run this amazing day

random friday facts

2012-01-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

1. Molly went on a massive dinosaur-killing bender while we slept last night.

It's all right, Molly, get a cheeseburger and some Advil in you and you'll be feeling better pretty soon.

2. Every morning when I finish whatever workout I'm doing, I make a smoothie and a cup of hot tea (winter only) and refill my water bottle. No wonder I pee 4329 times a day.

3. There are four dogs in this picture. Can you find them?

4. It's really hard to find a photo of the poet and I in my photo library where one of us is not in exercise clothes or being ridiculous.

5. This is the first race picture ever taken of me (second race ever). Check out my sweet form.

6. However, I was clearly a cyclist from a very young age, even if I didn't learn where the brakes were until 25 years later.

7. 95% of the pictures on my phone are of puppies. I'm sure this is a huge surprise.

8. Most of the rest are of food. I'm so ashamed.

9. This is a drink I had with Heather right after she moved back to DC. One made me feel pretty drunk. I had two.

10. This is the last race I ran before I started my blog. I took lots of pictures, clearly anticipating that I would be starting a blog and someday get around to doing throwback race reports. It could happen.

11. I have no idea. But I'm sure I won.

12. This still cracks me up.

13. None of the pictures in my phone are of my ass. Better check the poet's when he gets home.

14. I freaked out, just a little.

Happy Friday, friends! Let me know if you RFF'd today!

three things thursday

2012-01-26T10:57:00.001-05:00

1. The weather man is fired. At 6am this morning, my little phone weather bot told me it was "feels like 31º" outside, so I dressed appropriately. I opened the front door and immediately took off my ear warmers and gloves and stuffed them in the mailbox. A mile from home, I turned around and came back and did a Superman-phone-booth-quick-change into shorts and a tee-shirt. 31º, my ass. The rest of my run was just about as disjointed - I didn't want to head out on the trail for the time I had left, so I did the out part of my usual 4-mile out-and-back, and then took a long "back," and then some idiot on a bicycle started chasing me so I went straight at a stoplight where I would usually turn and ended up doing circles around my house just to finish out the time. Today gets a gold star. Good thing I'd already scheduled a dentist appointment for after work today.

2. We've been doing a "clean out the pantry" meal week here in an attempt to spend as little money as possible for the rest of the month (that new crank isn't going to buy itself). Whenever we do this, our meals get a little strange, but last night wins. Cauliflower mash (that I put too much milk in so it was nice and watery and weird), brussels sprouts and grilled cheese with turkey bacon. Yes, I am occasionally eating meat again and I REFUSE TO BE ASHAMED. And yes, our dinner spread did make for a very noisy evening in the intestinal region. Tonight I think that delicata squash that I bought over the weekend is going on a pizza and then we've got a few days of cleaning out the whole-wheat pasta stash. We've had to hit the grocery store for ~~ice cream~~ a couple of produce items here and there but otherwise have spent very little on food all week.

3. Speaking of my enormous crank, the universe did me a solid (I hate it when people say that) and I've got one on order that I hope gets here by this weekend so I can check that off my incredibly-needy-bike list. I've also decided that I'm going to spend the money (I'm cringing here) to actually do one of those computer-electrode-video-bike-fits that I've read about, now that I've had a few months to start getting used to my sick fast. I've found a few shops in and around DC that do this but I'd love recommendations from local folks about any good experiences you've had with fit anywhere. I've been really reluctant to do this because I'm a frugal miser that likes to sit at home counting my dollar bills over and over, but based on my injury-ridden past and the few niggles that I have going on right now that I just can't shake, I think it's absolutely worth it to get a real fit done. Sigh.

Happy Thursday, everyone!

mostly puppy wordless wednesday

2012-01-25T09:36:00.001-05:00

Dear Mamas,

I'm sorry that I pooped on the floor and tried to rip Graham's throat out and won't stop jumping up with muddy paws when you are wearing your only clean pair of dress pants and keep trying to steal Molly's food while she's eating. I promise to try really hard to stop rolling in the mud three minutes before you have to leave for work and jumping off the back side of the couch and escaping out the front door.

Dear Mamas,

Why is she still here? She smells and takes my raccoon and is stealing all the really good cuddling. I never wanted a sister!

Dear Mamas,

CAN WE GO OUTSIDE?

the latest in mindless blogger memes

2012-01-24T13:24:00.000-05:00

I don't generally like mindless blogger memes, but I suppose if I force everyone to participate in the one I created, I have to play along every once in a while, and there's nothing else to talk about in January. I got tagged by a dozen people in the latest one, which looks pretty complicated and has a lot of rules.

First, 11 ~~random things~~ rants ~~about~~ from me.

1. I can't believe I have to come up with random crap twice this week.
2. I really hate the comment-on-every-blog-post game that a lot of bloggers play. Commenting on my post every day to say "great job today!" just so I'll come and visit your blog and leave you the same meaningless comment every day is worse than the way I had to comb my hair in 6th grade so the cool kids would talk to me. Comment when you have something worthwhile to say. Comment if you just started reading so I can come and check out your blog and see if you are someone I'd like to read. Comment if you want to tell me something interesting about yourself, even if it has nothing to do with what I wrote about. Otherwise, go do your meaningless social climbing elsewhere.
3. I'm really uncomfortable around children ages 2-13, and I don't like it when social situations force me to try and interact with kids of these ages.
4. I am holding a grudge right now against Garmin because I completely lost my mind trying to install the quick release on my bike and head unit. I ended up shipping the kit back and now will defiantly only wear my Garmin on my wrist for the rest of eternity.
5. I've lived in plenty of states, but Virginia is the first state where I've come across a consistent army of drivers who will make a left turn from the right lane across 5 lanes of traffic without using a turn signal.
6. I hate it when people always tweet crap like, "someone make me go run" or "ugh I hate my bike and don't want to go ride." No one is FORCING you to do any of this, and your whining is making me want to punch you. I get feeling like that every once in a while but some people do it every damn day.
7. When I get really pissed off I start crying, and that enrages me, which makes me cry more. WTF body.
8. If you attempt to get me to do something by being passive aggressive, I will respond with pure aggression. That is not how to make a friendship last.
9. In a previous job, I managed with the DYFJ mantra. Do Your Fucking Job. That's it. That's all you need to be successful while working for me, and most people can't do it. I don't understand.
10. Losing a significant amount of weight and completing some races does not make you an expert. You didn't discover how to lose weight or run, I'm sorry to tell you. It does, however, make your life better, so sit back and enjoy that and just quit it already with the unsolicited advice.
11. Having a lot of money also does not make you an expert. Congratulations, your bike costs twice what mine does, you still don't know dick about how to ride it.

Since I got tagged in so many of these posts and most of the questions sucked, I asked twitter to come up with some questions instead. They are:
1. How is your crotch this morning? Just fine, thanks for asking. Sit bones are a little sore from the saddle I am still adjusting to.
2. What's your biggest secret that you couldn't imagine revealing in your blog? Ohh, you guys are so tricky! That would probably be that I've only played the monkey game with two men in my life. Wait, that's not a secret at all....gotcha!
3. If you had to set up a cage fight, who would you put in it and why? All the DC bloggers that annoy the piss out of me, in hopes that they would all knock each other out.
4. Macallan or Glenlivet? Macallan, I'm not a heathen.
5. How tall are you in bare feet? What are your measurements? 5'6". I weigh between 137-144 (usually around the 142 mark) and have an extremely large rear derailleur. I bulge in a B cup and droop in a C.
6. If you could create your own Gu flavor, what would it be? A year ago I would have said Mint Chocolate or Raspberry Chocolate, so I don't know. Maybe Root Beer.
7. When did you first realize that your ass was worth of a blog full of ass shots? I still feel as if my ass is not worthy, but the people want what they want.
8. Is your snark hereditary? Or did you spend years honing the amazing talent? I believe my snark initially developed as a defensive mechanism and I've been refining it ever since.
9. What is your most indiscreet pit stop on a ride or run? Sadly, I've bared my ass to empty my bladder all over the DC metro area, so I don't have a "most." Emily, to her chagrin, can confirm this.
10. Pirates or ninjas? Obviously ninjas.
11. What made you decide to start your blog? I was cooped up in bed after shoulder surgery. I had no idea how much it would change my life. And as much as I take cranky to a ridiculous level, I'm still glad I've done it and met the people I'm met through it.

If you are unfortunate enough to be reading this and haven't done it yet, consider yourself tagged, but if mindless blogger memes also make you crazy, just tell me something about yourself that I should know. You can also go read the last time I participated in one of these memes if you are short on productivity and long on unstructured free time. I'll wrap this up with a picture of my ass you've all seen a dozen times.

Happy Cranky Tuesday, all!

wordless monday

2012-01-23T10:28:00.002-05:00

I know, I'm a mess, but right now this is happening in our house and my office has been torn apart and all I can hear is ripping and tearing and cursing in Spanish and 70s music being blasted from every corner.

I'll be back tomorrow with an actual post, hopefully I won't have any holes in the walls and Graham won't have permanently picked up any very interesting new vocab words.

random friday facts

2012-01-20T13:01:00.001-05:00

1. The thermostat in my house is kept at 58º during the day and 60-62º at night. The heat doesn't work all that well and after the first winter here of $300-$400 gas bills, I'd just rather be cold.

2. We live about 300 yards from a Target. After 3 years, I'm not sure I could ever live further away from one.

3. I have at least three sets of plane tickets to buy and I'm not looking forward to spending the money.

4. My SI joint still pops out of alignment all the time.

5. I still haven't figured out how to consistently move forward while doing breaststroke.

6. Sweet potatoes are my new lunch go-to.

7. I really want to learn how to give my bike a tune-up and take it apart. I used to fix computers, how different can it really be?

8. I use my ATM PIN on my gym locker.

9. I'm finally down to only one shelf of beer in the fridge.

10. I think I need to start swimming with my goggles under my cap because one of the straps flips over all the time when I flip-turn and it drives me absolutely crazy.

11. I've woken up three mornings in a row pinned to the bed by snoring puppies.

12. I didn't really like beer until about 2 years ago.

13. I always wake up in the middle of the night and have to pee, and I always spend time trying to convince myself that I don't instead of just getting up and going.

