Hair Today...Gone Tomorrow....

Whoa!  The feedback I had on my hair post was intense!  I was partially posting as a joke, but you guys took your jobs very seriously.  Some of my favorite comments:

Seriously you guys had me snort-laughing in an insane way.  I think I'll bookmark the comments from this page for a rainy day when I hate life.  TOO FUNNY!

I should clarify, I regularly refer to my hair as crazy hippie hair, because it is, in fact, crazy hippie hair.  I love that it's long, I love that it's unruly, but don't expect me to bathe in patchouli any time soon.  I've had long hair forever.  I cut it off my junior year of high school, wanting it to look like this.  It didn't.  And it made me look even younger (if at all possible).

Oh hai! Told you I'm an ageless wonder... Real cool to still look like you're 16 at 27...

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I mean, who didn't want to look like britney!??!?

Then when I was 22 I decided I wanted to cut my hair again.  Because history has taught me nothing, clearly.  I had wanted to donate my hair, and figured that even if the hair looked terrible it'd be ok because at least somone benefitted from the hack job.  Well the stylist talked me out of donating it, don't ask me why.  And shocker, she did a terrible job and I hated it.  Plus I was a bit on the chubby side, so the haircut only accentuated that fact.  :/

Since this terrible haircut I've found a stylist that I love.  Every time I come in to see her she tells me my hair is too long, but that it's still healthy enough to keep it this long.  Really I think she's just afraid I'll cry a thousand tears if I ever let her cut it off.  But after your guys' comments, I'm contemplating the whole donation thing again.  I'm not sure if I can because I've put blonde highlights in my hair, so I'm not sure if she had bleached it to do so, but we may have a short haired jerbear this spring.  :/  My inspiration (and what I had originally wanted with the terrible cut of age 22:

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I think May would be the perfect time of year to take off the horse mane.  I'd probably drop a few pounds in the process and snag that marathon PR.  Thoughts??  :)

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Thursday night I had my 24509384059834095 sucktastic run through the snow and ice.  Excuse me for a moment while I turn all "Angry Runner" on you.  This winter... has sucked.  I ran outside way more than I have in the past, trying to be less of a sissy lala throwing down miles on the treadmill.  However, in the past two weeks, I have twisted a knee, rolled an ankle twice (same one, previously broken in basketball back in the day), tweaked both knees, and have intense shin splints.  Running outside... is NOT making me a better runner.  If anything it's effing up my joints and potentially my muscles from modifying my stride so much to keep from FACE-PLANTING THE ENTIRE RUN.  

I did 8 miles tonight, and at the 4 mile turn around, I almost let myself walk the 4 remaining miles home. Because, to be honest, my walking pace isn't that much slower than what I am capable of running in these crap.  And the risk of seriously injurying myself while walking has gotta be dramatically lower, right?

And the worst part of it all, is I was talking about next weeks weather with Kyle today, and it's supposed to be in the 50s next week.  Dudes... the 50s!!  AKA the best running weather EVER (=shorts and long sleeve.... love.)  He made the comment that everything will melt away by then so my pretty trails will be clear.  And I was excited, for all of 2 seconds.  Until I realized that with EVERYTHING melting, that just meant that the river that is... oh.... right next to the trails, is going to flood my g.d. running path!!!!!!  Which means that I'll be incapable of running on it YET AGAIN.  

BRB off mapping out long run routes around town, since my beloved trail will be out of commish until at least mid-June.  Oh, and they'll probably start up with the construction then.  GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

OH!  And I'm 98% certain that the part of the trail that the 5 mile and 5k of this weekend's race is on will be ice and frozen snow packed down.  Should make for a delightful racing conditions.  Ever wore yaktrax in a race?  I'm thinking I might have to.  Or do that whole face plant thing again.  YAYZIES.

I took pics of the crap I've been stuck running on, but I'm so ranty now that I don't even want to get my camera to upload them.  Perhaps another day. 

End rant. 

:)

My brain took a break this morning + Foto Friday

This morning sucked. Which sucks, BUT that means I got my crappy run out of the way for this training schedule, right? Amen. I had 5 miles to do at a recovery/easy pace and for once, I didn't feel like going a lick faster. That speed workout yesterday took it out of me. Phew.

But let me back up a bit. I hate people who hit the snooze button. Let me rephrase that, I hate people who hit the snooze button causing me to wake up repeatedly when I would much rather be sleeping. In college, all my roommates that were avid "snoozers" had kicked the habit about a month in to living with me. The wrath of a tired Jeri can cause intense transformations, I guess. Taylor's alarm goes off at 4:30am, which would be fine if he got out of bed at 4:30am, but he doesn't. He lays there until 5ish hitting snooze over and over again. I like to stay in bed while he's getting ready for work, allowing me almost an extra hour of sleep, genius. EXCEPT that he keeps hitting the damn snooze button, causing me to not fall back asleep at all, and be crabby.

When I finally got out of bed, I didn't want to run, but I knew I was too awake to go back to sleep. After talking myself out of not running, I finally got ready, only to find that I had left my iPod at home. Grr. Strike 2 Friday morning, seriously, you're on my poop list.

Strike 3 came in the form of poor mathematical skills. To be honest, I'm actually really good at math (Toot toot. Yes, that's me tooting my own horn.) My job requires a lot of math, and I'm proud that I can do a good chunk of it in my head. However, these mathematical skills are not awake before 8am.

Since I'm pretty bored with the trails by Taylor's apartment, I decided to run to one side of the trail for a mile and back (2 miles) and then a mile and a half in the other direction and back (3 miles) for a grand total of 5 miles. The distance to the trails is .2 miles. I knew this, and was factoring this in to the distance, or so I thought. At one point I even thought that I needed to only run 1.3 miles in the 2nd direction to get the correct distance, but then argued with myself that I would end up .4 miles short. And who wants to run around an apartment parking lot for .4 miles? (You know you'd do it too, don't scoff at me.)

Wrong-o. I was right the first time. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until I was at the roughly one mile remaining marker, and still had almost a mile and a half left. The fact that my legs were DEAD, it was insanely humid, I was tired, crabby, still hating the snooze botton, and no iPod tunes to drown out my negativity did not help.

Oh well. I survived, and I'm probably stronger because of it. One this is for sure, I will be doing my tricky math the night BEFORE I plan these weirdo routes to avoid any extra length in the future.

The only good news to report, is that I actually hit my slow target pace, for the first time, um...ever. Also, my training log is back up on runnersworld PHEW, so I can report my stats. :) 5.25 miles in 51:06 for an avg. pace of 9:44. Target pace: 9:46. BOOM. :)

For Foto Friday, I thought I would include some sweet pics of the softball tourney of Tay's.

My arm looks way weird, but I think I'm trying to get my bev out of the photo. :)

The guy to my left is the one I raced after the bars back to our hotel. If you need a reminder, I won. :D

I really like this one of us. :) We struggle at cute pics, so I get excited when we succeed.

One of the other gf's who made the trip. Good times.