Stress Buster

One morning, several weeks ago, I was getting ready for work. I glanced up at the mirror for a split second and saw an unusually light colored hair on top of my head. Keep in mind, I'm a natural brunette and beings I spend about zero time in the sun, there was no reason for my hair to be "sunkissed" with blonde straglers. All of the sudden, it was like the mirror had some sort of magnetic pull on me. I practically had my face smashed up against it to get a closer look at this "blonde" hair. Sadly, it wasn't blonde. It was gray. I was in denial for several weeks until the inevitable happened again this past Sunday. I found ANOTHER one. What the heck is going on? I'm only 28, neither one of my parents started graying until their mid 30's, so why in the world are these less than brunette (I can't even bring myself to say the G word again) hairs showing up? I think I can sum it up in one word: Stress. I haven't exactly handled the last several months very well and to say my stress levels have increased would be an understatement. Something has to be done unless I want to be fully "less than brunette" by the time my husband is actually living with me!!!

So, needless to say, it's time for a serious plan of action! Several weeks ago, Jason and I were discussing the benefits of running. He loves it and is quite good at it. Me on the other hand, I HATE running with a passion. When I played high school sports, running was used as a form of punishment. Well, I'm sure you can see why after several years of playing sports I started to associate running as being a bad thing, which is sad because it can be such a stress reliever. Which is exactly what I need!

I mentioned to Jason that it would be nice to learn how to "like" running. I know it's something he enjoys and it would be nice to have atleast one hobby in common. Because let's face it, I'm never going to become the bow hunting goddess that he would like me to be and he's never going to be able to sit through three hours of non-stop infomercials like I can. I decided that entering a 5k (let's start out SUPER easy) would be a good challenge. It's something to work towards that I could see the end results. So, I quickly googled races in the Denver area for next spring. I figured I would give myself plenty of time. Well, it didn't work out so well. Jason said that I should shoot for running in a race next fall. Darn him.

So, the plan of action is to start incorporating Couch to 5K into my weekly workouts. It's a program that helps you to build up your running tolerance with the idea of having you ready to run a 5K in 9 weeks. Not too shabby is it? The best part about it is you only have to run 3 days a week. WAHOO!!!!!!!! That doesn't mean you can take the rest of the time off. It's probably a good idea to stay active, but just have a less intense workout for the other days.