14. I've never met a nut I don't like.

15. I can't deal with soup. Stew and chili is okay, but soup, ugh.

16. I need white noise while I sleep.

17. The fact that a lot of my RFF's are about sleep tells me I've been sleeping a lot.

18. I haven't been to a physical therapist in almost a month. This might be a record.

19. I'm officially addicted to Powerade Zero.

20. I think I'm going to pay someone to do my taxes this year.

21. I'm hoping to get at least some things on my bike straightened out this weekend.

Happy Friday, everyone! Let me know if you RFF'd and I'll try to not forget to link you!

on coaching and training and other gibberish

2012-01-19T09:51:00.000-05:00

You'll remember, dear friends, because I just won't let you forget, that back in July I signed up for an ironman. One of the first decisions I made was deciding that I wanted to work with a coach. I went through the highly scientific process of harassing the crap out of everyone I know, including the internet, for recommendations, and then spent a bunch of time asking the same questions to people over and over again on the phone before I settled on someone who I thought was the best match. He set fire to my entire life, my race schedule included, told me to trust in the process, and we hit the ground, erm, well... running.

August is a pretty tough month to begin HR training, and I get that. I started out with my coach by doing a max HR test, and he created zones and numbers and training from there. I trained using those numbers for a few weeks and something just wasn't right. So he adjusted my numbers, and adjusted them again, and again and again. And instead of seeing progress, I was seeing that I was getting slower and less efficient across the HR board. When I asked questions about what was happening, I was presented with a complicated series of baffling graphs that were supposed to "prove" that I was getting faster even though my watch plus the earth were saying otherwise and in the end, I was essentially told to just do my workouts and not try and understand ("Hush, silly girl, let the big people talk.").

Fast forward to Waterman's, where I didn't have a great day for a lot of reasons, almost none of them related to my level of fitness at the time. In an attempt to salvage value from the day, I pulled together some questions I had about events that occurred on race day (other than crashing my bike) and sent them off to my coach. This led to a series of interactions that solidified the decision I had been considering making for the last several weeks: to search for a new coach, one with whom I was a better match. I was hesitant to do so only because I've seen others bounce around among coaches, never sticking with one long enough to actually see any progress, and I'm not a quitter, I don't give up on things. But it suddenly became very clear what the right answer was.

In my original search, I only looked for local folks because I believed that it was important to be working with someone nearby, just in case I needed to bang on their front door at 4am with a burning question about EFS or lock laces. In the three months I spent with my first coach, I learned that location was really not all that important, especially in a city like DC where there is a glut of triathlon resources, and certainly not as important as finding someone that I could have a good relationship with and not be too terrified of to ask questions. So I carefully crafted an email and sent it off to one of my super duper triathlon girl superstar crushes who I had been stalking through twitter and the blog world for quite some time. I squealed with delight when I got a response (I still do this sometimes, sorry, Sonja) and after lots of discussion with the mafia and the poet and the rest of my support system, I was in.

We decided that I'd take November off from being coached entirely to see just how much of a mess I could make in four weeks and I'd start at the beginning of December. I gleefully went back to my old ways of running lots of miles all the time as hard as I could without much recovery and ran myself through a half marathon PR and right into a fatigue hole. I essentially collapsed on her doorstep on December 1 puking and raving. Try and make this pile of slobbering Katie into an ironman, aaaand good luck with that. And I'm now about halfway through month two and I can say, without a doubt, that this was absolutely the right decision for me.

I felt back in August, and I still feel, that one of the best parts of being coached is that it removes so much stress from my training life. I'm a hamster on a wheel. I wake up, check Training Peaks, do what I'm supposed to do and that's pretty much that. Someone else is making the giant spreadsheets and figuring out when to push and pull based on my races and my recovery and the schedule of my life, and I'm so relieved that it's not me. I'm a young athlete - I can swim without drowning, ride ~~mostly~~ without crashing, and run without falling down - and I'm training for my first IM, so all I have to do is what I'm told and I'll probably get there all right. That part isn't really rocket science - although getting anal-retentitve type-A athletes to do it (and nothing more!) probably is. I'm not sure that I've ever had someone in any facet of my life tell me, "you're not working hard enough." And while I love being a TP-robot, I also like understanding why I'm doing the things I'm doing. My coach is awesome for about a billion reasons and I will sit you down and make you listen to all of them, but I think that one of the best things about our relationship is that I feel like I'm being heard - which is all people really ever want. I send her somewhere between two and forty-seven emails a day asking all kinds of bizarre questions, and she always finds or has the answers without making me feeling like I'm a babbling idiot. I've followed her for a long time as an athlete, but what I'm learning is that she invests just as much of herself into coaching, at no apparent loss to either.

One of the other parts of working with her that is so fabulous is that she takes a very holistic approach to training (as in, you can't compartmentalize; not as in, go live in the woods and drink dirt), and that is meshing really well with how my outlook has been changing over the past several months. I can't remember the last time I felt this at peace with my training. I used to be obsessed by numbers, I used to post weekly recaps of my training that showed everything I did all week, and in the late spring, for a number of reasons, I stopped doing it. I think that by posting my weekly dallies, I was focusing on what I was doing compared to everyone else instead of focusing on what my own progress looked like. That's a really hard mental game to play. I was also constantly comparing my training load to the load of those around me and wow, does that get tired and old REAL fast. I don't need to prove that I'm the biggest bitch in this playground, that I can go harder or longer or faster than anyone else. Because I'll never win that one, and even if I did, who cares who wins on a training day?

There is a place in training for checking in with numbers, to make sure that progress is moving in the right direction. That's a MAF test on the track, or a TT in the pool, and once it's not 30º out it will probably be a TT outside on the bike. In seven weeks I've been surprised by the progress that I've seen at these checkpoints, but I'm not going to lay it all out so you guys can tell me how awesome I am, because that doesn't matter either. I'm not running at a 4 minute/mile pace or swimming hundreds on :45 seconds in the pool, I'm not cycling at 25mph while playing the banjo and not breaking a sweat, I'm not changing the world, I'm just training for an ironman.

So I'm going to sit back and just keep on keeping on. I've been trying to quiet my mind and my training and draw it all inwards to hang onto this peace that I've found. I'm working so hard on letting go of all the noise that surrounds me, and there is a lot of it here in DC, as there probably is everywhere. Lots of noise telling me that I'm not training hard enough or fast enough or that I need to be spending piles of money on fancy equipment, and boy oh boy is THAT one of my soapbox topics right now, wealthy assholes throwing their wallets around instead of looking in the mirror and facing the work that needs to be done. So letting go is a process in itself, but I'm trying. Trusting in the fact that I am on a good path that is straight and true and will lead me to have the best possible day on June 24th. But I'm even learning that while race day is special and magical, it's still just one day. Sure, I'm darn proud of the PRs I've set and I'll be excited to set more, but what matters more is when I have the days like I did on New Year's Eve - where I've done the work that will let me go out and just explode with joy because I'm moving and sweating and breathing and I'm surrounded by friends and love. I'm going to cross a lot of finish lines in my life and if I can cross every single one as happy as I was that night, as happy as I was at Philadelphia last fall, then that is really all I need. That's why I'm here. I got a good strong reminder of what really matters, and I just dare you to try and convince me that it's numbers on a clock.

wordless wednesday

2012-01-18T08:16:00.003-05:00

Why, yes, I am enjoying recovery week.

three things thursday on tuesday

2012-01-17T10:33:00.000-05:00

1. I can't remember the last time that I was physically so in need of a rest day and a recovery week. I can remember feeling mentally burnt out quite a few times in the past and taking rest/recovery for those reasons, but I can't remember ever feeling this physically drained. It's a different kind of tired, too - post-race soreness is more sharp from a hard effort, post-long workout soreness is more of a hungry kind of wiped out. Last week I built up to a pretty big weekend, and when I finished my Sunday workouts, it was all I could do to get food down before climbing in bed. This is a deep-in-my-muscles kind of exhaustion which makes me not even a little bit antsy (so far) to go swim, bike, and run. Instead, I want to be nice to my body with warm clothes and water and sleep and cooking real meals again. I'm pretty sure this is the desired result of a proper block of training. Let's not examine why I haven't experienced this before any more closely.

2. All the puppies got haircuts this weekend, but Molly is the only one that looks like she did it herself. Mohawks are in.

3. I'm not going to say that my shins have stopped hurting because if I do, they will start hurting again - that is, if they have even stopped. So what I am not saying is, my shins have stopped hurting. But I'm currently in a 2-shoe rotation where every other run gets every other shoe (Newton Lady Isaac and Brooks Ravenna) and my body seems to be pretty happy about it. I'm spending a lot of time these days doing things to try and make my body happy, including experimenting with my diet as I'm learning that food is not just calories in and out but can actually affect things like inflammation, recovery, and sleep. Ridiculous, I know, but my investigation so far indicates that it's true. I'll keep you guys updated to what I find out.

Happy Tuesday! If you had a long weekend, how was it?

random friday facts

2012-01-13T12:43:00.000-05:00

1. We have two roommates and live on the main floor of our house, but I still almost always pee with the door wide open.

2. I have never been inside a lululemon.

3. One of my college roommates had a killer Chicago accent. I managed to pick up pieces of it, and it still pops out sometimes.

4. I have finally figured out how to get the air out of my stomach in the pool before it kills me (bend over, push on stomach, burp). Now if only I could stop sucking it in.

5. Through a lucky twist of fate, I have never had severe saddle problems. The saddle that comes on the bike has always worked out just fine.

6. I probably should have been a finance major.

7. I know you're supposed to put spinach in the smoothie but I just can't. It smells and gets stuck in my teeth.

8. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't let the poet do the "manly" chores while I do the "womanly" chores. I want to be like, "No, you go clean the bathroom, I'll pick up the dog poop!" But then I remember that I don't like picking up poop.

9. I wish I could grow a long curly mustache.

10. Yes, we do have a Dyson.

11. I still struggle with body image. Logically, I appreciate what my body can do and know not to fuss about the numbers. But then I look in the mirror at my thighs - especially when I'm in a bathing suit and can see the wobbly cellulite - and feel like a fat cow.

12. I'm trying to decide if the amount of greens I'm eating right now is making me feel better, or if I just feel better because I'm being haughty about the amount of greens I'm eating. Either is fine.

