Mental Blocks

Taylor Swift - Cricket Pavilion, Phoenix, June 1st, 2007

I went for a run tonight and I totally sucked. I went trail running with my 'training for a marathoner' friend at 7:00 pm and the mixture of heat (110 degrees), loose sand on hills, and dry wind made me want t0 stop almost immediately. My friend Angel is a small energizer bunny who runs miles every day so my mind kept saying "you can't keep up with her, you might as well stop". I whined a lot, stopped a couple of times and finally she just said, "its in your mind, you are not even tired when you are stopping". It was so true, I wasn't breathing heavily, didn't really feel that tired, and was able to recover in around 30 seconds. So I have become a running wimp. I totally blame biking which is so much fun that it makes running seem incredibly painful. Hmm something to work on. I shall have to force myself to get over the hump.

I did get some biking in this weekend, despite the high temps of 115 degrees. I did a new trail on Saturday morning called Trail 100 in the Phoenix Mountains. It was a mixture of rocky singletrack lined with cactus and full of elevation and sand traps. Overall, a great ride. We randomly chose to go east to west and soon realized it was a great choice since we were going down more than up. By the end the 10 mile trail, we were all feeling to hot to go back the way we came so we rode back to the car along the canal and by road. It was probably around 18 miles in 2 hours. Overall, I felt like I got more confident going down hill on some very rocky track. There wasn't a ton of places that were terribly technical, but the violent bouncing was a fun twist to get used to. Sunday, I wimped out and just road 15 miles at the gym on the spinning torture device. When I ride that thing I just sit there dripping sweat and realizing just how quickly the sweat drys outside. Cause everyone knows 115 is hot, but ... "its a dry heat."

Both Saturday and Sunday night we spend the night listening to great live music. Saturday night was spent at Martini Ranch listening to an 80s rock band called 'Rock Lobster'. They played all fun 80s cover songs. Sunday I had free VIP third row tickets to the Brad Paisley concert. While I am not a huge country fan, I do listen to it every once in awhile and free is free. Brad has a really great voice and he sings very poignant songs that you can't help but feel moved by. Also performing was Jack Ingram, Kelly Pickler, and Taylor Swift. I thought all of the performers were great as part of the new modern non-twangy country scene and I was surprised at how many of their songs I had heard before. Being in the third row didn't hurt either (great for pictures), I could get used to this VIP stuff.