Absurdly ambitious.
Like one time in high school, I decided that I was going to go to Julliard's and become a great singer. I would go on to sing on Broadway and all over the world. Granted, at this point, I had never really taken any singing classes or voice lessons. But I was gonna make it. I would sing along to the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack (Sarah Brightman, not Emmy Rossum) and think very highly of myself. Luckily for me, I have a sensible mother who knows me pretty well. When I announced to her my idea, she lovingly shot down my dream with her logic.
Looking back, I'm pretty sure it would have turned out like those American Idol auditions where they've been told their whole lives that they are just amazing singers, only to be slapped in the face by the cold, hard hand of reality.
I'm glad my mother loves me.
So about a month ago, I got ambitious again. Only this time, my mother decided to be encouraging (I really think she feels bad for talking me down from the Julliard cliff that I wanted to jump off of). I leaned over in church one Sunday when I was home visiting and told her that I wanted to run a half marathon. She looked at me and said, "that's a good idea".
Yeah. I was gonna run it. Forget the fact that I haven't run more than a mile in over 6 years when I did cross country one year in high school, it was partially to prove my mom wrong when she said I couldn't hack it. All of this makes my mom sound like a horrible person, but really.... she knows me and my aversion (putting it mildly) of anything that makes me sweat or breathe hard. I hated that year of cross country and was the slowest one on the team. But it sure showed my mom, and my aunt gave me $10 for sticking it out the whole time.
Haha, my poor family.
I started thinking of how great it was gonna be once I had run this half marathon. I would be one of those elitists who run all the time and love it and are super healthy and beautiful. Visions of this ran around in my head for about a week. I decided to pace myself and do it next May. That gave me 8 months to train.
Well I finally got around to going running for the first time. I even had new work-out clothes and a watch with a timer to see how long it took me to run a mile. I did it all without stopping and it took about 9 minutes 50 seconds. Yeah baby!
Then my body gave out. I lay down and tried to regulate my heart rate and breathing for the next 10 minutes.
Ah reality, thou art a heartless old hag.
This was going to be harder than I had originally thought. Too bad I had already told my friends and the boy that I was trying to impress, so there was no way to back out of it. Dang my need to impress cute boys!
So now, I'm taking a deep breath and taking a realistic look at this. I still think I can do it. But now I need to re-motivate myself.
Wish me luck!
