Not So Hot

So last night was the first Bootcamp walking night at the Owings Mills High School track. The Weather was GORGEOUS! It was 71 degrees and sunny with a light breeze in the middle of June! What a pleasure to have a good excuse to be outdoors, getting healthy, and socializing with some really incredible women.



Unfortunately, since it was the first session, the trainer was unsure of what we were all capable of, and I felt she was way too easy on us. After some light muscle stretching she set a goal of 1 mile (4 laps around the track). I walk about 3 times that much around my neighborhood in the evenings with the dog, so I was a bit surprised, but I decided I would try to talk with a different person for each lap, and get to know some of my comrades.



I took lap #1 with Frances (the director of the program and its creator) she told me about how she got the idea to do this, and about some of the challenges and rewards of working full time as a counselor and social work manager while raising 2 kids and starting this business. I admire her even more now, and we chatted a bit about how she could market the bootcamp to a broader audience since she is trying to make this her full-time job.



Lap #2 was with a woman who is currently a police officer, but is getting her degree in elementary education. I mentioned that Naomi is working with some pretty difficult circumstances in her DC charter school, and that a police officer's training could really be handy for a teacher. She agreed, but said that she is not interested in working with what she called "kids who are only coming to school to show their (gang) colors." She wants to work with kids who have the right attitude, but are lacking an environment conducive to learning.



Lap #3 was with a woman from my team who works for Under Armour. If you didn't know, Baltimore has one of the central offices of the Under Armour Corporation. I have met a number of people who work there, and I am always staggered by the dedication and number of hours per week their employees give to the company. They must have some incredibly supportive business practices the have such devoted employees. She even works on Saturdays, and was concerned that she might be late for our session at 4 on Saturday.



As I started the final lap, the trainer admonished me for "moseying along" at what was a leisurely pace for me so that I could "chit chat." So I took the last lap alone, walking to the pace of the theme song in my head "Ain't No Stopping Us Now!" I was "on the move" and "it was alright!"



For anyone reading who doesn't know me well, I always have some song or another bouncing around in my head. No need for Ipods here! I am usually thematic, but occasionally I find myself humming aloud, much to the extreme annoyance of everyone around me!



Anyway, as I came around the final lap, I was finally getting into a groove, and so I decided to take one more while the others were finishing up. One of the mentors (who incidentally has been at every class I have taken this week) caught up with me, and encouraged me to actually run the back half of the lap. I was nervous about my knee, but it was actually fine. I was so proud of myself!



When I got home, I fed the dog and then dumped all of the rotting food from the refrigerator whose smell nearly knocked me out when I opened the door! We had an unexpected crowd staying over last weekend. Elaine decided to go food shopping while Alex was out food shopping. Needless to say, we had a whole lot of stuff that was either double purchased, or that Alex and I don't really eat. While they were with us, some of it got eaten, but they did not remember to take the leftover food they had purchased home with them. I have come to the conclusion though that I will only buy bagels and challah at Golberg's since all of the cream cheese went moldy, and when I looked at the dates on the container I realized that they had re-stickered the lids covering the previous week's dates with new ones. EEEEW!



Once the fridge was empty, I realized that I would need to restock for Shabbat, so at 10:00 I headed out for the Giant. I have always found food shopping to be very relaxing, especially at night, so I decided to take my time and browse for some all natural and organic food that was low in calories and fat. I found some really great options. I also discovered that the Giant is now carrying a lot of the Israeli products that I usually have to go get at 7 mile market. I think mom described most of this in a previous blog. I bought Of Tov Sesame Chicken Schnitzels for my Shabbat dinner. Cool! In looking for a link for the chicken, I just discovered a kosher peapod-style website Avi-Glatt!



Anyway, I got home, took a shower, and got into bed, only to be startled by the start of a veritable concert of noxious noises. They have been doing road construction at my intersection for a few weeks from 7pm-5am. Last night the jack hammers started at 12:45am and did not stop until 4am. Worse than that was the constant beeping of the backup alarms on the equipment, and the final straw was the dog barking at every worker that set foot on my lawn. I watched some really bad TV until I was just too tired to care anymore, and I finally dozed off around 3:30am. Hopefully they are almost done with my particular stretch of road!