I Heart Pole.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!  (Is there?)  Is it normal that my extremely very favorite hobby slash workout includes dressing in clothes too small to wear to the grocery store, wearing heels so high they make me tower over my tall husband, and emulating a stripper with a room full of other ladies doing the same?  Sure, we keep our clothes on, but other than that, pole dancing is a hybrid of athletic moves and overt expression of sexuality.  The music is dirty, the lights are low and disco, and the moves are sultry.  I adore it.  I crave it, I look forward to it every week.  The dirtier the music the better.  I love learning the impressive tricks, but even more than that I dig the grinding, hip swinging, dance moves.  I love it when the lights are low, the disco ball is on, and we spin around, climb up, hang from, slide down, and rub up against the pole like no one is watching.  Except that to take it a step further, I can't wait for people to watch.  That I can't quite explain, but I have been looking forward to the opportunity to perform since the day I started.  It's a fantastic cardio and strength building workout, and an incredibly empowering exploration of sexuality mixed with artistic expression.  It's addictive.

More Numbers

Aside from being mere double digit days from the big birthday, I've also got a couple of other numbers rattling around in my head lately.  Not accomplishing anything, really, just rattling around.  Making me think, and making me sweat a little:

-roughly 15 weeks until the big Diva performance,
-a little over 18 weeks until the marathon.

The marathon is scary, I'm not going to lie.  I can and have been running 3-3.5 miles at a time comfortably, although not quite as frequently as I needed to have been for building a base to train on.  Now I'm going to be doing that several times a week and increasing the distance weekly for a longer run.  Up to about 10 miles I can kind of picture progressing to, but beyond that feels like a mental abyss.  I guess I do not need to worry about it yet until the time comes, but I'm having trouble visualizing it.

I am extremely excited about the prospect of the pole performance, but nervous too!  It's been a long road to get to this point, 2 years or so by the time I had to stop for injury for a while and then start almost all over.  I'm shocked and impressed with all the things I can do now, even though I haven't gotten myself into the kind of shape yet that I'd planned, and to say I'm stoked to show it all off to friends and family is an extreme understatement.  But being that excited for something that is a one-time deal is also a recipe for a LOT of pressure.  I will need to find a way to manage that so I don't get myself all worked up and get sick or injured and miss it.  I keep questioning my song choice, too, I've been thinking about it for like a year now, I swear!  But I keep coming back to Low (Flo Rida) and I think that is still it.  Someday I'd love to have a chance to perform to a slower, sultrier song, but that takes even more skill and strength to do the moves more deliberately.  For now I'm going to stick with a high energy, faster paced routine.  Time to get rolling on the choreography, too, because the 8 week prep class will be put to much better use to practice the routine than to be fiddling around trying to come up with one.  That's not very far off!

Three Posts-

100 Days!

[If I knew enough about web stuff to do it I would insert a blood curdling scream from a Halloween CD here which would play loudly upon opening this post…]

I turn 40 in 100 days.  100 DAYS!!  I completely freaked out when it was 365 days away, and again when it was 300 days away, and yet…  Same situation, different excuses.  Same goals, shorter time available to work on them.  Same issues, same perfectly good solutions available.  Same lack of anything stopping me but myself.  Hmph…

The Catch 22-

Mind vs. Body.  Having time to one’s self to collect one’s thoughts and just “be”, vs. getting enough sleep to keep one’s body working better.  This is my continual dilemma.  I have some of my best thinking time either while running alone, or while up late after everyone else goes to bed.  Yet I am always tired and rarely get enough sleep, and tiredness makes me eat more junk.  The running thinking time is awesome, but it does not include the ability to record any of the thoughts I’m having, so sometimes my only writing time is late.  Hence when I go through periods of being even more tired I scarcely write (because I can’t use my work computer or time for blogging, either.)  Anyway, chances are that when you see me having written a particularly long or introspective post, it was put on there late at night, and I am probably struggling with being extra tired as a result!

Methodology Muddles and Fresh Notebooks

So, which way to go on reining in t he food control?  I’ve tried a bunch of methods, and they are all valid and can work great.  IF YOU DO THEM AND STICK WITH IT.  I am the only reason that the methods I have tried have failed.  Well, ok, trying to be less hard on myself, why they have not worked to get to me to my goals.  Weight Watchers, Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery, Biggest Loser, increasing protein, eliminating gluten and/or white flour/processed foods, plain ‘ole calorie counting and working out, all can do it, all have their merits.  All have in common reducing calories in some form of another, and in order to do so require documentation of intake.

Here’s where my weird perfectionism can get in the way:  I can’t stand writing down everything I’ve eaten/am about to eat on a bad, bingey sort of a day.  I hate to see it then, and I hate to see it glaring back at me later.  If I’m writing down what I eat, then it stands to follow that I’m eating better, eating less.  That always makes me stop writing if it isn’t true.  This also explains why, when packing up stuff to reduce the clutter in our place while it is on the market, I found a zillion little notebooks with about 5-6 pages written on them each.  And a gazillion more blank ones, each one waiting their turn for the inevitable “fresh start”.  Yikes!  How can I move past that?  How can I simply start writing, and continue to write, no matter what it is or how bad, so I can see it, face it, and fix it, even if it is only incrementally?  How can I re-energize myself after a bad eating day without getting that little bit of new notebook boost for a fresh start?  How can I admit so publicly to such neuroses without being told to get help, haha!  And let’s be clear, there is nothing wrong with getting or needing help, I’m just laughing at myself because so far, the main readers I have (that I am aware of, anyway) are people that know me.  Well, if you read this blog, you will reeeeally get to know me, like it or not!   ;)

Run Cat, Run!

A brief summary to catch you up:

I am officially retired from the wedding planning business.  Friends and family, I would still be happy to help you should such an event be on the horizon.  Friends of friends and friends of happy clients, sorry, you missed the boat.  I couldn't take that much time away from my family on weekends while also working full time.  It was a blast, I am proud to have created a business for myself, and was pleased with its success, but I am out.

I'm a little behind on my marathon training.  Not to the point of disaster yet, but I am absolutely up against the wall to run more often than I am doing in order to make my base more solid before I start ramping up.  I really don't want to have to cut the event back to the 10-miler option, I want the whole deal!

I've reached Level 6 in the pole dance classes.  (The tricks are getting very much harder, and they would be less so if I was lighter and stronger.)  Next stop, graduation performances.  Should fall sometime within February.  Very, VERY excited about this.

We're buying/selling a house.  Or, at least, we're trying.  We need more space, and it is time.  But the levels of extreme stress contained therein speak for themselves.

Food continues to be a hindrance in working on my weight loss goals.  The above mentioned stresses do not help.

It's light sooner in the mornings now, but I am tired and perpetually in a frazzled rush in the mornings.  It is almost fully dark as I pull into the driveway each day after work.  Weekends have been packed.  But there is one thing, one single, simple key thing which will help me to pull all the above pieces into place, and that is to run.  Not run away, tempting though that can be during a busy work day, but just run.  Run to meet my marathon goals, run to erase stress, run to clear my head, run to make my body have more energy when it is not running, and run to make my body crave healthier food.  Run, Cat, Run!