Ooooh ... fun, fun, fun. A dear friend of mine who's a hockey nut recently bought me a pair of used hockey skates. He's always interested in getting more people to start skating and he thought I would totally love it. So he got them sharpened for me and yesterday I went for my first skate! Now, you have to understand that I had never before skated on hockey skates and there actually is a huge difference. The weirdest part for me wasn't the lack of toe-pick, it was the fact that the back of the blade is about an inch and a half shorter. I kept of feeling like I was falling over backwards because there was nothing there to stop me. And you also have to understand that I think I've only been skating once in the last 12 years. I was understandable nervous and thought I was going to die, but I had a total blast! As soon as I got over my initial nervousness I began to remember what skating's all about and how good it feels. I started to really enjoy the hockey skates, as somehow they actually make more sense to me than figure skates do. And I think that for the first time in my life I actually was feeling the strong desire to really skate well. It was awesome!

So now, of course, I'm feeling the overwhelming desire to go skating all the time. And I want to play hockey. It makes me sad that I can't play hockey with my friends just because I have no "official" association with MIT. Boo.

In other news, I've got yet another running goal. Check out this run. I think it looks like it would be the right one for me to do. It's going to be in March, which means that it'll still be nice and cold, so there's less of a worry of me overheating. And it's an Irish thing, which will make me feel all super-duper good about my Irish heritage. And it takes place at several locations around the world on the same day (Ireland, Australia, and Somerville, MA) which I think is really cool. And it ends up in Davis Square, where there will be music and food and all that jazz. And since it's so close to the center of the universe (Cambridge) then my friends could come out for support. Honestly, I think it's an awesome idea and a really good goal. So by March I have to be able to run 3.4 miles. I can totally do it.

I've been feeling completely uninspired to go running lately. I think it's because of the fact that I've been doing it inside on the treadmill at the gym. The problem is that I feel like it's actually better for me to do it that way. When I'm on the treadmill then I've got something that keeps the exact time for me (important for the run/walk) and I've also got something that's keeping perfect track of the speed that I'm running. One of the problems that I've always had when trying to do this outside was that I would end up running much too fast and burning out almost immediately. So having my speed right in front of me is a very helpful thing. My goal is to finish the Couch to 5K program and then start running outside. That way at least I'll be continuously running.

And that's about it for now. I'm actually off to the gym to do the aforementioned dreaded running. Ah well, it's gotta be done if I want to keep to my goal, right?