13. I have a lucky number.

14. I work alone in my house most days, but I never listen to music.

15. I have never thrown an egg.

16. Except for Harry Potter, I haven't seen a movie in the theaters in years, and the poet and I have a movie date on Monday. Suggestions?

17. I eat gluten-free pancakes because the mix is delicious and awesomely fluffy.

18. I have no desire to own expensive shoes that are not running or cycling shoes. But now that my running-shoe-lust has been (temporarily) fulfilled, I'm dying to bring home some sexy snakeskin cycling shoes.

Not randomly, but since a few have asked: Sofie is settling in pretty well. She's learning the law of the land a lot more quickly than the first two did as puppies, and has already graduated to couch-snuggling. All is well.

Happy Friday, all! What's on tap for this weekend?

three things thursday

2012-01-12T09:42:00.005-05:00

1. Every time I post on the blog that my shins hurt, they stop hurting. So: MY SHINS HURT, Y'ALL. I'm not sure if it's still because of my bike shoes (I don't think so), because I ran three miles in the Newtons two days ago (probably not) or because I ran for an hour in my Ravennas this morning (also unlikely). Or maybe it's just that my lower legs are still getting used to the way my gait has changed over the past nine months. Let's hope it's that, although I prefer to freak out about ghost injuries rather than consult science and/or logic. Meanwhile, there is no better feeling in my life right now than when I snap those compression socks on post-shower. MY SHINS HURT.

2. For some reason, I imagined in my own head that last week was the last "build" week in my training and this week would be rest. I have no idea where I came up with it, I have a lot of theories and it's hard to keep track of them all and where they come from. But I was firmly convinced last Friday that I would get through my not-all-that tough weekend and then whhhheeee into easy week! I discovered in a pow-wow with my coach on Monday afternoon that THIS week is actually the final "build" week in my training block. WAA WAA WAAAAA. Getting my schedule Monday evening was a pretty rude awakening. About half of my workouts say "ouch" in them somewhere and I'm going to be spending an unfortunate amount of time on the trainer this weekend. Combine that with an extremely busy and stressful work week and I'm just hanging on. I almost fell asleep at the dinner table on Tuesday night and I'm seriously considering drinking something caffeinated. I could put in a picture of me asleep at the table but instead I'll leave you this gem from last weekend, mid-bike-ride car-transfer-with-sandwiches-to-HP.

Safety first, bitches. Yes, I was driving with my bike shoes and helmet on; no, I don't know why my bicep looks like it's about to explode. This would be more funny if I hadn't gotten up Tuesday morning for a trainer ride and realized ten minutes in that I had automatically put my helmet on. SAFETY FIRST.

3. ANYWAY (what was I talking about?).... This morning I did my commute before my workout, which meant I got to do the monument loop while the sun was coming up. I've lived in/outside/around DC for over ten years and I will still never get tired of this run. Here are some pictures that look exactly like every single picture runners take while running around the city, you can skip them and proceed directly to judging me for wearing my bike shoes (and my seat belt!) in the car if you'd like.

Oh, and I made brussels sprouts for dinner last night which made everyone on twitter lose their damn minds, I had no idea these weird things were so popular. I don't know if they are a SUPER FOOD but they were delicious, but so is beer and nobody freaks out when I talk about that.

No one has pooped on the floor in our house in four days. I'm out, bitches.

wordless wednesday

2012-01-11T09:34:00.000-05:00

I know it's been puppy-overload here this week, but I've got just two more.

Molly: "But I don't WANT a sister!!!"

Ultimate concentration.

three puppy tuesday

2012-01-10T10:46:00.000-05:00

So, we really did it. We brought her home.

She came home on Sunday. Graham and Molly met her briefly a few weeks ago, but we decided that it would be best to have a longer "getting to know you" period before we brought her into the house, so we spent a great deal of the afternoon in the backyard.

Her personality is different than our other two - she's very sweet, but has tons of energy and just kind of explodes with joy. She's only lived here two days and she will stand at the bottom of the patio steps and coo at me if I don't come into the backyard with them. You can't not love her.

Graham is thrilled to pieces to have someone else to play with, especially since Molly's been lethargic the past few weeks as she has gone through treatment. He'll bring Sofie a toy, she'll steal it from him and then growl and bark at him if he tries to take it back. Lots of tails wagging. Molly is taking a little more time to warm up to her, but I think that's in part to how she is feeling on her medicine. I'm hoping that she will become more playful as we wean her off of it.

Sofie's got a little bit of the "raised by wolves" that Molly had in her when she came home - mostly because she's spent most of her life around dogs, not people. So we're already working on teaching her how to live in a house - like not climbing up on the dining room chair (and then table) to get the extra-delicious-smelling sandwich that someone just left there. We learned very quickly that "housebroken" just meant that she is used to going to the bathroom outside, probably because she mainly lived outside. And since she isn't used to living in a house, she doesn't really know the difference between things like "carpet" and "grass." But I think the learning curve for her will be steep - just like our other two, she obviously wants to listen and please us. Sometimes the crazy comes out and overtakes that, but it's an adjustment for her too, and she's trying.

For some reason, I'm much calmer about it this time around. Maybe it's because she's not a puppy so we don't have to let her out every 2 hours on the button or her bladder will explode. Maybe it's because we've been through the bringing-a-dog-home thing twice, and I know that it will be stressful for about 2-3 weeks and then it will be fine. Or maybe it's just because I know how much it's worth it.

actually, yes, I do have an enormous crank

2012-01-09T14:27:00.002-05:00

In case you live in DC and also in a cave, the weather was gorgeous here this weekend. After a Saturday morning of GF pancakes (SO FLUFFY!) and dithering, I ended up doing a big pile of hills in Maryland with some friends. I've spent lots of time on the trainer on my QR, and I've done a few short workouts at Hains Point (flat and windy and no cars to kill you), but I've never done any more climbing than the teeny tiny bumps on the MV trail near the airport. So I decided Saturday morning, I'd ride the QR. I have to get outside at some point...

The first part of the ride was pretty flat, but once we hit even the smallest hill, my ass got dropped. I spent most of the first few climbs cursing my serious lack of bike fitness, but as the ride went on and I got warmed up, I started to realize that it wasn't all fitness, but that I was running out of gears a lot sooner than I was used to on my roadie (so maybe 98% I have no fitness, 2% WTF bike). When we stopped for calories and self-portaits that look like every other picture posted on this blog, I checked out the road bikes my buddies were riding and realized that they had a lot more easy gears than I did.

I figured out pretty quickly that they would notice if I tried to steal their big plates mid-ride and voted for the "least hilly" option to finish out the day. When I got home and whined to my coach about it, she made me go count all the teeth on my crazy bike and report back.

As it turns out, my road bike has "compact" gearing (not as many teeth) and a medium-length crank, and my QR has "really huge and bad for climbing" gearing (lots of teeth) and an extra-large crank. If you know anything about cycling, which I apparently do not, my roadie has 11-28 on the back, a 50/39 on the front and a 170. My QR has 11-23 on the back, a 53/47 (?) on the front and a 172.5. And it all needs to go, because I'm a short & squat hill-climbing madwoman that needs to get through an ironman (did you forget?). I have no idea how to go about changing all of the crap around but I'm going to be in the bike shop ~~flirting~~ this weekend trying to figure it all out.

All that aside, I had a really brilliant day riding my TT other than mashing the crap out of my knees. It was sunny and breezy and I was riding outside with friends, which always makes the top ten list. I managed to drink from my water bottle without swerving ~~too far~~ into oncoming traffic, and I spent a significant amount of time in aero with very little side effects, other than my super-duper extra-crabby shoulder. And the bike is so much sex. I can tell how much lighter it is than my roadie and when I drop into aero, everything just gets fast and easy and smooth. Which makes me feel better about getting dropped by this wench on her TT all summer long.

How was your weekend? Did you get out and enjoy the sunshine? How many times have you posted on twitter that it's snowing right now?

random friday facts

2012-01-06T12:34:00.002-05:00

1. I hate repeating myself.

2. I keep thinking about moving from blogger to WP, but then I start reading a ton of articles about how to do it and then I read some more articles and then I give up and go drink a beer.

3. I do not like sharing a lane with people doing breaststroke.

4. It's been a really long time since I've been to a yoga class, and I miss it, but I also think it was contributing to my bones-not-staying-where-I-put-them problem.

5. I despise blatant social climbing.

6. No matter who farts in my house, we blame Graham.

7. I still have not yet learned that yelling at the wind doesn't help. Oh, and eats HR.

8. One of the main things that I don't like about our house is that we sleep on the main floor.

9. I keep trying to like sushi but, fish, ugh.

10. I put an entire bag of spinach in my dinner last night.

11. My little toe goes completely white when I run in the winter.

12. I really hate how much money we owe in student loans. We overpay every month like crazy, and it's still going to take probably.....10? years to pay them off. I've actually thought about doing a PF-blog-style monthly recap on our expenses, but that's a little terrifying, and it's not running or pictures of my ass so it doesn't really belong.

13. Molly is scared of the foam roller, therefore I chase her around with it every time I roll.

14. I never buy new purses. I've been carrying the same big white purse from Target for at least 2 years.

15. I get out of the pool to pee.

16. I have been sleeping a ton in the past few weeks. Like 8-9-10 hours per night.

17. Sometimes, I am really good at keeping secrets.

18. Switching into a gentler, kinder pair of running shoes has allowed a lot of blisters and rough spots to heal. My feet are almost pretty now.

19. I vow to never post again that I'm feeling good and injury-free. After posting yesterday, I pissed off my shoulder somehow, tweaked my SI joint at the gym and dropped a weight on my foot.

20. I've been having some very interesting dreams about Hugh Laurie. It might be time to watch a different show while on the trainer.

Happy Friday! Leave me something random to cheer up my bruised toe.

three things thursday

2012-01-05T11:32:00.000-05:00

1. The cranky weird sore spot I got on my shin a few weeks ago seems to have gone away. I sticked the bejesus out of it for a few days, which was almost worse than the time I had my adductors Graston'd, and did the usual routine of alternating ice with constant panic about a stress fracture. When I got back from my holiday travels, I went and saw my PT. I've been having some tightness in my hamstring for a few weeks - really minor, but twinge-y on longer runs. She diagnosed me with a tiny bit of tendonitis at the attachment, which is already almost gone with ice, advil, etc. - but also said that my sore spot on my shin was probably a byproduct of my lower leg working hard to compensate. Strange, how the body is all connected. So even though "ignore it and it will go away" would have probably worked in this case, I'd still rather spend the $15 to make sure that all my bones aren't collapsing.

