Sunday, June 19, 2011

I actually stuck with something! And I saw five people get chased by a bear.



Couch to 5k
Around the time I posted my last post I started couch to 5k but I felt all over the place so I didn't write about it. If you haven't heard, couch to 5k is a running program decided to take your lazy couch potato self and get it to run a 5k (3 miles) in nine weeks. Now, I've been running on and off for five or six years. But I bet you I ran 2-4 times a week for two or three weeks, then took 3 weeks - 3 months off and then tried it again. Guess what? It did not go awesome. I think the best I could ever really do was run for fifteen minutes straight. I used to push myself to 20 or 30 on the treadmills at school, but that probably happened a total of 10 times my entire college experience. I probably still only ran 1.5-2 miles. Even when I was in Leavenworth and was the thinnest I've ever been, I was running maybe 15 minutes at a time. Usually I'd do 7-12 minutes, ab workout, run/walk home.
But today, after just five weeks of couch to 5k, I ran without stopping for 20 minutes. And afterwards, I didn't even feel like I wanted to die. It felt like the perfect amount to run. A challenge, yes, but not I'm-never-doing-this-again-I'll-just-die-here-in-the-middle-of-the-street. AND the schedule just has you running three days a week, so I can procrastinate every other day and still have one day to spare! Seriously, it's like the perfect workout. Have you ever just gotten TOO excited about your new goal to lose X number of pounds and just gone wayyyy too hard at the gym? And then you never, ever, ever want to go back? Well this program makes sure you don't do that. So you just feel awesome afterwards.

Do couch to 5k, you have them.

Spirit Singers
I guess I'm officially in charge of the Spirit Singers. Which is awesome, because it means I can work on teaching, and devising, and all sorts of cool artsy things. Of course, it reminds me that I'm too lazy to be in charge of a group, because I have absolutely atrocious follow through sometimes. Speaking of which, I should probably type up our idea list and e-mail it to the group instead of writing this post about how much I love couch to 5k. Maybe I'll go do that...



Yellowstone!
I almost forgot! I went on vacation! Work is so much more awesome after going on vacation! Adina and I went to Helena, Montana to visit one of our most favorite ladies, Marie! It always is so amazing to see really good friends again. New friends are great, of course, but old friends just...don't judge you the same way the rest of the world does. And that is a beautiful thing.


 So here's the thing about Yellowstone. It's in the mountains. It's awesome. It's the "Disneyland of National Parks" as Adina's mom put it. IT ALSO LOOKS LIKE THIS:

in MAY. Practically June. Not a tropical vacation. And to add insult to injury, while you're freezing your booty off, you're looking at approximately 5 billion hotsprings, which look like this:

One of the (approximately) 5 billion hotsprings
And I don't know about you, but to me this just screams "I am a tropical sauna, come bask in my warmth." However, there are signs posted everywhere warning you that people DIE from these tropical vixens. Acid everywhere. And the ground is totally unstable, so if you step on it you're very likely to find this lovely acid to burn through your shoes and kill you. Like in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." They also smell a bit like rotten eggs. Gross. They look real perty though, don't they?

Don't be fooled, they smell.
We also got really lucky because we decided to drive through the east side of the park the second day we were there, leaving Old Faithful for the final day and then driving back to Marie's before making the long haul home. THANK GOODNESS, because the next day we woke up to find out the who eastern half was closed due to avalanches. Yeah. In June. Plus, we got to see some people run away from a Mama Bear.
And isn't that why everyone goes to Yellowstone in the first place?
Looking at this picture, maybe it was a Grizzly. We were pretty sure, at the time, that it was a black bear. But everyone else said it was a Grizzly. Perhaps we were as bad at Yellowstone as people thought we were.
I bet you're thinking "Now Jana, why would people thing you're bad at Yellowstone?"
Here's why.
We decided it would be a good idea to walk around in the show in short dresses and heels. It started off innocently enough: we were going to dress up and go to the bar for food and drinks. The bar is in the hotel we were staying at, so this is a legitimate idea. However, then we decided to go to the other restaurant where there was a view of Old Faithful. Which involved walking outside. People all but pointed and laughed at us. Adina was trying to take pictures, and I was trying to run and not slip.

Still not as foolish as getting chased by a bear.