Adventures of a Hungry Redhead

I found it on Pinterest.

Confession: I’ve been slacking. As previously noted, the last two weeks have been a bit hectic. There have been a lot of late nights, forcing me to skip evening workouts, but also causing me to lose sleep, sleep through my alarm and miss my morning classes. It’s a vicious cycle of hating myself. That and I stuck my finger in a blender which means kickboxing and weight training is extra painful. Yeah, I was making a smoothie and thought I could flick that errant wad of spinach into submission… I was wrong. Thankfully, I have a crap blender (hence the errant wads of spinach) and not a kickass VitaMix or Blendtec, otherwise I’m pretty sure I would have lost a finger instead of a nail.

To kick my own ass, on Saturday, no matter what the weather, I’m going to run eight miles.

And in honor of all the decisions that have been keeping me up at night (some are even about cake), today’s song is Decisions by Borgore. And I do want the whole cake.

Tags: music, running

It’s hard to be fired up this Friday. Not because it’s cold, not because the holidays are over, not because I want to keep sleeping in and eating cookies. Nope. It’s hard to be fired up because this is the time of the year when there is a wave of hopeful people descending upon the gym taking up my parking spaces, my lockers, my elliptical, my weights and my space in the group fitness studio. Yes, I said ‘my.’ I am an only child. I assign possession to many things that technically don’t belong to me, but are in fact mine. Mine!

Some tips, if I may, for those with a fresh gym membership card:

• Just say no to matching track suits and anything that says “PINK” on the butt.
• Keep your phone in your locker unless it is how you listen to music.
• If you can do 20 reps faster than you can do 20 jumping jacks, you need more weight.
• You need to arrive BEFORE the group fitness class starts, not at the exact start time or five minutes after. When the equipment is gone and the place is packed, you’re SOL.
• Please don’t sit or hang on a machine while you chit chat with your buddies for 30 minutes.
• If you bought your shoes at Payless, they are not appropriate for running on the treadmill.

Yes, I’m a gym bitch. My final tip is to put some Cazzette – Beam Me Up on your playlist.

Tags: music, running

I’m all for speed and going fast — it’s my preferred modus operandi — but sometimes things pick up too much speed and you can’t keep up, or worse still, you can’t enjoy the moment. I’ve been feeling that way lately and even more so with the holidays. You want everything to be perfect and you get so caught up in the details, schedules and making everyone happy that when it’s all over, you feel kind of empty. Don’t do that. Slow down. It’s Thanksgiving after all, so just take a moment, breathe, and appreciate whatever moment you’re in: the run, the climb, the airport, the crazy family, the Black Friday shopping lines. No, scratch that last one. That’s just a waste of time.

Get some Tritonal – Still With Me fired up in your headphones and breathe in the moment.

Tags: music, running

I am not a fan of country music, but the new Taylor Swift album* is not country music.  And she named the damn album after me so I had to get it. This is my favorite song from the first “country” album I’ve ever purchased. If you pull up next to me in my car and I’m rocking out oblivious to the world, this is probably what’s playing. Thus, it makes for excellent running, jumping, kicking, catapulting music. Oh, I knew you were trouble when you walked into my ears Taylor Swift, you and your high school love songs.

*I initially typed “Taylor Swift CD” and then I laughed, because nobody uses CDs anymore.

Tags: music, running