Sore spot aside, I obviously still haven't learned that walking around in my Kinvaras make my shins ache from a lack of support. I lifted in them on Monday afternoon and then was on my feet for most of the rest of the day, and was completely shocked to wake up Tuesday morning with extremely sore/tight lower legs. Sigh. It will make me sad if I have to completely remove a pair of hot pink shoes from my closet, but clearly recurring shin pain that lasts 2-3 days isn't teaching me anything. A couple of days in supportive shoes and compression socks always fixes me right up, but I have enough problems with ghost injuries without adding another from sheer stupidity.

ALL of these things aside, I'm actually doing quite well in the injury department. My hip flexors are behaving, my butt is behaving, my cranky shoulder nerve thing let me swim almost 25 miles last month, and my legs in general seem to have adjusted pretty well to all the shoe changes I was playing around with all summer and fall. I'm not sure that I can remember a time in my life where I've been this active for this long without a debilitating injury, but I'm certainly going to embrace it and hope that I can keep this streak alive.

2. I still have a pretty weird love affair going on with the pool. I used to completely hate it and dread swimming, but the past few months...I don't know. I'm not a swimmer, and I still get roasted by all the super fast people I swim with, but I just really like it. It's peaceful. Especially now that I can do flip-turns without cracking my skull on the floor.

3. Run...swim...I guess the third thing Thursday must be the bike? I hate the trainer with an all-consuming passion. My speed/cadence sensor thing isn't calibrated right and I can't fix it, and I KNOW that there's just no way I spin my brains out for 90 minutes and have only gone 14 miles. Plus I still have a really hard time getting my HR up while inside, although I am sweating buckets as soon as I go over 100. I don't have any of these problems outside, so I'm trying to focus on the fact that I'm doing the work and ignore some of the numbers. Soon enough it will be spring, and I can get my sunrise ride back on, and then it'll be hot and time to climb hills and I'll be complaining about that, instead. These are the days of our lives.

Happy Thursday, everyone! What are you complaining about today?

not even close to wordless wednesday

2012-01-04T10:58:00.001-05:00

We took Molly and Graham to the vet a few weeks ago for their yearly round of pokes and prods. They each got a handful of vaccinations, plus some tests done.

A few days later, I noticed that Molly was doing this weird thing when she yawned - she couldn't open her mouth all the way, and she was twisting her head to one side. I didn't really think much of it the first time I saw it, but after a couple of days went by and she was still doing it, I started to worry. I figured she probably just had an ear infection and scheduled an appointment with our vet.

I got out of the pool a few afternoons later to some pretty terrifying text messages from the poet, who took her into her appointment, mentioning things like sedation and x-rays and biopsies, so I zipped over myself to talk to the vet. Essentially, she seemed fairly convinced from Molly's symptoms that she has a disease called masticatory myositis, which is an auto-immune disease not uncommon in large breed dogs. It means that her immune system is attacking the muscles of her jaw, which is why she was unable to open her mouth. There was a whole menu of ways to diagnose the condition, most of which are not even close to definitive. We decided on one of the complicated blood tests that would both hopefully point to a yes or no and rule out some other scary things. Her blood work came back the next day, and it wasn't positive for MMM, but it was "almost positive" (elevated proteins and the like). We decided that instead of continuing to test, we would begin treatment with steroids because that wouldn't harm her, and just watch and see what happened. If she got better on the medicine, that we confirmed the disease by process of elimination, and if she got worse, then we had a BFN, which could actually be a positive thing because than it might just be an infection.

Both the good and bad news was that she responded immediately. After only two doses, she was able to open her mouth much further. It's been almost a week now, and she seems to be steadily improving. We decided to try her on a diminishing round of steroids, in the hopes that she won't need to be on them her entire life. The problem with this disease and the treatment is two-fold: first, the steroids depress her immune system, so she's vulnerable while on them, and some dogs catch some pretty scary diseases during treatment, and secondly, she won't ever be "cured," but instead, we'll spend her life watching her carefully and managing flare-ups as they occur. It also means that we'll be managing her vaccinations differently, because vaccinations poke the immune system with a sharp stick, and while they didn't cause this, the shots she got a few weeks ago are what made it flare-up for the first time.

She seems to be generally happy and waggy, although a little more tired than usual. We're a bit concerned that she'll fly into a 'roid rage and chew the house down, but so far, so good. Graham has for the most part been extra attentive and snuggly (except for last night, when he bit her on the leg because she didn't want to play).

So that's been the cause of extra-strong stress in our house over the past week. Now that we have a better understanding of what's going on, I'm much less worried because I truly believe that it is managable, but I spent a few days bawling my cranky little eyes out. I've actually come to love this little wrist-chewing butt-sniffing waggy tail quite a bit, and it would be awful if she got taken from us this young. We've also confirmed that the disease is not genetic, so we won't have to go through all of this after bringing her long-lost separated-at-birth twin sister this weekend.

December recap: this is not a 2011 recap post

2012-01-03T10:26:00.001-05:00

Let's take a look at my December - and only December - goals.

December Goals
Make sure to keep getting enough sleep and good food as training ramps back up. Mostly check.
Don't be afraid to ask for rest if you need it, but don't be a lazy bum. Check!
Get the bike fit straightened out. Oops.
Plan a mini-vacation for somewhere in the middle of IM training. You'll appreciate it when it shows up. Our mini-vacation dollars are going instead to expanding our family. That should be just as relaxing, right?
Spend more time in the pool than any other month in 2011 (14+ miles). 24+ miles in the pool this month.

I started out December feeling kind of gun-shy about getting back into a training schedule, and that shows in my goals. I was pretty concerned that my feelings of burnout were going to get worse, not better, and that's a terrifying way to feel 6 months out from ironman. I decided with my coach to push the official start of our training back a week so I could sit on the couch and eat bon-bons, and it turns out that was a really excellent call. I'm still trying to be pretty careful about not overloading on the training, but I also have a genuine fear of feeling like a giant weenie in front of my coach. I'm hoping the combination of these two will keep me honest - it's a delicate balance. My biggest goal this month was to spend a ton of time in the pool, and I did, rounding out the month with a 5x2012 yard swim on New Year's Eve with my favorite cycling buddy and a new friend. My brain stopped working around the 5K mark but my arms didn't give out until after 9K, which is pretty promising for someone who used to swim with one arm (other holding the nose).

Yeah, you try holding the phone steady after beating the shit out of your arms for 3.5 hours. It only took us 7 attempts to get this one.

I'm getting more and more adjusted to my new sick fast, although I still think a bike fit is in my near future. I spent over two seasons of House on the trainer this month, only getting outside a few times near the end of the month to learn that I have zero handling skills. But I did 40 miles on that sucker this weekend with no crotchtacular issues and very few upper back crunchies AND didn't crash in the wind. More promising news. And while I had some creaks and moans on the run this month, I can see significant improvements happening to my stupid heart on paper and have rotated into yet another new shoe that feels oh-so-good, it's almost better than beer PLUS chocolate PLUS flannel sheets.

Looking down into January, I have to say that I don't really do the resolution thing. It might be for you, and that's just dandy, but I think it's ridiculous and you're here because I'm cranky and you like it so just stop acting all offended. I make small goals every month because I want to be conscious of my life, but at least half of those are generally in jest ("OMG cook the fucking squash already." "Do not buy a major piece of furniture."). What is my bag IS, is living my life, day in and day out, and consistently trying to find small ways to make it kick some pretty serious ass. That's why I signed up for an ironman in July (did you forget?), that's why I did a diet analysis in December (still waiting for lots more feedback on that, you guys), that's why I picked April to decide to try and be a badass cyclist (pending), that's why I'm so happy that the last day of the year was exactly how I want my life to be and not the first. I don't want to binge in December and purge in January, I don't want to wait another day to try and change my life and my habits, I want to do it now and today. I'm not going to tell you that THIS YEAR I'm going to ride my bike a billion miles or stop drinking beer or exercise some meaningless amount of times per week or stop cursing or take more pictures of my ass. There will be no "how did I do in 2011?" post (spoiler, no resolutions last year either, but I wasn't as cranky about it then) and there will be no "this is all the crap I will do in 2012" post. I'm just going to keep on, keeping on. I'm a (wo)man with a plan, and it's not the jam plan (8 points to you if you have even the faintest idea what I'm talking about).

December
Yards swum (swimmed??): 42910
Miles run: 74 (ehh, I took a week off).
Days food was logged: 10
Days I felt like I had a OCD hangover from the obsessive food logging post-log: 3
Dining room tables I still have not purchased: 1
New puppies that are the reason for the above: 1
Runs where I fought with my HR so much I whipped my Garmin across the room: 1 (improvement)
Runs where I learned that chatting adds :40/mile to my easy pace: 1
Last-minute PRs set: 1

January Goals
Keep wearing the Christmas tree swimsuit until it wears out.
Don't strangle any fat people at the gym (I know this should be, "be encouraging and patient with new exercisers," but, come on, have you met me?).
Eat spinach more often. It worked for Popeye and appears to be one of the possibly-missings in my diet.
Clean out the iTunes library. No one needs this much Genesis.
Learn to cook eggplant in a way that does not involve pizza.
Keep rotating shoes despite a love bordering on obsession for the new pink ones.

Now go read yesterday's race report, I'm the crabby one that pulled the short straw and had to write it but I'm also the reason you don't have to read six blog posts recapping the same race. You're welcome. Oh, and if you're a party pooper like me who isn't making resolutions, let me know and we can go have a beer.

Fairfax Four Miler: race report

2012-01-02T11:00:00.001-05:00

Over Thanksgiving, Amy and I came up with the NYE plans for the mafia. We'd run the 4 miler - together, as friends, no racing just doing what we love, together - and our wives would stay home and cook us dinner. It was, we decided over the third ~~bottle~~ glass of wine, the best way for everyone to spend the evening.

