Ein Royal mit Käse

Someone in my apartment building had McDonald's tonight. I know because that's all I could smell in the elevator as I headed out for my run. The few times I've had McDonald's in the past year (usually a good 4-5 months apart) I always end up feeling sluggish and sick but I keep going back. There is something in their food which holds slightly addictive qualities; perhaps it's the 5000:1 ratio of fat/sodium:actual food, perhaps it's the fries with the sprinkling of what I can only assume is sodium crack, perhaps it's the fact that I have no willpower and it still smells good although it makes me feel like ass, perhaps it's that Ronald McDonald secretly sneaks into my bedroom every couple of months and plants subliminal messages in my head. I may never know why I always feel this need to return to McDonald's. I stood in the elevator straining my mind to think I had forgotten anything so I could ride back up to my apartment, but I had everything so I stepped off the elevator, and headed out to meet THR for my run... or rather walk. I'm still not totally better so I'm slowing down the running for just a little bit.

Despite the fact that I'm not feeling well, there was a couple of times on the walk today when I wanted to break into a run and that made me feel good. The more I run, the more I like it. I'm seeing results; my body is changing, my cardio is improving (although right now it pretty much sucks because I can only breath through 1/4 of my nose), my distances are increasing... it's a great feeling. I have decided that I want to set myself a goal for running. I have the 10K coming up which I plan to "run" (read=run as much as I can) but that's very soon so I can't really train for it beyond what I'm doing, so I've decided that if I feel good running the 10K then my next goal is the Royal Victoria Half Marathon in October. It's scary saying that because I look in the mirror right now and I don't see a runner: I see me, my mouth and a (despite shrinking) large butt. I can't, unfortunately, sass my way through a half marathon so I need to find that runner in there. I know she's in there, lost in one of the rolls of fat and probably slowly suffocating.

I really didn't think I would enjoy running when I first decided to actually give it a try. A random conversation with a friend about the Antarctic Marathon in 2013 and this little idea started to take root. Delays thanks to my severly sprained ankle almost seemed like some sort of warning sign, but here I am and I'm loving it. I want to become a runner and that's more than I ever thought possible. I always imagined that I'd run because it was a good way to get and stay fit not because I wanted to do it. With this world of running opened the world of travelling to run. I loved this idea of centering travel plans around a race. I started searching for races in parts of the world I want to travel to (or back to in many cases) and as a result, I've set another goal for myself: if I ever run a marathon, I want to pop my proverbial marathon cherry with the Three Country Marathon in Europe. I debated about the Jungfrau Marathon but it has a scary altitude change and there's a lovely cog-wheel train all the way up there so really, why run it?

I miss Switzerland. The view from Sami and Susi's front steps.