run this amazing day

1. And they are everything I imagined they would be. 2. I realized earlier this week that every since I got back from Jamaica, I essentially jumped right back into my pre-Kinetic training.  An endless rotation of lift-swim-bike-lift-run-lift-yoga-bike-run.  The intensity has been much lower (quality workouts replaced with easy workouts) but the volume per week has essentially been the same.  And I'm in my self-proclaimed off-season!  What is wrong with me?  I swore that after Kinetic I'd take some time easy and just do what I wanted, but it turns out that I'm stuck in some all-or-nothing mindset about training.  This week, I started to feel burned out.  Part of it, I'm sure, is residual exhaustion from Total 200.  Part of it is that I have several friends in the thick of IM or half marathon or some kind of training, and it's so easy to just jump in on a ride or race as a social event and get carried away.  But part of it is simply that I'm just not feeling mo

What to do when a hill workout gets cancelled due to a thunderstorm. Yes, that is a shake weight.

Yesterday at PT it was time to add another set of awesome exercises for my butt.   Last week we added dead lifts, single leg dead lifts, box steps, and hungarian dead lifts to my strength training, on top of the squats and single leg squats I had already been doing.  Out of those, I think the single leg dead lift activates my glutes the most - at least that's where I feel the most burning - but sprinkling those things into my week has made a big difference in my butt.  I'm spending 100% of my time running focusing on my form, and being able to feel my glutes while I run is a scary new brilliant but tiring experience. I wasn't really sure what else we could add to that, but that's the fun thing about PTs - they always surprise with new ways to make you sore.  Yesterday's addition?  Kettlebells. I've read about kettlebell training before, but have never even picked up one of the things.  I'm not the most coordinated person in the world, and the fear of putt

I heard about the Total 200  - a double century in one day - way back in the winter, but didn't want to commit until I was closer and knew what my cycling was going to look like.  In late May, I heard that it was about to sell out, so I went ahead and signed up.  I love things that sound insane.  I had done quite a few rides in the 70-85 range already this spring, and I figured I'd do a few 100/50 Saturday/Sunday splits and be okay.   Well, then I started going to a new PT, who didn't give me any actual restrictions but told me to keep it easy.  I've been really focusing on healing the past few weeks, and as such, haven't done many long rides.  I knew that spending that much time in the saddle would the the opposite of "keeping it easy," so I started shopping around my bib.  I thought I had found someone to buy it, and had even picked out a short triathlon to jump in on Saturday instead.  But then in the middle of last week, I found out that wasn't

1. I almost only buy things on sale, but I can never remember to use coupons. 2. I get mad when Facebook suggests friends for me.  Facebook, you don't know me!  Maybe I don't want to be friends with my husband's ex-wife! 3. An old Amazon gift card meant two things yesterday: a) I used up a gift card and b) hot pink shoes are on their way for only $22! 4. I'm really bad about replying to personal email sometimes.  And then I'll get motivated and wipe out my inbox. 5. I hold a grudge. 6. I've been running about 10-15 miles a week.   7. I'm not sure what I spent money on before triathlon and owning a house.   8. I have a pair of black running shorts that I bought in 1999 when I started running.  They didn't fit for about 6 years but I kept them anyway.  Now, I wear them almost every day. 9. I have no idea what to do with my basement.  Right now it's an office and the place where old furniture goes to die. 10. I was on the sum

1. I am almost positive that I was able to feel something happening in my glutes this morning while I was running.  It might have been due to yesterday's dead lift party, or a week of kicking the crap out of them with strength training, but something was definitely going on.  I call this progress.  I also am ashamed to admit that I ran on a treadmill this morning.  Which turned out to be a bad idea anyway, because it is just as warm and possibly more humid inside my gym than outside.  But after spending 90 minutes whining about the dew point this morning, it was treadmill or nothing at all.  I know this means my soul just got sucked out through the bottom of my running shoes, I'm sorry.   However, it did give me yet another good opportunity to focus on form and count my strides-per-minute and concentrate on keeping my hips under me and not over-striding as I got faster, all of which probably would have gone out the window if I had been suffering outside.  But the treadmill got

This is basically how I feel right now. Flattened.