By the time the actual evening rolled around, we'd managed to drag both Allison and Emily into our evening, and without even a little bit of planning, showed up looking like this:

Those sparkly hats say, "Happy New Year" and we managed to run at least .05 miles of the race before they blew away. I warmed up by doing the following: having the worst run of my entire life the day before, swimming 10,060 yards earlier that afternoon with Emily, eating a bagel an hour before the race started, oh, and then forgetting to leave/leaving things in the car enough times to actually warm up the legs a bit. The weather was brilliant, far better than the 28º and sleeting that were the conditions the last time I ran this race (2009).

Not-even-close-to-brief side note that will surprise no one: it didn't occur to me until the night before that my PR for the 4 miler was a) set at this race in 2008 and b) incredibly soft, only 3 seconds faster than the "planned duration" my coach put in TP when she laid out my week (35:57). I tried to break it earlier this year on completely untrained legs and failed miserably, mostly due to my complete inability to ~~listen to Amy when she says she's going to run easy~~ adjust my expectations reasonably on a 100º+ evening. My tempo PR for this distance is in the high 30:xx range, but that was back in the spring before my back ripped my season apart and doesn't count anyway. A few quick texts had almost everyone on board for starting out easy and trying to PR by exactly and only one second, combining my desire to do exactly what I'm told with my desire to PR one more time AND have a great time with my they-are-all-faster-than-me-anyway friends.

So that went well.

We started out easy and chatting, and it was awesome. Everywhere I turned, there was a CAR logo to hang with. I've never run a race with a pack this big, and the feeling I had was pretty similar to when I ran Philly back in September - explosively happy to just be out in the night air, to be surrounded with my girls, to be running for the love of it. It just doesn't get any better than that.

And then we hit some sweet downhill at the front of the second mile, so I let my legs carry me down, and then that pace didn't feel bad at all, it actually felt kind of amazing, and when one of the girls said, "Wait a second, this isn't running easy!" and someone else said, "Ummmm, my watch has an 8 on it," I just said, "We're banking time, bitches! This is how you do it!" (George is probably going to disown me for linking to that.) And everyone laughed and we just kept going. When we turned a corner somewhere near the end of the second mile, we could see a big tall hilly out-and-back, and I groaned and those jerks tried to drop my ass, but they forget that while they may be fast, I have something they don't, and I caught them on the downhill and we kept going.

When we could see the 3 mile marker, I told Liz, who was taking real mile splits on her non-GPS watch, "I'm going to need you to do some math here." Because if I had to run a 6-minute mile to PR, I was just going to enjoy it, but for the love of God, I wasn't going to miss it by 15 seconds. We passed it, she lapped, and then told us all that we just needed to run another 8:40 mile to sneak in by one second.

It's so hard to explain why I love running with my friends, why I love the teamwork that I've discovered in running with CAR, but they are my village. We rode past the 3-mile marker and I could just feel it, I could feel everyone around me tuck in and push, and we got quiet and I just kept thinking about keeping my stupid ass under me and leaning into good form and trying to ignore the fact that this felt a fuck of a lot harder than an 8:40, but it wasn't me, I didn't do it, they all carried me up the last hill and then down into the finish and if it wasn't for the idiot with the stroller, we probably would have finished together and under 35, but none of that mattered.

Sometimes there are things more important than numbers on a watch, or what my heart is supposed to doing or what shoes I'm wearing. I didn't realize how desperately I needed a reminder of what really matters in my life, but this was it. My happy roots are in running, they are in a place where it's about protecting fiercely the things and people you love, and being joyful to feel my blood pumping and my legs moving and who cares about how far off of someone's PR it was or how easy it was for someone else or that the first mile was stupid slow or how much my coach was going to strangle me for running a mile that started with a 7 or whatever. This is why I run, this is why it's worth it.

I love you guys. Happy New Year.

a year in races

2011-12-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

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 first 70.3 with a cycling PR that still stands at just above 3 hours.

I ran yet another 5K the following weekend which remains the worst-executed race of my life but snagged me an AG place just before we took off on our honeymoon.

I completely despise running in the heat, but I tried to fool myself into racing a bit throughout the summer: tying my still-crappy 10K PR, attempting to PR the 4-miler on one of the hottest nights of the summer, and running a 5K on another hot night after a long brick with my IM-in-training best cycling pal. I finally wised up and did some cycling events, including 100 miles to nowhere, the AF Cycling Classic (one of the worst organized events I've ever done), and a double metric century ride with that same IM bud.

After signing up for IMCDA in July, I started looking for a coach and decided to start working with him in August. He immediately laid waste to my entire schedule for the next several months, begrudgingly allowing me to still participate in the Philadelphia Half Marathon in late September as an easy training run. I'm so glad that he did, because while I didn't even come close to my PR, I had absolutely the greatest day and spent the whole race with a huge smile on my face. There are some things that are better than PRs.

Next up was my fall 70.3 which was an almost-unbelieveable disaster. I crashed my bike and then fell apart mentally on the run, bringing in quite possibly my slowest 13.1 time of the year (no, I still haven't looked), but coming away with a 2+ minute PR on a rough and tangly swim.

I followed the race a week later with my first shot at the 8K distance after a day of wine-tasting, my biggest accomplishment of the day being that I was able to stroller-check some guy and I made it over the finish line before I threw up.

I managed to squeeze in one last cycling event before buckling down and focusing on getting sick 6 days out from my fall half marathon. I pushed my race back a weekend and my goal downwards by 10 minutes, which left me with a PR for the year and an experience I've never had before in all my years of racing - going out way too fast and blowing up. I didn't run a step until almost a week later, when I managed to PR the 5 miler distance on an extremely ~~rude~~ hilly course.

The beginning of December brought the mafia back down to take home the win at the Key West triathlon for the second year in the row.

I started to settle into easy, HR-based running, but my coach decided to let me race my brains out one last time and I did, coming within 20 seconds of my 10K PR on a windy and boring course to wrap up racing for the year.

Tomorrow night I'll run a 4 miler with my girls, but it'll be easy and chatty and at least one of us will be carrying a "special celebration" water bottle. And then Sunday starts my "less but more serious plus none of those stupid 5Ks" plan for 2012.

What did your year of racing look like? What are your big races for 2012?

a year in photos

2011-12-29T12:05:00.000-05:00

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...

the food log results

2011-12-28T13:15:00.001-05:00

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, which is where you guys and your helpful medical degrees slash internet knowledge come in. Some other things to note: Everything on the log was cooked in my kitchen with the exception of the burrito, the taco salad, the Wegman's pit stop, the 4 chicken wings and dinner on 12/18. I was traveling the last three days of the log, so things got a little weird there, but I still managed to mostly avoid restaurant/fast food (although the vegetables became a bit more scarce), which is consistent with my normal eating habits. I do about 90% of my exercise in the morning, so that's the reason for the double breakfast (usually a protein bar pre-workout and then a protein smoothie post-workout). I don't sit around and eat Gu for fun, so you can assume those were in longer workouts. And I think that's about it. So please, if you're bored at work (and if you're working today, you probably are), take a look through and tell me what I'm missing and what I'm overloaded on. Otherwise, just enjoy being horrified by my eating habits the week before Christmas and move right along.

Tuesday 12/13

Flintstones vitamin

1 cherry Larabar

1 PB Gu on trainer

1 bottle of EfS (96 cals) on trainer

Half apple larabar I found in my car

Smoothie (frozen strawberries, yogurt, scoop of protein powder, banana)

1 cup of Cheerios

Banana

PB&J on wheat

Colby jack cheese snack stick thing

2 pieces of toffee while making dinner (130?)

Bowl of 3-bean chili, some shredded mozzarella & a few tortilla chips

Cup of hot tea w honey

Wednesday 12/14

Luna protein bar

The other half of that car Larabar

Granola, protein powder, yogurt

Banana

Chicken, eggplant, tomato, cucumber, feta in a pita

Honeycrisp apple w PB

1 serving of taco delicious - chicken, green & red peppers, onions, green chiles, salsa, cheese in a tortilla baked in a casserole dish. Some multigrain chips on the side.

A small mug of mint chocolate chip ice cream

Cup of hot tea

Thursday 12/15

Clif bar

Smoothie: 2 bananas, handful of frozen strawberries, yogurt, scoop of protein powder

Cup of tea

Flintstones vitamin

Leftover taco delicious

Honey crisp apple + PB

Larabar

1 glass of wine!!

Bowl of pasta, red sauce, cheese

Cup of tea

Small mug of ice cream

Friday 12/16

Clif bar

Protein fruit yogurt smoothie

Cup of tea

2 pieces of toffee while potato cooked

Sweet potato w ketchup

A string cheese snack thing

Mint chocolate Gu on trainer

Holiday Party time!

A billion carrots & a few pita chips w cheese

A little scoop of mac & cheese casserole

more carrots and some celery

A bite of Thom's brownie

A teeny bit of ice cream

Saturday 12/17

Clif bar

Gu Roctane 10 mins before race

A gulp of hot chocolate before c/d

A giant cup of grapes

3 GF pancakes w blueberries and whipped cream

Burrito: black beans, corn, salsa, queso, steak

Apple w PB

1 Sierra Nevada porter

Some cinnamon pita chips

Cup of tea

Sunday 12/18

Clif bar

Swig of EFS liquid shot on trainer

Spoonful of PB

Smoothie

Some cinnamon pita chips

Wegman's pit stop: spring roll, sesame chicken, tiny bit of white rice

Sam Adams winter lager

half a spinach strawberry salad

2 pieces of bruschetta

Flintstones vitamin

Piece of toffee

Cup of tea

Monday 12/19

Clif bar

Smoothie

Cup of tea

1 cup of Cheerios

Banana

Cinnamon walnut bagel with honey almond spread

banana

Cheese string stick thing

Sausage, chunky vegetable sauce, bowtie pasta

One tiny bite of a cupcake (coconut, ugh)

Some pita chips

Cup of tea

Tuesday 12/20

Luna protein bar

Bottle of EFS on trainer (96)

Gu on trainer

Protein smoothie

Cup of tea

Salami sandwich on whole grain

Banana

A couple of cinnamon pita chips

2 very old shot blocks

Honey crisp apple and PB

2 pieces of pizza w green peppers & a breadstick

Cup of tea

Wednesday 12/21

Luna protein bar

Yogurt/protein powder/granola/banana

Giant bowl of strawberries/blueberries

Clif bar

taco salad: lettuce dressing salsa corn steak cheese

3 small pieces of toffee (140)

Licked the beaters!

