ok folks, it’s official. i am entrant #119409 in the National Women’s Day Totalsports Ladies Race 10km Run – August 9th, 8a.m.. i’m signed and paid up – now all i have to do is actually show up and do it!

unfortunately i can’t say that my running program’s been particularly successful lately. after i managed 8k’s i just couldn’t get it together to get to the track for 2 whole weeks. ok, so i did go to the gym in that time, but i didn’t manage to do any long runs. when i finally made it to the track yesterday, it was swarming with high-school kids and their trainers. it seems track season is upon us. it was a little distracting sharing the track – i’m so used to being alone in the inside lane and i had to stick to the third lane because of the sprinters.

it was a rather unspectacular outing. i think i must be getting used to running on the treadmill because i was having trouble with lower leg pain like i haven’t had since i first started at the track. i eventually only ran 5k’s at a dismal time of 36.08″, but then i did go to the salsa class at the gym immediately after.

can i just digress here for a moment and talk about breast pain? OMG! as i get older the monthly fluctuations in my cup size (and the accompanying pain!), just seems to get worse! i think it’s this bad this month because i’ve started eating chicken again and i’ve heard that lots of places use hormones in the feed, which means i may just have upped my estrogen intake as well. the pain got so unbearable, that even though i wore 2 sports bras in order to run on monday, i was forced to take 2 advil just so i could go to sleep that night. the irony is that since watching dr. 90210, i start thinking about how big my breasts are in terms of cc’s (a minimum of 500 this month)! scary!

anyway, today i did a quick 20 minutes on the treadmill (about 2.5k’s), part of which i walked because my premenstrual mammary glands were killing me with every step. i eventually tied my sweater around my chest just  so i could run for at least a little while.

i followed my run with an hour of tai-chi which was pretty cool. i used to attend classes here in johannesburg with beautiful, amazoniam liz van heerden, an excellent sifu who teaches both chen and yang style, but it got too difficult to get to class what with my studio schedule. now i occasionally catch a class at the gym. at least i’m starting to cross-train again. 

anyway, time to get serious! back to the couch to 10k plan. i can do this!

wish me luck!