for separately purchased inverters. I've not really used it because the inverter I got myself two years ago had space for two outlets. I used one for my laptop & the other for my phone. Both of the phones I have use an Android charger (because, well, one is an Android! 😂😍) Also, the inverter had space for two USB ports on it - which I never needed to use. I just really needed a way to charge my laptop while in my vehicle.

And I didn't want to always have the engine running - cause that's expensive & not great for my vehicle either. Well, for these two years now, I've been winning at that one. After my exhausting visit to several brick & mortar stores, & canvasing Amazon's options (as well as their Q&A sections & reviews), I learned that I'm most likely going to need to accept that my engine will need to be turned on to activate the inverter - & well, this might be a very good thing. After all, it's sorta protecting my vehicle & its battery & the overall life of all of them. I've picked out this one. It's wording ["Not recommended to use for a long time when vehicle is not running."] suggests to not use it too much without the engine being turned on - which does give me a notch of hope that it's similar to one I currently have, which no longer works, yet could work with the engine turned off.

All of this just in time for all of this upcoming daylight. Yes, I'm certainly glad...No, I'm ecstatic that we're back in "DST" & shifting our days' hours in so that we're making the most of our daylight. It's more opportunity to be "out there" making the most of the weather (even if there's a little precipitation from time to time 😊) & the fresh air whether it be to run, to hike, to bike, or even just going for a simple stroll, a.k.a. a walk. 😏 Bring on the Vitamin D! ☀

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Definitely Didn't Hear That!

Back in the day before Dr. Google & any other type of quick, online referencing mechanism (or, online for that matter), sometimes things just weren't clarified.

Thus is the case for me with a particular song. I really hadn't thought much of it. When we were young, we simply listened to the radio. Our family really didn't purchase records, cassettes, etc. They were always transitioning to the next medium anyway. I mention this because I know certain artists & their recording companies would elect to include song lyrics in the jacket's data. Many years later, I remember this song's lyrics to be an example of said liberation.

It's a regular joke that's been played plenty of places that this song of Elton John's can come across sounding as if Elton is singing about this celebrity. I believe Phoebe had been part of a related joke in an episode of this.

For me, however, my dawning happened just this morning. That's right. During a rebroadcast of Casey Kasem's Top 40s from a week during the early 1980s. I heard the song & I heard it as I always have heard it. It's never made sense, though that's just the way it's always been & I've never questioned it because I didn't love the song; it was just another well-played radio hit.

I'd always heard the refrain as "With you I'm gonna gag." And by "refrain", I'm talking about the name of the song. This song. Really. I did. Yep. I'm still shaking my head too. 😞

Nope, it doesn't make any sense the way that I hear it. Obviously I've not really listened to it. It's not a song with such a story like this song, the only #1 hit of Harry Chapin. Yet, I believe it still lacks enunciation the same as this song...After all, are we really sure what Tim's saying the bull's name is? 😎😂

There was a time period of my life, possibly close to a decade, where I'd make such a special point of being able to tune in to listen weekly to Casey's countdown. When I knew there'd be a good chance of a song or two I'd really want to hear, I'd make sure to be right there at the radio. Also, if I was certain there'd be a consecutive set of songs I didn't care too much for, I'd make a break for the bathroom. 😂 Such were those simple years when this was all there was for the worry. 😏

There's been a few weeks recently where I've been in the vicinity that my radio's antenna has been picking up an "I Heart Radio" station from time to time, thus the memories. Speaking of memories, doesn't Babs sing about them here? Okay, that was corny.

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DJ Talk

Recently I happened to catch a radio DJ mentioning about using the phrase "thoughts & prayers". Actually the DJ was discussing how a celebrity had recently used the phrase on social media. The entire conundrum was as typical of these things & considerably overrated. Nevertheless, the DJ ended up explaining how they didn't think anyone who uses the phrase "sending my thoughts & prayers" actually does do this. Potentially those people think about in that moment, yet that's pretty much it, according to this DJ. The DJ further explained that they didn't think anyone went home at night & actually knelt at their bedside in these prayers.

All of this "out there", is really discussion for another time. What I will say right here & now is that the DJ was apparently unconsciously making a "black & white" strong stereotype of how those who pray, actually "successfully" do pray. (The word "successfully" in quotes as, well, who's to debate the actual "success" of anyone's prayer or ability to pray.)

*****

However, the next day, that same DJ "won my heart back". The DJ's been talking a lot in recent days about cops & getting pulled over. And reasons that should just be automatic, "Well, officer, since ...[insert whatever it is here]...happened..." And the officer would essentially let that driver go with no more than, maybe, a warning.

Well, that next day the DJ mentioned that certain songs, should they be booming from a vehicle's speakers, should provide an accountable alibi. The DJ's example suggestion was this song. It's a good song. And it made me think of others which could easily fit this same profile.

Some more current tunes would be this song, this song, this song, & this song (really like! 💕 great beat!), this song, this song, & even this song too. Also really like this song...Actually it may really only fit the profile of this post because of my personal enjoyment of it. 😎 Some might also say this song & this song. The Today Show made this song a little more famous several years ago.

From what I can tell, it appears that I see much of her work to "fit the profile", an artist who identifies herself based on the color she turns when she blushes; I quickly eyed up this song, this song, this song & this song. Then there are a couple of songs that're so "bad", that they're good: this song & this song.

And a few Oldies, Yet Goodies would be this song, this song, this song, & maybe even this song if you're willing to dive back another decade! 😮 I pretty much bought this song a bunch of years ago to be able to jam out while driving.

This song...yeah, this one'll make just about anyone really wanna rock out! 💃. Who am I kidding?! 😂 Let's see. This song, this song, this song, & this song too. Since, like with the other artist, "MJ" has a lot of talent to offer to this car-turned-boom-box concept! Hopefully there's a lot of "cop forgiveness" offered! 😎😂

I also have a vision of the many car commercials where the viewer watches said car drive down a long, highway road with nothing but land around...and there's a song blasting through the speakers...Or a young family heading out on vacation, & to further get into vacationing-mode, to feel freer, these are the sorta songs the family would be jamming to (while buckled in their seatbelts) & singing along to at the top of their lungs.

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