Baked potato

Some crumbs of a peppermint brownie

Thursday 12/22

Luna bar

Granola/yogurt/protein powder

Banana

Some honey wheat pretzels in the car

Luna protein bar

Peppermint brownie (2)

Cheese and a few cashews

Homemade pizza w butternut squash eggplant onions walnuts gorgonzola

Glass of wine

Piece of toffee

Another like ohhhh .3 glass of wine

Friday 12/23

Luna bar

Mint chocolate gu

Muscle milk light + banana

Turkey cheese lettuce tomato on wheat

Some chips

Butterfinger

4 chicken wings

A billion baby carrots

Some jalapeño Mac & cheese

2 glasses of wine

Some pepperoni

Some of those peanut butter things

Oh god more wine

Saturday 12/24

Luna protein bar

2 pieces of Amy's pesto pizza

Banana

Split a small sugar cookie

Tons of green beans. Red roasted potatoes. Tiny bit of prime rib.

More green beans.

Bite of Thom's cheesecake

happy holidays!

2011-12-23T09:00:00.001-05:00

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.

three things thursday

2011-12-22T10:11:00.000-05:00

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 weaving around like a drunk. However, it was amazing to be back outside on the bike, despite the fact that it was just cool and damp and windy enough to produce 843 buckets of snot.

2. Yesterday I was walking down the stairs when I felt a weird twinge on the outside of my shin. I ignored it (duh), but after running a few miles it was still twanging. I massaged the crap out of it before I went to bed, but it's still bothering me today and it's making me cranky. It's not on the bone, it's in the muscley part of the lower shin on the outside of the leg. I feel it when I'm pushing off my foot to walk, as well. Hrrrmph. I'm kind of hoping that I just bumped into the coffee table and forgot about it, but I'll be icing and wearing the compression socks and scouring the internet for a while to see what kind of special tumor I could have. Any ideas, Dr. Bloggers?

3. I've been in the pool a TON this month and I actually love it. I've already surpassed the yardage I set for myself as my December goal and I've got 9 whole days left in the month. I'll be ringing in the new year with several dozen of my closest swimming friends, as some raging psychopath has set up a workout for New Year's Eve that is 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5x2012 yards. I'm hoping to be able to complete at least 3x or 4x, but if I'm feeling fine nearing the end of 4 I'm definitely going to go for the golden insanity ring of 5. From someone who used to hold her nose and swim with one arm. I'm going places, people, watch out. I don't feel like I'm necessarily getting much faster in the pool right now, but it's becoming easier to swim at certain paces for longer distances (which actually might be the definition of getting faster, but whatever). I'm pleased with the way my training is going right now and that, I think, is about all I have to say about that.

Happy Thursday, friends! Please diagnose my leg, okay thanks.

wordless wednesday

2011-12-21T09:07:00.001-05:00

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?

three puppy tuesday

2011-12-20T10:51:00.001-05:00

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 longer and leaner. We brought our two inside after a few minutes to let them all hang out, and they seemed fine, although they were far more interested in the 34832 new smells that exist in a dog grooming location.

The poet and I did the secret eye look thing that married people do (there's a class on it) and decided that yes, it absolutely was the right thing to do to bring her home. She's getting spayed this week and will stay down there until she has healed, but as of the beginning of January, we're a family of 5.

Molly was completely worn out. Meeting new family members is an exhausting business.

So, yes, we are completely nuts, and yes, life here will be even more busy, but no, no one is surprised that we decided to bring her home. Like I said last week, we're lucky. We have the time and the energy and the space and the love to keep making our four-legged-family larger (although we probably don't have the space to add anymore after this one), and I hope to never take that for granted.

Christmas Caper 10K: race report

2011-12-19T17:07:00.007-05:00

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 sleeve when I left the house by not bringing any other clothing with me (other than sweats). It wasn't that cold out but it was WINDY. I always forget that Hains Point is a peninsula surrounded by a giant vacuum and is never ever NOT windy. So I did my warm-up, cutting it short when I heard the call to line up, but then realized that they were yelling for the 5K folks so I just hopped and shivered for a little while.

The 5K lined up and left, and then I stood around at the start line for a while with my friend Kayte, wondering where all the 10K people were, and then we noticed that the official 10K starting line was about 50 feet behind the flag.

I pretended like I was going to run a 32 minute 10K and stood here for a few minutes, but then dropped back before the race started. It was nice to feel fast for just a little while.

Someone yelled "go" and we were off. I've completely lost the ability to run by feel, so I had lap pace showing on my Garmin. There was a 1K spray-painted on the road, and I looked down at that point to see 8:11 pace. I slammed on the brakes, hard, but it felt so easy. So nice! So bouncy and I love running! And then we went around the corner of the point and straight into headwind hell. The 10K course was an out-and-back you did twice, so we were only running into the headwind for a few minutes before we turned around to head back to the start, but that included turning back around the point and back into over a mile of headwind hell. And the extra fun thing about a 5K/10K loop is that all the 5K people got to crank up the gas and bullet into the finish and the 10K people had to turn around in the middle of the road and do it all over again. The biggest of sighs.

I decided rather ambiguously somewhere in my first headwind that as long as I was running in the 8s, I'd be happy. I hit the 5K mark at 26:26 and knew that a PR wasn't happening, so I stopped to help myself to a cup of water (shut up, I know I don't need water in a 10K) and then headed back out for loop 2. I tried to run a little smarter on the second loop, running hard when the wind was as my back and not fighting so much when it was in my face. My 4th mile looks slow, but once I subtract the 20 or so seconds of walking I did to drink, it was actually fine. Mile 5 was into the wind and then at my back, and mile 6 was hard into the wind all the way home.

I could list the enormous amount of reasons why I'm not unhappy with this but I think it's simpler to say just that. I will note the huge breakthrough of being able to race in loose shorts for the first time in my life without chafing, which speaks strongly to how much my form is improving (except for the last .2, see below). But this was a good hard honest effort, it's what I can do right now based on where my fitness is and now I don't have to run fast again for about 5 months. And hopefully by the time I do, I won't look like this 10 steps before the finish.

I don't even want to talk about all the things wrong with this picture. Also, Emily is whining about running a 20:04 5K with perfect form in hot pink shoes, you can go slap her here.

How was your weekend? Did your form fall apart at the end of a race or is it just me?

the 2012 race schedule

2011-12-16T11:22:00.005-05:00

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 (hopefully she feels the same). So here's how I built my 2012 race schedule around that. I've also decided not to sign up for any races after CDA until it has come and gone, so (lame cop-out ahead) this is really just my race schedule for the first 6 months of the year.

Over the last 2 years, I think I've calculated that I've run 21 5Ks. 21! That's a lot of times at that distance. But I've raced it less than 5 times. The 5K has always been my coming-back-from-injury race, the first time that I get back out there after being sidelined by something devastating, and I'm tired of it. I also really despise the distance, because when done properly, it sucks balls. Race schedule ingredient #1: I will run no 5Ks in 2012.

I've also done a lot of races just as training runs. I've run several distances this way, and I'm a little tired of having so many 10-minute-mile races to my name. In the giant pile of running races I did in 2011, I think I only tried to race the living crap out of 2 or 3. I want to have a different attitude towards 2012. I want to race less often, and I want to prepare, taper, and then empty the tank every time I do. Race schedule ingredient #2: I will run less (or no) races as training runs in 2012.

I think it's fair to say that I still haven't gotten on top of the 70.3 distance yet on the run. On the swim and bike legs, I've been able to put up halfway decent times, but the run leg still evades me. However, if I examine my training cycles leading up to the 70.3 and the conditions of race day, I find that I haven't done a great job at planning well for either of those things. Race schedule ingredient #4: I will be smart about choosing a 70.3 and I will not let it eat me alive.

And finally, the distance I moan about not having a PR the most: the 10 miler. For some reason I just haven't run one of these suckers in about 6 years, and I've only run one in my life. My "official" PR is 1:53 and I've beaten that on the way to every 13.1 I ran this year, as well as on dozens of training runs. Race schedule ingredient #5: I will run a 10 miler.

That said, here's how 2012 is laid out as of right now (i.e. races I am registered for currently).

National Half Marathon - 3/17/12
Parkway Classic 10M - 4/22/12
Monticelloman 70.3 - 5/6/12
Ironman Coeur d'Alene - 6/24/12

After all that build-up, what a letdown, huh? I've decided to not plan anything for January/February so I can just have solid training without interruption for racing and recovery (unless my coach decides otherwise). I have a pretty serious score to settle with the National Half, and that will hopefully be the day I finally get that sub-1:50 I've been yammering on about all year. The 10 miler will fall about 2 weeks out from my 70.3, but the fabulous thing about my current PR is that I can race it fairly conservatively and still PR the living daylights out of it. I spent a lot of time with Emily searching for the perfect spring 70.3 ~~even though she backed out to run a stupid marathon~~ and I think Monticelloman is the one. There's a 2 mile lake swim the last weekend of May that I might add, and I might jump in some other small races along the way, but I also might....not.

I'm really not sure what I'll feel like doing after CDA. I hate running in the heat, so I'll probably want to just dust off my road bike and rack up a billion miles for a while. Depending on how the summer shakes out, I will probably choose a fall A race that's either a 13.1 or a 70.3 or a 26.2 (yeah, I said it) if I'm feeling really sassy. I should also do an entire olympic-distance triathlon at some point instead of just doing one leg once a year. Or maybe a sprint, I haven't done a sprint since my first triathlon ever. But I don't know how I'll feel after ironman, so maybe I'll do none of those things. The good thing is, I don't have to decide that until June.

What does your race schedule look like for 2012? How do you build it?

three things thursday

2011-12-15T10:00:00.002-05:00

1. Completely ignore what I said yesterday about 2 dogs being a bad idea. We recently discovered that Molly's sister is up for adoption.

At first it sounded completely insane, but now we're seriously considering this. Her name is Sofie. My cranky little three-sizes-too-small heart just breaks at the thought of her needing some love, and the honesty of it is, we're lucky. We have a home to live in and cars to drive and a basement full of bicycles and while we're pretty focused on paying off those darn student loans right now, we don't want for much and we have love to spare. And I am grateful every day for all of these things. So why not?

