Do as I say, not as I do

If anyone I remotely cared about asked me about what they should do after a couple weeks of missed runs and travels, I would have told them to take it easy.  Ease back into things.  If you jump right back into your routine after missing too many runs you risk injury.

So what did I do?  Ran 38 miles in 3 days.  After missing a gazillion runs, I decided to put my long run & two of my medium length runs 3 days in a row.  What can I say?  I have 12 hour shifts everyday for the foreseeable future and the idea of running a 10 miler after work was less appealing that pushing through today.  My legs are not going to let me forget the stupidity of it, but I think I fortunately avoided injury other than a couple small blisters and some chafed skin.

The best part of my run was when I got the trots.  Yup.  Always an adventure.  Looping back towards a park where there is a bathroom, I started getting increasingly concerned about how much further it was.  My legs felt like lead and my stomach was not happy.  Trying to gauge how much longer I had, I glanced down at my Garmin to see this:

Ahhh!  6.66?  When I've got the trots!?!  I'm not superstitious, but when you've got bathroom on the brain I don't need any bad luck.  Lucky for me, the park was around mile 7 so I pushed my lead legs as fast as they could go and made it in the nick of time.

A little trick I used to get through the run was something I've mentioned before.  Smile!  Every time I felt a grimace across my face I would force a smile.  So simple, but it really works.  You can't help but end up with a real smile.  Especially if you start with a goofy smirk:

Don't try this around small children.
They might cry.

Open Mouth. Insert Foot.

Minutes after I posted yesterday about being in a wonderfully good mood I realized I was missing my wallet.  Ha!  Talk about a challenge.  I wrote how I was going to smile fanatically all day no matter what and then... whoops!  I find myself retracing my steps from the morning, making police reports and canceling cards.

The good news is that I don't keep much in my wallet.  Just my drivers license and a couple credit/debits cards.  And no one had attempted to make any charges.  I don't think it was stolen.  Most likely it fell out of my back pocket when I took the scenic route biking to campus yesterday.  (Of course I took the scenic route!  It was nice out.  What can I say?)  So it wasn't tragic.  The episode is most accurately described as a major hassle.

But every time I got frustrated about the situation, I thought about the post I put up earlier in the day challenging everyone to smile & improve their mood.  "Fake it 'til you make it," was the message.  And you know what.  Every time I thought about it, I laughed at myself and the uncanny timing of it all.  And then I would force myself to smile.  You know what?  It actually did make me feel a little better (which then made me actually smile.)

Story of my life.

The other thing that made me feel better?  Getting in a spinning workout last night since yesterday was my day off from running!  And now I'll make sure I go for a run and a long bike ride today.  <sigh>  Well...  You gotta be able to laugh at yourself.

Have you had a good laugh lately?

Smile!

It's Friday.  A day that's typically pretty easy to enjoy.  Today, especially so.  Heading out my door this morning, the first person that I saw was an older gentleman.  He was carrying his cane slung over his shoulder with two full grocery bags hanging from it behind him.  As I was about to bike away we greeted each other and when I asked how he's doing he responded with, "If I was doing any better it would scare me" and flashes the biggest grin.  (Nothing sketchy!  Mind out of the gutter.  He then mentioned how he just retired and how it's nice to have time to do things you love.)  You know how genuine smiles are contagious?  I rode off smiling like a crazy person.

Then I headed over to campus to get some work done.  I found a good place to study near the gym so that I can get in a workout this afternoon.  And what do I see when I get there?

I actually stuck my head into the shop and asked, "are those really free?"  Yup.  Free t-shirts.  Why?  Who knows.  Is it the most amazing t-shirt I've even gotten?  Nope.  Pretty generic & they only had larges - which are too big.  But as a grad student, I'm not one to be snobby about the free things I accumulate.  I can always use another pajama shirt.

I've decided that for the rest of the day I'm gonna be in a good mood and I'm gonna smile like a crazy person.  I'm hoping someone will see my ridiculous grin and start smiling, too.  And even if your day isn't going well... Smile!  Smiling, even when you fake it, can actually improve your mood.  The research isn't rock solid, but it does suggest that your facial expressions can influence your mood.  If you "fake" a smile or a sneer, subjectively that has been shown to result in emotion change.  (A pdf of one of the studies with these findings can be found here.)   So, give it a shot.  What's the worst that will happen?

(I would like to thank the Rally to Restore Sanity for providing my with endless awesome pictures & slogans - like this one - which I plan on using for months to come.)