Water, water, everywhere...

A few years ago, I spent some time living and volunteering at a children's home run by a Canadian NGO in India.  We were lucky enough to have water available to us from a tap.  We couldn't drink that water, but it sure made doing the dishes and bathing easier as we didn't have to lug water from another source back to the home.  Still, with 150 bodies living onsite, we had to be careful with how much we used from the well, or in the evening there would be a mere trickle coming out of the tap. 

Each day, I carried two buckets (the size you might use to wash your floor) of water upstairs to my room.  I used one to wash myself and my hair and the other to flush the squat toilet.  I remember thinking, "I will never take a shower for granted again!"

I'm telling this story because, of course, with time, I've definitely become guilty of taking long, leisurely showers, especially after a run.  When I stop to think about it, it still astounds me that we use perfectly good drinkable water to shower, to do our dishes,  and worse, to water our lawns and even to wash our cars.  This week, I've reset my stopwatch as I get in the shower and am putting myself on a 5 minute limit.  Here's a link to find other ways you can save water in your home:  http://www.h2ouse.net/.

Today was my day to go to the gym and run intervals on the treadmill.  I started with a 10 minute mile warm up, then upped my speed to about 9:30 for a mile, then 1200m a little faster, then 800m a little faster, then 400 m faster.  I still wasn't going as fast as I possibly could, so I upped it to 8 minute miles and ran 800m at that speed.  And finished up with another 10 minute mile.  This was a great run because, a) at the end, I felt like I could keep going, and b) all the changing speed kept me from getting bored, and c)  I ran a total of 10km in 57:45, which seemed completely unattainable 2 months ago.

While running early on I started feeling the ache creeping back into my knee.  I kept running, hoping it would go away, which was maybe not the smartest move, but it's what I did.  Instead of going away, it got worse and became more of a pain than an ache.  I really wanted to get through this workout, so I kept running, but I started thinking light thoughts.  I thought back to 18 years of dance training and my dance teacher saying, "If you look like a lump, you'll land like a lump!"  I pulled up my posture and concentrated on keeping my shoulders back and my body upright and level, and guess what?  It worked!  The last half of the run was pain-free!  When I got home I put ice on it for good measure and I'm going to do the "modified for bad knee" poses at yoga tonight just to be safe.