2. I'm only a couple of weeks into what I would describe as base building/training, but my body is starting to adapt. I spent all of last week being ridiculously sore, but that has quieted down and now I've moved into the phase where I'm just extra exhausted all the time. I'm almost too tired to eat, which is the most ridiculous statement that has ever been posted on this blog. But it's true. I read somewhere that IM base training is some of the more "boring" training you will ever do in your life, and while I'm not bored at all right now, most of my training is just easy volume, especially on the run. And it's good.

3. I'm starting to understand why logging your food is a bad idea long-term. Last night I wanted a (small) bowl of ice cream before bed, and I felt incredibly guilty putting it on my log. But in reviewing my day, I had a ton of fruits and veggies, enough protein, and had done some calorie-burning TTs in the pool that morning, so there was no reason not to eat it. It was the definition of "treats in moderation" and I don't think that there was anything wrong with it. But I still felt guilty about it, which is why I will track my food for this week or so and then stop - I don't want to slide into any obsessive behaviors that have to do with food, especially heading down the road towards ironman where I can't afford to end up in a calorie hole at the end of the day.

Happy Thursday, everyone! If you have 3 dogs, please leave a quick note explaining why I am insane, thanks!

wordless wednesday

2011-12-14T09:25:00.001-05:00

On Monday, I took both dogs to the vet without any backup.

Worst idea ever.

food log challenge

2011-12-13T09:51:00.006-05:00

I've never logged what I eat.

For a while last year, when I first started weaning meat out of my diet, I kept track of how much protein I was getting, mostly to make sure I wouldn't waste away into nothingness. At some point, I hit up my friend Heather for some food advice because I was feeling wonky, and she told me that I wasn't taking in enough calories to support the booty. So I started roughly keeping a mental tally of calories, which was actually a really eye-opening experience because I had no idea how many calories were in most things (vodka has calories? how rude). Still, I didn't do a formal tally, just a rough estimate throughout the day to make sure I was getting in enough and the right kind of delicious calories.

Fast forward a year. As the distances get longer, nutrition becomes more and more important, both during exercise and after in recovery. When I was in my last 70.3 training cycle, I was pretty careful most of the time (notice the absence of absolutes here) about what went in. I spent the first few weeks of November solidly in my off-season diet wearing my off-season pants, but I only really enjoy that for a short time before I start craving veggies again.

Last night my coach emailed us all with a challenge - log everything we eat between now and Christmas Eve, and send it to her every single day. Yikes.

I did a pretty thorough cost:benefit analysis of the situation, and while it seems that horrifying someone I've just started working with is not really the most brilliant idea I've ever had, I've decided to do it because I think it will be really good for me. And to make it even worse, I'm going to post it all here when it's over. Nothing like telling the internet you'll do something to create a false sense of accountability. I actually do think it's a great idea for the reasons she sent us - it's tough to keep your eating on track this time of year, and maybe I can figure out some things that I need more of in my diet (ice cream?) to help grow the Ironman monster.

So, starting today, I'm going to write down every single thing that goes in my mouth and in 2 weeks you'll get to see the list of it all. I am NOT going to take pictures of it all because I think that's annoying, but I might document some of it. We'll see.

Feel free to join me, although you don't win anything except the joy of putting your own diet under the microscope (neener neener neener). Maybe it will be fun?

Have you ever kept any kind of food log? How did that go?

the butternut squash pizza

2011-12-12T10:26:00.001-05:00

I realized last night as I was going to sleep that this weekend is the first weekend in almost a month that I wasn't out racing. I had a completely stressful week, so Friday night was an early one - dinner and "Friends" episodes and bed early. Saturday brought a mixed bag of workouts - I'm still really motivated to swim by my awesome Christmas gear. We're having a lot of work done on our house right now, so Saturday afternoon was full of hammering and sanding and spackle and paint. Saturday night was round two of the most brilliant pizza I've made yet. It goes a little something like this...

Ingredients:
1 onion
1 butternut squash
1 eggplant
1 bag of walnuts
1 container of gorgonzola cheese
some shredded mozzarella
some other stuff (butter, oil, yeast, flour)

This is a bit time-intensive, but I've found that if I do the process in the right order, I'm not standing around waiting for the onions to caramelize while the squash is getting cold and the eggplant is burning.

1. Preheat the oven to 400º.

2. Drop a big glug of vegetable oil and a scoop of butter into a large saute pan. Thinly slice the onion and cut into long strings. Saute onions on very low heat for about an hour (while you do the next bunch of steps), stir often.

3. Microwave a butternut squash, one minute at a time, for about 3-5 minutes. (This is an Emily trick that makes it easier to peel). Use a peeler to remove all the skin (rind? outer layer?). Cut it in half and scoop out the weird seeds and goop. Chop it into large chunks and put them on a large cookie sheet. Dribble some olive oil around and top with salt and pepper. Put it in the oven for about 30 minutes.

4. Start making the dough. Add 1 cup of warm water to 2 & 1/4 tsp of yeast, stir. Wait a few minutes, add 1 tsp of sugar and 1 tbsp of vegetable oil, stir. Let it sit for about 5 minutes or until it gets bubbly and foamy. Add flour 1/2 cup at a time until dough is elastic and soft. Cover it and let it rise for about 30 minutes.

5. Poke your butternut squash and stir your onions.

6. Thinly slice the eggplant and lay it out on another cookie sheet. Dribble it with olive oil, salt & pepper. The butternut squash is probably done, pull it out and set it aside, and put the eggplant in the oven.

7. Stir onions some more. You'll know that they are caramelized when they are a soft brown and smell sweet.

8. Press the dough out onto a greased cookie sheet. Brush with olive oil mixed with salt, pepper, & garlic powder.

9. Put down a very light layer of shredded mozzarella. Next, layer the eggplant, the onions, the squash, the gorgonzola cheese, the walnuts, and then another light layer of the shredded mozzarella.

10. Cook at 400º for about 15 minutes or until cheese is cracked and bubbly. Let it cool for about 5 minutes, then slice and serve. I like to top mine with freshly grated asiago cheese and eat it before anyone can take a picture of it.

We demolished almost the entire thing on Saturday night (4 of us, for the record, not just 2), and I had a piece both pre- and post-long trainer ride on Sunday. I managed to sucker the tall girl into doing my trainer workout with me, so we were both fueled by squash. Delicious.

Please notice my sweet trainer setup that can hold both water bottles, a box of Gu, my phone and my pajamas (removed only seconds before beginning my workout). I might get through all 7 seasons of House this winter.

How was your weekend? Did you gorge on squash and not race like me?

random friday facts

2011-12-09T11:51:00.000-05:00

1. I am only able to wipe my nose on my right shoulder when running in cold weather. If I tried to wipe it on my left shoulder I would probably trip and fall and break my neck.

2. I have been drinking "Sleepytime" tea before bed for the past two months. It's probably one of those wacky mind games, but I feel like I sleep better after I drink it.

3. I don't wear boots.

4. I had never seen "It's a Wonderful Life" until I met my husband. We watched it one Christmas as 38 different YouTube videos because we couldn't find it anywhere else online.

5. Anything less than 1500 yards just isn't worth getting my hair wet.

6. When I was a little kid I used to eat dinner a lot with a friend who didn't like carrots and I loved them. She would pass them to me under the table.

7. I finally have figured out what to do with my arms in a flip turn.

8. I did not discover until I moved in that my fireplace is bricked over. So rude.

9. I still don't have a good grasp on the geography in the middle of the country. Colorado I've got, but all those states to the left are just in a pile, according to me.

10. Salt water tastes disgusting and I'm terrified of jelly fish. No ocean triathlon for me.

11. I am absolutely refusing to sign up for a single race after CDA until CDA has come and gone.

12. There is one fancy pillow on our bed.

13. A bat flew into the side of my car in a parking garage this morning.

14. We sold my sexy little convertible last week. I was sad.

15. When I was a little kid, my parents always made sure that we had a giant pile of presents to open on Christmas morning (even if some of them were turtlenecks and socks). I still miss waking up to that giant pile.

16. I haven't purchased any new makeup in about two years, which is probably why my mascara makes my eyes itch.

17. I have a pair of fluffy pink slippers...with the Eagles logo on the side.

18. The only jewelry I wear is my rings.

19. I can't buy Christmas presents for anyone until the day before I gift them. Otherwise I get too excited and just gift them early.

20. I just changed my twitter picture for the first time in almost a year. Please don't freak out.

Happy Friday, everyone! Let me know if you RFF'd and I'll link you up!

three things thursday

2011-12-08T08:42:00.001-05:00

1. All of my Christmas swimming stuff showed up! I'm already pretty excited about being back in the pool (strange, I know) after a few weeks off and a now-quieting-down cranky shoulder, but this puts it over the top. I think I need a new swim cap to celebrate all major holidays. It basically looks like Santa threw up all over me. Who's the cutest??

2. IM-focused training, otherwise known as Project Make My House Short & Fat started on Tuesday. It's Thursday and I'm still alive, soooooo, so far so good. But I am pretty sore. Apparently your muscles don't just keep themselves in shape while you eat and drink and sleep for two weeks. Lame. Speaking of eating and drinking and Ironman (see what I did there?), our post-race celebratory meal on Saturday happened to be in the same restaurant as Chris McCormack. See? He's right there. Basically at our table. He's even posing for the picture! (click on it to see the really excellent look on his face and/or a really close-up look at Jon's pores).

He busted me staring at him more than a few times but was too shy to come over and say hello. I can't imagine why.

I mean, we're all winners today! Come on now, Macca. Basically instant BFFs.

3. The poet and I did another round of "puppies are our children" photos a few weeks ago and I love them. LOVE.

(photo credits to love life images)

Don't try and tell me I'm some crazy childless weirdo who love my dogs too much. I already know.

Happy Thursday!

wordless wednesday

2011-12-07T08:45:00.000-05:00

A puzzle for Wednesday morning. Name that mafia ass.

Plus a little payback.

You're welcome.

