run this amazing day

1. Everything goes in the dryer.  Including spandex.  I KNOW. 2. I am having an incredibly difficult time typing/spelling this morning. 3. I always get up to pee once in the night and can go straight back to sleep.  If I get up twice, I'll be up for the rest of the night. 4. I make little piles all over my desk. 5. I can't stand unread emails, but I almost never check Facebook anymore.  The little red numbers used to haunt me, but not anymore! 6. My status is always "Busy" on Google chat.   7. I went to the bike store yesterday later in the afternoon, after I'd had a work appointment.  One of my bike guys said, "Hey, I think this is the first time I've seen you not looking like a sweaty homeless person!" It made me proud. 8. Sometimes I am afraid to tell people I don't drink coffee. 9. I really like DailyMile, but I really don't like the overwhelming amount of fake "GOOD JOB!" that is there.  Or the people that post the exa...

1. Two weeks ago, I had my first Graston treatment on my psoas/iliacus.  For about the past week and a half, my sacrum has been falling out of alignment much more often, going from 4-5x a week (still a lot) to at least once and usually twice a day, but sometimes as often as 5 times.  And until yesterday, I didn't put these two pieces of information together, but now that I have, here's what I think happened (Back off, man, I'm a scientist).  My tight piriformis used to be holding my sacrum down, and when that loosened up, my psoas/hip flexor started holding it in place.  Now that my right hip flexor is completely calm - and trust me, I never thought this day would come - there is NOTHING holding it in place.  It makes complete sense, but until I put these pieces of information together, it was really smoking my bananas.  On Tuesday morning, I felt it move out of alignment while I was doing planks at the gym.  Come on, now, PLANKS!  Planks are stre...

We bought Molly her own dog bed yesterday. It's her new favorite thing ever.

Usually blog-chain-letter-type trends make me pretty stabby.  To be fair, a whole whopping lot of things make me stabby: people who stand on the left side of the escalator, people who spit when they talk, when the toilet paper is put on upside-down, etc.  But I kind of like this one that has been floating around, and in the interest of propagating self-absorbtion through blogging (isn't that the whole point of blogging?), I've decided to stamp and send the chain onwards.  (Many of these posts exist under the "I LOVE THESE" tab on the blog but I can only be modest for so long). My Most Beautiful Post Calling a post "beautiful" makes me snort protein-yogurt ooge out of my nose.  However, the "post that made the highest number of people email me to say that they were crying at work" was the letter I wrote myself on my 30th birthday .  It actually one of my favorites as well, and I have no idea how I'm going to top it when I turn 31 in a few...

After I ran this race last year, I swore I would never do it again.  The heat was just plain ridiculous plus I went out hard and choked.  In a 5K.  But when first the poet , and then I stumbled across free bibs, I said okay, but there was no way I was going to race it after declaring my hatred for evening summer races a few weeks ago.  A 3.1 mile easy run with water stops sounded great to me, plus I had lots of mafia blog buddies running the race as well.   I tapered for the race by doing a 3.5 hour brick much earlier that morning with Emily .  We went out and rode the Reston inner loops again.  The hills felt much easier than even 3 weeks ago, and I really concentrated on keeping my HR low while climbing.  As it turned out, we averaged a faster pace over the 51 miles than we did the first time.  It was starting to get pretty hot when we got back to the car, so I whined obnoxiously  convinced Emily to only brick for 15 minutes and ...

I've been in PT with Dr. Paul for about 5-6 weeks now, and I'm really happy with the progress I've been making.  When I started working with him, he recommended pushing back the gait analysis that I had scheduled after being so frustrated with this injury .  In his words, " Your gait is going to look completely different a month from now." I'm so pleased that he was right. Yesterday morning, Amy and I trekked out to Gainesville, VA, to work with Dr. Maggs at Active Spine and Sport .  Amy attended a presentation he did a few months ago and was impressed with him, and he came highly recommended by several other people, including Cristina , who did a gait analysis of her own a month or so back.  We decided that we'd drive out early to avoid traffic and do an easy run before our appointments.  As many of you know, the weather in DC lately has been a bit hot, and our "4-5 miles" was quickly downgraded to "4 at most" and then "we...

