I Have Nothing Witty for This Title

Workout: Ran 3.4 in 29:23. Yeah...let's not talk about how slow that was. Ugh. I started out soooo well and then I took a minor walking break at 12 mins and that was my downfall. I need to stop stopping! It always does me in. The rest of the run was just exhausting and I was pooped. Damn periods and uteruses (uterii?!). Am I the only one who gets SUPER tired during "that time of the month"? I could sleep for days if I was able!


Enough about my Aunt Flo. Look at these shirts. I want them soooo badly! If anyone wants to contribute money to the "Jen's Super Broke" fund, I am gladly accepting donations at this time. Or just buy me a shirt in size Small and ship it to me. I will love you forever! Pinky swear!


I finally caught up on everyone's blogs. Holy Moses, you people post too much! I think it took me darn well 3 or 4 hours to read through them all! Luckily I am on summer vacay right now, so I don't do anything productive anyway, but still. Way. Too. Many. Blogs!


I've wanted to talk about waving while running for a while now. Yeah, I know, waving is kind of a weird topic to talk about. Who does that?! Me, that's who. 

All hail waving kitty!

So I started waving to people when I was running when I lived in Kentucky. Everyone in Kentucky is gosh darn friendly, it's ridiculous. Am I right or am I right, Julia? I loved it! California is a pretty friendly place if you're up in NorCal. SoCal is a whole 'nother kit 'n' kaboodle that we won't get into right now. Anyway, so I got to Kentucky and when I wasn't doing this:

I love the smell of urine and poop in the morning!

...I would be running. My coworkers thought I was crazy. After an 8 hour day of mucking stalls, I would go run anywhere from 3 to 7 miles. I lost a lot of weight and was more buff than I had ever been in my life. I also could eat the biggest burrito Harrodsburg, KY had to offer, which, I'm proud to say, my boss couldn't even finish. Take that, men! My metabolism was off the charts awesome! Ok, back to waving.

So when I would run on beautiful roads next to my farm...

...trucks, cars, SUVs, and sometimes the occasional tractor would drive by and they would all wave to me! It might not be a huge, Miss America-type wave, but I always saw them. Usually it would be a pointer finger flicking up in acknowledgment of my presence or a fast hand-up gesture. I never got a middle finger wave. Usually I was the one handing out those because some dipshits thought it was fun to try to run me off the narrow road. Anyway, waving became a thing I got used to receiving and giving. It was a friendly way to say hello when we obviously couldn't appropriately greet one another.

These guys saw me run by them all the time.

When I moved back to California, I was so used to this that I waved to everyone...and everyone looked at me like I was crazy. Sad panda :( I persisted. No one was going to stop me from being friendly, damn it! So I kept waving and eventually people waved back. Some days, when I'm grumpy/tired/PMSing/angry, I keep my eyes on the ground and run quickly by pedestrians or bikes. I don't wave to the cars because there are far too many and I usually run on busy streets with 2 or 4 lanes of traffic. But most of the time, I have those awesome endorphins going and I'm waving at everyone.

I love waving at someone who looks angry or grumpy and they suddenly perk up, smile, and wave back. It makes my day! I always think that maybe, just maybe, my small act of kindness changed their whole day around. You never know! I would hope that my minor wave wouldn't be the best thing that happened to them that whole day, but it could be, and I'm not going to prevent someone from having a little bit of happiness headed their way.

The best waving experience happened about a week ago. I was on my long run, struggling at the halfway point because, I, well, have been sucking lately with the whole breathing thing. I was running toward a young guy headed my direction on the sidewalk. He had his pants hung low, a baggy shirt on, and a stern face, obviously trying to act tough and hard, like my suburban neighborhood had been rough on him. I waved at him, and he, in shock, stuttered out a "Hey! How's it going?" I didn't reply because at that point I was past him and it would've been awkward to stop and turn around to answer him. But it was one of the longest replies I've received and it was from this hard looking, wanna-be thug. Day made :)

Do you wave to people on your runs? Does unexpected friendliness from strangers make you happy or weird you out?