Taking another day off from blathering about running....you can check out my first and second house projects posts if you'd like, but essentially, my house is falling down around me and I am working hard to slow that process down.  As always, you can click on any of these pictures to see a much larger version of the mess. The basement seems to be particularly bad, and it wasn't a priority when I first moved in for two reasons - it was being rented to a friend, and I wanted to get through some projects on the first floor before coming downstairs.  When we moved in, the basement bathroom looked like this: Yeah.  A good scrubbing took care of most of it, and it got painted the same brown (NOT a good idea, but we had extra paint) as the living room on one of our painting spree weekends, so it was fully functional for a while.  Then, one evening last fall, I smelled mold and this happened. What we kind of figured out happened was two things - first, the tub needed to be recau

Last year I found a pair of bike shoes on a clearance table somewhere for $15.  The reason they were on the clearance table?  They were the previous year's shoes.  So I bought them and have beat the crap out of them over the past year.  There's nothing wrong with them, but I don't like them because they don't match my bike (I know).  And every time I go into the bike shop, I wander over to the shoes and drool until one of my bike guys says sternly, "Your shoes are fine!" Well, this weekend I went on a loonnnng ride, and when I got back, I noticed one of my shoes was wiggling around on the cleat quite a bit.  It turned out that I had lost 2 of my cleat screws.  So I toddled off to the shop to see if they had any spares.  After an exhaustive screw man-hunt, I decided to just buy new cleats.  "They" say that you should replace them every 5000 miles anyway, and I'm pretty sure I blew past that in April .  But the other screws were pretty stripped

1. I can pee REALLY fast.   2. I hate it when people write "tough" instead of "touch."  It happens a lot and now you ALSO will be haunted by it. 3. When we do poses in yoga that put my nose 2 inches from my feet, I pick at the calluses and blisters and toenail polish. 4. Graham barks if you say, "Who's here?" (I kind of expected him to bark from me writing it just now).  One of my favorite games is to wait until he is sound asleep and then yell "WHO'S HERE?" and then when he runs over to me, barking his crazy head off, say, "Did you hear something?" 5. After hearing a song once, I have about 95% of the lyrics memorized. 6. Sometimes I dance while I'm swimming.   7. This has happened several times: I try a running shoe, fall in love with a running shoe, find it online at 50% off and buy 3 pairs, then decide I hate it and have 2 brand-new pairs left in my closet. 8. I broke my ankle in fifth grade and it w

1. I have terrible metro karma.  Something annoying and delaying happened on every train I got on yesterday.  I had to metro up to the Zoo from work for my PT appointment, and we got as far as Dupont when they made everyone unload and said they didn't know when the next train would be headed north.  And my appointment was in 11 minutes.  So what's a girl to do?  Why, haul serious ass 1.8 miles in dress clothes, laptop in backpack and not a single hair tie to be found.  Thank goodness I had a (very old & worn out) pair of running shoes with me. Oh, and Connecticut Ave has only a tiny hill.  But fortunately it was only 81º out, not 104º like last Wednesday.   So after my PT appointment, I needed this to continue cooling down after my less-than-2-mile-run. There's raspberry yogurt under there somewhere.  And I usually only get one gummy worm, but I went crazy and doubled up.  Hold me back, I'm losing control.   2. Speaking of PT, I'm actually surprised that it

Someone almost ended up riding the orphan train earlier this week. Little brat.

I stumbled on this ride earlier in the week while looking for an organized ride to jump in on Sunday morning.  It started less than 2 miles from my house, and I remember watched some of it happen last year and it looked like a blast.  Not a race, but a huge ride that does a 12.5K crit loop, so you get some race-like pack riding experience without having to come in 435th (or worse).  I didn't know how I would feel after the 4 miler, so I didn't pre-register, figuring that I would wake up Sunday morning and decide if I wanted to go or not. My alarm went off at 6am and I moaned and groaned about going, but eventually got up and out the door, my bike and jersey packed with 60ish miles of fuel.  The way the ride worked: you could do as many laps as you wanted, but you got a bronze medal for 2 (25K), a silver medal for 4 (50K) and a gold medal for 8 (100K).  Based on the price, I decided I was only going to do the ride if I was planning on doing 100K.  The other item of note?  The