1. Right now, as you read this, I'm at the fabulous (we hope) Dr. Maggs getting my gait analyzed.  Fingers crossed for a magic fix!  (Spoiler: this never happens.)  Even though I've been working on my form for over a month now, I still decided to go do this because I am hoping that he might be able to point out minor things that my PT/coach/everyone that I make stare at my ass all the time/self have missed.  My running has been fairly consistent, although still low in overall milage, for the past few weeks, and I am starting to feel more settled into good form, so I think it's a good time to go. 2. I'm almost 2 weeks into the Brooks Adrenalines and I'm still loving them.  They feel so much lighter than my 2150's and I really like the smaller heel.  My shin is still bothering me the teeniest tiniest bit, but I noticed earlier in the week on the bike that it was twanging and that made me notice that my cleat was slightly off-center, so back to the bike sho...

We have two of these: And two of these (possibly to be three in the not-so-near future): So this week, we brought home one of these, to carry it all: The face of a woman who's just signed up for an Ironman: Molly can fetch while swimming: Happy Wednesday!

So, the way my schedule has unfortunately worked out, I've done NCVC hills on Monday night and CAR hills on Tuesday morning for the past few weeks.  I take both workouts pretty easy, but by the time CAR is over, I'm ready to give these legs some rest!  (Side note: Wednesday has been a rest day for the past few weeks, don't get your rest day panties in a twist!) Monday night generally looks like this: And Tuesday morning generally looks like this: Last night at NCVC hills, though, I was the only woman to show up, and the nice guys who usually hold the pace back and ride easy with me weren't there.  So the "recovery ride" workout turned into a swinging dick hammerfest around the rolling hills of Arlington.  That plus the fact that the heat is worse this week than last meant I was a little extra tired.  I made sure to cool down, foam roll, stretch, ice, and eat right after the workout, but I had a pretty sleepless night which meant it was extra tough to...

So, just like every athlete that gets pregnant signs up for an Ironman, I'm going to promise to try REALLY HARD to not only talk about the 140.6M baby I'm planning on delivering next June.  We all know how that goes.  But I think you should be safe for the next 6  minutes  months or so. I'm still in my self-imposed super rest period .  Last week was pretty easy, although I did have two quality running workouts for the first time in weeks (instead of the usual one or zero).  On Friday morning I went back to tempo.  Even though I only did 2x1 mile, it was still awesome to be back, especially since the CAR blog mafia was there in full attendance.  However, despite the fact that I love the morning workouts, particularly in the summer, I think I'm going to have to flip back to the Thursday night tempo so Friday can be an easy day (this is what I did in National Half training).  On Saturday morning, I woke up with a very upset stomach (which I'...

RFF side note: Thanks to everyone for such overwhelming support yesterday.  You guys make me feel pretty pumped about what's to come.  Much more on all of this next week; for now, it's random friday fact time! 1. I met Richard Dreyfuss once.  He came in the Apple Store and I fixed his computer. 2. I have only paid for a race picture once in my life, and that's because it was the worst race picture I'd ever taken. 3. I really appreciate proper usage of the semi-colon. 4. My books are organized like this: separated into categories that only make sense to me, author's last name, title.  And the ones I'm embarrassed to own are mostly in the basement. 5. I get mad at my shuffle when it plays too many songs in a row by the same artist.  That's not shuffling! 6. I have no desire to hang up or display my race medals, but the bib from every race I've ever run is in a big clip on my fridge, and on the back I write the distance, time, and date. ...

It takes a village for me to do most things.   Even though I've  stopped mentioning it  here on the blog for, ohhh, at least 3 days, it doesn't mean that I've stopped thinking about it, and it definitely doesn't mean that I've stopped talking about it.   I worked through it with a friend, and was convinced that I wanted to sign up.  But then another trusted, reasonable, logical friend presented me with the undeniable fact that I get injured, often and a lot, and I mean, of COURSE I can do an Ironman.  Just maybe I shouldn't do one this (next) year.  And the logic got me - the logic always gets me, it's just so....LOGICAL.  So I told myself no.  Not this year.  Have a healthy fall season, rock some more 70.3s, and then maybe.  And I realized that IMAZ sign-up would happen after this "healthy fall season," so I started thinking about IMAZ 2012.  Or even IMWI 2012. But then I looked at courses, and I read race reports on top of r...