Bear!

For the first time since the start of the summer, I am anxious enough to blog. This is probably not a good thing, in regards to my long term health, but I do enjoy the feeling of pouring myself onto paper in the same way that the sky poured itself onto my head when I tried to go running today. Seriously, I'm soaked.

Tomorrow, my certification program starts. We'll call it Relay, which is good, because that's its name. About a week ago, I was sent the first few assignments, but I promised myself I wouldn't start them or worry about them until today. Instead, I focused my energies this week on fun training and catching up on Dance Moms.

I found out that there is about half a season of Dance Moms that I haven't watched! Much of my week had episodes shamelessly watched on my computer while Tim was out doing important things like emergency medicine research or EMS.

I attended two more different exercise classes. Mostly, I really like the teacher. The third class was very modern-dance-ish, which I LOVED. It made me sweat, but was the most fun. I definitely feel stronger after this week. Let's see if I can keep this up.

On Wednesday, I kept making excuses not to do my scheduled swim, before I realized that I didn't have a schedule. My A-race is done. The season is fun only from here on out. Fortunately, I had several (5!) really fun runs this week. The strength training is making me feel better as a runner. I had my highest mileage week (18.4 - yes, I know it's only .2 more than my next highest) and have no major aches and pains in sight. (Except muscles. Many muscles.) This included a fun interval session on the track (4 x 400 m, or 4 laps, at goal 5K pace, with a lap jog in between each) which wasn't too strenuous, but I enjoyed. I also just did a nice tempo run in the rain, which included 15 minutes at a sub-10 minute mile (actually, 10 min @ sub-10 and 5 min @ sub-9, but that was accidental).

I also had a pretty exciting bike ride yesterday. I joined a riding group that has rides at multiple levels every day. I picked the slowest and easiest ride on Saturday, and met a group in a school parking lot about 35 minutes away from home. The first thing I noticed is that I was the youngest of the group by at least 30 years. I guess that's what happens when you're slow at biking. I soon realized that not only were they old, they were good. The ride was hilly (like, West Side Highway hilly), and I struggled to keep up with the group. Fortunately, the ride leader stuck back with a few of us slower folks, and we averaged an embarrassing 11.2 mph over 21.5 miles. (Hilly miles. Very hilly miles.)

The best part of the ride, though, was one moment about halfway through. I had just crested another hill, and saw that about 15 feet to my right, next to a bush, on the front lawn of a nice big house, was a bear. A real bear. A full grown, really gigantic, huge, black bear. I nearly lost control of bodily functions, and tried to pass as quickly and silently as possible, hoping it wouldn't notice me. Fortunately, it waited until I passed before crossing the road. The ride leader, who was about 20 feet behind me, chose to alert the group by shouting, "Bear! Bear! Bear!" It was cool, after the fact.

To use a cheesy metaphor, I feel like that bear is the upcoming school year. It's big, and it's looming in the bushes. I'm not anxious about all of the things I'll have to do next year, due to my new responsibilities as lead lesson planner, but I'm anxious about being stressed out. Yep, that's how my mind works.

Fortunately, I am now "allowed" to start on my work. So far, I'm finding the Relay work time consuming, but actually pretty interesting. As I've found about most of my education education, it makes much more sense after teaching for a year or two. I've watched some videos and written some stuff about childhood physical, socio-emotional, and linguistic development. I've promised myself that I'm going to remain positive about the whole Relay thing. Besides, I've learned some cool things so far: Did you know that 11-through-13-year-olds like to push boundaries and challenge authority? NO WAY.