run this amazing day

And it has been one hell of a year. I kicked off the year by running a 5K with my husband of almost 12 hours.  We ran it easy with a friend and a little kid singing the Super Mario Bros theme song. I didn't race again until I was pretty deep in half marathon training, when I was lucky enough to have Amy pace me to a 5K PR  that still stands: 24:15.  I was pretty cranky about this race, but not as cranky as I'd be a month later when my back spasmed and left me in bed for almost two weeks.  I showed up at the starting line at the National Half, and ended up having a day that looked nothing like what I hoped it would be.  I'm still proud of what I did that day . After that, I focused on healing for a while until I accidentally ran the 5K in Boston with my girls, then another 5K with another recovering-from-injury friend .  It's easy to see why I hope to not run this distance in 2012.  My next big race of the year came mid-May, when I crossed the finish line of my fir

I enjoyed this post so much last year when I stole it from Liz that I've decided to do it again. January It happened a few minutes before January, but it was the big event of the month. February New bicycle comes home. March I break my back into a billion pieces . April I break in my new spring crotch bike seat with 30 days of cycling . May I graduate . Cross a finish line . And then relax in Jamaica . June   Puppies go swimming. July I climb a LOT of hills. August My form actually starts to improve . September I have the best - but not fastest - race of my life . October My girls come to visit . November The poet runs his first full while I blow up the half . December We decide to make our family even larger . So long, 2011, you were pretty fabulous...

Happy Holidays, my blog friends!  I took a few days off from the land of the internet to spend 24 hours in the car time with family and it was quite nice to have a little break.   I successfully made it to the end of the food log challenge - i.e. I logged every single thing I ate and sent it off to my coach.  But now it's time for the real fun - analysis.  Lots of items of note: I'm not concerned about overall calorie intake against burn for the day.  My weight fluctuated in a 3lb range throughout the time I logged my food, which I believe is perfectly normal.  There were some days when I ate a little too much against what I burned, and there were some days where I didn't do a great job replacing the burn, but over 10 days, it all evened out.  I thought about including my exercise for the day in the log, but since I'm not trying to manage calorie burn or lose weight, I decided not to.  This is more about figuring out what's missing and how I can eat cleaner, wh

We did a virtual Christmas card this year.  I can claim that I care about the environment and wanted to save money, but in reality I'm just way too freakin' lazy to deal with envelopes and addresses cards and all that garbage.  And yes, it is already out of date , but we've made a habit of scheduling  huge life events at the end of the year so this will probably always be the case. Happy Holidays, my blog friends!  May whatever holiday you celebrate be full of all things delicious, relaxing, and stress-free, and may you be spending less time in the car schlepping all over the eastern part of the country than we will be.

1. It been at least 3 weeks since I've been outside on the bike, and I've actually only ridden my sick fast once.  I've spent the last three weeks doing everything on the trainer, but this morning's temps looked nice enough to manage outside, so I convinced Emily to join me for yet another sunrise ride.  The nice thing about being on the trainer for the past few weeks is that it's given my lower half a chance to acclimate to the crotch scenery.  The bad thing is that I have no idea how to steer.  I spent at least the first two loops staggering back and forth across the road.  Things got a little better the longer I rode, and by the last loop I had things under control enough to take a few pictures (the mark of excellent bike control), but there's no way I'd want to ride on an actual road like this for a while.   I'm hoping that the weather stays mild in January (it could happen) so I can start to get some handling skills.  112 miles is a long time to be

I finally figured out why I kept slashing myself with my paddles. Apparently Strokemaker makes two different sizes of "the green ones" and I ordered the giant-male-Olympian-complete-with-rippling-abs size, instead of the 5'6"-still-kind-of-new-at-swimming size.  Who knew size mattered so much?  

After we discovered Molly's sister was up for adoption, the poet and I had a lot of Very Serious Conversations about whether or not to bring her home.  2 puppies seems manageable, but 3 is on the verge of completely ridiculous.  The internet people all voted to bring her home, of course, but none of you guys are going to come and pick up her poop or fix the chair she chews up, so that went in with a grain of salt.  We decided that the best thing to do was go and meet her, and let our dogs meet her, and see if it was a good fit. We all drove down one afternoon this weekend.  When we got there, we left the puppies in the car and went in to meet her ourselves first.  As soon as Sofie came out from the back, I think it was a pretty done deal.   She was so sweet.  Her personality seems a bit more tempered than Molly, although who knows what will happen when they have time together to plot against us.  Her face looks just like Molly, but she's a little more stout where Molly is l

I signed up for this 10K a few weeks ago in my post-half-marathon frenzy.  It was only $8 and it was on Hains Point, a place simply guaranteed to be flat .  But then I took 2 weeks almost completely off and then I rededicated myself towards making my house really really fat and then I basically completely forgot about it until Emily reminded me early last week.  I kind of thought that my coach would pull it or have me run it easy, but according to her June is still pretty far away and I could have one last brain damaging race before settling in for the winter.  So, done.   I had an all-in-caps mandatory warm-up and cool-down to do, but other than that, no plan or strategy going in.  I sorta kinda thought that maybe I could PR, but I haven't done any speed work in weeks, so probably not, but my PR is from when I was coming back from injury, so maybe, but I was kind of tired, so maybe not.  Complete dedication to racing, that's me! I committed to wear shorts and a long sleev

So, it looks from the blog world like this was the week to post my 2012 race schedule and I almost missed it.   Obviously, I decided last July what my big A race would be for the year: Ironman Coeur D'Alene.  I was a little terrified right away about what I had decided to do, but the more planning I do, the less worried I feel. The only real goal I'm setting for myself is to have a really excellent day.  I'm sure that I will have rough ideas about what I think I can do as I get closer to the race, but those are secondary.  Right now I feeling calm and centered about this distance.  I'm finally starting to wrap my hard head around what this training cycle is all about, and I'm excited to execute, execute, execute - even if executing means taking it easy and not setting fire to the track.  I've only been with my coach for a couple of weeks, but I've been stalking her racing for a long time and I feel confident that she can get me there in one piece (hopefu