Top Fifteen Things I Learned, Some of Which I Didn't Want To Know

This was going to be a "Top Ten" list, but as anyone who knows me will attest, succinctness is not one of my better qualities (or possibly not even one of my qualities at all), so here goes.

15) Taking pain medication two hours before my workout makes it less difficult to do things in my workout (yes, yes, I know this is a recipe to overdo it and hurt myself worse, but if I go into the whole explanation, this top fifteen list will be so long it will run into tomorrow).

14) Despite pain medication, it still hurts to walk on the treadmill.

13) If I slow the treadmill down to 2 miles an hour, it doesn't hurt.

12) If I calculate that pace out to the 3.1 miles of the triathlon, it will only take me 93 minutes for the "run."

11) That's depressing.

10) If I want to feel better about my progress, I should track it on my iPod, which apparently is off by quite a bit, indicating 1.25 miles for every actual 1 mile in comparison to the treadmill.

9) I can run a little tiny bit without it hurting--but even mixing brief spurts with slow walking, it takes me exactly an hour to finish 3.1 miles.

8) BUT I CAN DO IT.

7) My maternity swimsuit really doesn't fit, and really won't work "for now" since one of "the girls" popped out (yes, completely) in the middle of swimming laps. Thank goodness I was only in the pool for 20 minutes and no one else was around, because it was near 1:00 in the morning.

6) I can now swim a half mile in 20 minutes.

5) Unfortunately, this means I can swim nearly as fast as I can walk.

4) They clean the women's locker room at 24-Hour Fitness from 1:00 to 3:00 am.

3) By "they" I mean "an individual of the male gender."

2) Also, "they" don't post a sign indicating this from the pool entry to the locker room.

1) This makes for very awkward me-standing-in-towel-only-begging-for-privacy-to-someone-who-doesn't-speak-English moment.

After getting home, I discovered two more things (besides that a Top Seventeen just sounded dumb): 1) There are lots of slugs on my front walkway that late at night and 2) my husband didn't let the dog out. *sigh*