Love-Hate Relationships

I had all kinds of productive thoughts swirling through my head at 5:30 this morning when I was in the middle of my 5 mile recovery run.  My morning was all planned out -- I was going to finish my run, wake the kids up and get them dressed/fed/off to preschool, make a green smoothie for breakfast, take a big pile of clothes to be donated and write a quick blog post.  All this was to be accomplished before picking the girls back up at 11:45am.  Easy, right?

Post-breakfast sisterly love

Love getting rid of things!

I was going to post about the start of my Boston marathon training or the lack of motivation I have to complete my home organization projects or how I am already feeling pressure to start my Christmas shopping.  (Most of this pressure comes in the form of daily stacks of catalogs delivered to my house with pictures of fully-decorated Christmas trees or wrapped presents on the front.  These catalogs cause me to forget the fact that it isn't even yet Halloween.)

After the run, however, I turned on my phone and the screen froze up into a bunch of squiggly black and white lines.  Like a miniature zebra screensaver.  Ugh.  Did I mention this was my new iPhone 5 that I have had for exactly three weeks?  Really, Apple?  All my plans went out the window...

Heading to the Apple store

After battling traffic to the downtown Apple store to get a new phone, the rest of the morning was spent trying unsuccessfully to restore my phone using a very recent backup.   Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted that backup and restored from a year-old backup instead.  Shortly thereafter, I realized that I had also deleted all of the pictures from my Italy trip that I had taken on my phone.  Fighting back tears, I just gave up and accepted my new phone for what it was.  Which is exactly like my old phone was a year ago...with no pictures of Italy.

I do love Apple products.  I'm typing this post on my MacBook.  I use my iPod nano when I run.  And I'm never without my iPhone.  But I can't count the number of hours I have spent syncing and backing up and downloading and restoring from one product to another over the years.  The benefit of Apple products is supposed to be their seamless integration with one another but somehow it has never worked that way for me.  So I also really hate Apple products.  Today, especially.

This got me thinking about other things that I both love and hate.  Last week I had a track workout and I can honestly say I have always had a love-hate relationship with the track.  I generally hate it when I'm doing it but love the results I get from it.  As much as I love marathons, there are certainly days when I dread heading out for a 20 mile training run in the rain and there are definitely times during the marathon itself when I swear I will never do another one.  However, within an hour of finishing a marathon, I am ready to sign up for the next one.  (Remind anyone of childbirth?)  I also love dense, flourless chocolate cake but hate it when I eat the whole cake.    I love wine but if I have too much, I definitely hate it the next day.  (I suppose a little impulse control would help with these last two...)

I know a lot of people have love-hate relationships with sports teams.  Or politicians.  Or their jobs.  Maybe even their spouses or kids(!!).  My husband has a love-hate relationship with our dog but that is mostly because he is the one who takes her for walks in the cold, windy rain and picks up after her.

What is there not to love about this face?!

In the end, I suppose having a complicated relationship with something or someone isn't necessarily a bad thing.  There really are very few things in life that are just black or white -- almost everything is a varying shade of gray.  Isn't that what makes life interesting?

I am looking at my running schedule now and see that Friday is another track day.  6 x 800's as part of a 6 mile run.  I know it will be hard.  I know I will want to quit.  And, at times, I will hate it.  But I also know how much faster and stronger it will ultimately make me as a runner, both physically and mentally.  So I suppose I will love it at the same time.  Or at least when it is over.

(And I will probably continue to buy Apple products, too.)

"If you never have a 'bad' day [running], you're probably doing something wrong; if you never have a 'good' day [running], you're definitely doing something wrong." - Mark Remy

Yesterday's workout was a 9 mile progression run (2 miles warm-up at 8:30, 3 miles at 7:30, 3 miles at 7:15 and 1 cool-down mile at 8:10) and I finished it before the kids woke up at 7am.  It was my longest run since the marathon and a sort of kick-off to my Boston training.  It left me energized and excited to have a goal to work towards once again.  Only 24 weeks to go!

Do you have a love-hate relationship with anything?  

- Kristen