VO2 max test: my house is really tall

2011-12-06T11:06:00.000-05:00

After struggling through a fall season where my HR zones were continually being "adjusted," I decided that I'd like to get a VO2 max test. A VO2 max test measures many things, but the results of the test will give you your zones based on science instead of guesswork and formulas. VO2 max refers to the maximum amount of oxygen that an athlete can use during intense exercise. The test gives you your VO2 max number, which is a good indication of your aerobic endurance potential, but it also gives you a ton of other information about how many and the kind of calories you currently burn during exercise at different intensities, as well as HR information as related to zones.

I asked Lauren for a recommendation because I knew that she was really happy with the test she took last spring, and ended up scheduling with Melissa Dalio from endura coaching. I contacted her via email about the test and we scheduled it for last week. My initial impression of Melissa via email was fantastic - she seemed organized and detailed and everything I needed to do to prepare for the test was very clear. I was told not to exercise the day before or the day of the test and not to eat for 3 hours before the test. One mistake I think that I made which may have slightly affected my numbers was how I ate throughout the day. When I'm hungry I get REALLY cranky, and I was so worried about feeling hungry after not eating for 3 whole hours that I'm pretty sure I overate quite a bit at lunch that day. When we started the test, not only was I not hungry, but I actually still felt full. Melissa told me that this may have slightly affected my fat-burn vs carb-burn numbers. Otherwise, I felt rested and ready to go.

When I showed up for the test, Melissa had me start walking on the treadmill to warm-up while she took down a bunch of information about me (age, height, weight, rough idea of training paces, all kinds of stuff). I'd guess that I walked for about 15 minutes and then eased into a slow jog. One thing she did that was great was set up a video camera so I could see myself running from the side on the TV that was mounted right in front of the treadmill - live gait analysis. We talked for a few minutes about some minor things as related to my gait, and then she turned off the camera and we got ready to start the test. She paired my HR monitor with her machine and set me up with the mask that you wear that measures your breathing. (She was also awesome enough to take a bunch of pictures and even a video of my suffering).

The test starts at a very easy pace. Data is gathered in increments of a minute, so she let me know beforehand all the secret hand signals to let her know that I was getting tired or close to being done, and she told me that she'd have me finish out the minute (if possible) to get complete data. Every minute, she upped the pace by about :30-:40/mile, and once I got pretty close to running flat-out, she added elevation instead of increasing pace. Melissa let me know before we started that most people end the test and say they could have gone one more minute. She also kept manual notes of HR/pace/cadence on a clipboard while I ran. I made it 14 minutes and then we shut it down. After that, I walked for about 10 minutes to cool down while she printed out and worked through the data. Here are the results of the test (it's all gibberish but click on it if you're a science nerd like me):

And here are my zones (running only):

Just for fun, compared to my running zones that I used all fall (hot mess, straight ahead):

So, what does all the science mean? A lot. (Disclaimer: I'm using my memory and the packet Melissa gave me to translate all of this so it's highly likely that I might be getting some of it wrong. Hopefully you internet scientists will straighten me out).

First of all, my VO2 max number is amazing. Like really seriously surprisingly amazing, now that I've done some more research about what all this means. My number, as a 31-year-old 5'6" 140lb female, was 51.5. Here's a chart to help you recognize how awesome I am (like you needed it).

Right. So the first thing I learned is that my aerobic potential is literally off the charts, which is a great piece of information to be armed with, mentally, on day 1 of IM training.

The next piece of information is less happy - even at low intensities, my body is burning almost all carbohydrates and no fat. This is really bad news for an endurance athlete. In zone 2, I burn 4.7 Kcal/min of fat and 8.7 Kcal/min of carbohydrate. Ideally, those numbers would be at least switched. At my lactate threshold - the place where your body can recycle lactic acid as quickly as it is making it (top of zone 4, HR 170) - I burn 0.6 Kcal/min of fat and 14.4 Kcal/min of carbohydrate. One of the many reasons that athletes spend so much time training in the dreaded zone 2 is because that's how you teach your body to burn fat. I'm not sure of the statistic and I'm way too lazy to google it, but I believe that you have enough fat stored in your body to take you through a ridiculously long amount of exercise - like 24 hours or something crazy. In contrast, you have enough carbohydrates stored to take you through about 90 minutes of exercise. So athletes train at this low intensity to overload their slow-twitch muscle fibers which is where the fat burn happens which increases endurance (i.e. the thing you need to get through an Ironman). Right now my body really sucks at that but it's really amazing at burning carbs. Or, as Melissa put it, in my endurance house right now, my foundation is small but my house is REALLY tall (and I should be able to run much faster than I do, sigh). Fortunately, I'll be spending most of the next 7 months in zone 2, which should help my body become an aerobic fat-burning monster.

The other really critical piece of information that I got is related to nutrition. When you are exercising for a long time, you need to replace the calories you are burning. You can't replace the fat calories but you can replace the carbohydrate calories (I think). In zone 2, I burn 281 Kcal/hour of fat and 523 Kcal/hour of carbohydrate. Ideally, you'd like to replace every calorie you burn of carbohydrates but that is theoretically impossible because you'd probably power puke your brains out on the bike (not recommended). However, Melissa let me know that I should be aiming for at least 250-300 calories per hour, which is quite a bit more than the 200 per hour I've been working off of for the past several months on the bike, and not even close to the 100 per 45 minutes that I've used for every long run I've ever done. Which means I've probably been under-fueling for long workouts, which has probably been contributing to my very tall and skinny house.

I'm really happy that I did this for quite a few reasons, not the least of which is because I'm addicted to the science related to exercise. Being firmly aware of what my body needs and is doing makes me feel much more confident about starting up IM training. I'd like to go back in a few weeks and do this test on the bike, as there are formulas that can translate these numbers back and forth but they aren't exact. If you're a local athlete, I definitely recommend Melissa for this test, and I'm sure I'll be back in her studio quite a few times this season. Make sure to tell her that the blog with all the ass shots sent you.

Have you ever had a VO2 max test done? Did you lose your lunch? Is your house wide and short or tiny and tall like mine?

Key West Triathlon (bike leg): race report

2011-12-05T10:21:00.002-05:00

At this race last year I was pretty horrified at the conditions for the swim. It was my first OWS, but I still wasn't prepared to swim through a mile of strangling seaweed in a brackish bay that tasted slightly like fish poop. This year, the race was moved to the other side of the island and I was moved forward in the mafia rotation to the bike leg. I felt pretty prepared to race the crap out of this, making sure to get on the bike at least twice in the 8 weeks preceding the race.

We managed to get our incorrectly-sized bikes from the rental company late Friday evening and I took a short spin around the parking lot. Race morning was an unqualified disaster. We woke up and headed down to transition where a single volunteer (race director?) appeared to be managing the chaos. Our chip was missing, so we were initially told to "just take another one." Note to race directors: this is how to make your day suck really hard. But in a magical unheard-of turn of events, after standing around for a while, someone actually turned up with our chip. The swimmers of the group took off for the swim start and I went back upstairs to put on my ride glide and eat breakfast.

One of the best parts of the day was definitely hanging around in transition as the elite wave of men came in from the swim, naked from the waist up. Sadly, Beth showed up pretty quickly and I had to hop on the bike and head out. I had been eyeing the other relay-ers in transition and only one women's relay team member left T1 before I did, and I was pretty sure I could take her.

I mounted the bike and got to it. I had absolutely zero race plan before heading out, other than "drop the hammer." We rode down a short street and then turned right to ride on the highway that wraps around the outside of the island. Or, directly into hell. I should have realized by the severe gusts of wind at the start that the bike would be tough, but somehow I just assumed I'd be riding in a little bubble of calm flat road. I would say that these were easily the most difficult conditions I have ever ridden in. I'm used to spending most of my time racing in my drops, and I was being whipped around too hard for about the first 10 miles to even be able to consider taking my hands off the handlebars. I was pretty glad that I had taken "average mph" off of my Garmin screen, but I was able to figure out roughly what I was doing and it was ugly.

So I started to plan. I would take splits at every 10K. I would sit on my favorite interval HR for the first 10K (155) and not budge. The second 10K I could have 1-2 more beats. The third 10K I could have 1-2 more beats, and the last 10K I could light the fire. This made the first 10K pretty slow - I think I averaged somewhere around 15.5mph (Garmin battery is dead and I forgot the charger, no splits for you). The wind would shove me hard, and I'd have to sit back and spin easy until my heart calmed down. You bet your dander that I was cussing HARD inside my head. Every time we made a turn, I desperately hoped that I'd get some of the wind behind me, but it was just everywhere. The course snaked us right around the airport, and planes were taking off about 30 feet away for 15-20 minutes. And every time one of those suckers lifted off, I got pounded by the wind.

The course itself was decent - the turns were well-marked and being manned pretty well by volunteers. I didn't see a single course official out there and, as such, there was a TON of drafting going on, but that's the case in a lot of races. The roads were a bit rough, lots of cracks and potholes and one deep gravel trench the width of the road. I got passed a few times by some hulks on TT bikes, but only 2 women passed me and I caught one of them a few miles later. And the woman who was the only relay team in front of us? I caught her at mile 6 or so, and then never saw her again.

The 20K mark was roughly the turn around at one of the many out-and-back loops we did, and when we hit it and I saw my time, I started to get pretty mad. Or, more mad than I was already. Even with little training, I should have been able to hit better numbers than that (obviously I was completely ignoring the conditions of the day). So I gave myself a few extra heartbeats and went. I rode as hard as I could and every time the wind threw me, I just put my head down and rode harder. The worst stretch of headwind was right before the 30K mark, and I fought and fought to the turn. When we turned around, finally, for almost 4 minutes, it was quiet. I wanted to use to tailwind as long as it was there, so I cranked up into my biggest gear and just went.

As soon as we turned back onto the island road, the crosswinds were back, but I could see the home stretch by then and didn't care. We got stopped for a few moments due to traffic, but I just tried to roll easy because I knew if I stopped, my legs would start complaining. I hit 3 miles to go and just rode as hard as I knew how to ride. I started picking people off and when we finally turned back onto the road that brought us back to transition, my tank was empty. I think I averaged 22mph for the last 10K split. Fueled by wind rage.

I have never been so happy to get off the bike and not have to go flying out of transition. I got my chip onto Liz and wanted to collapse.

With a solid run from her on top of Beth's ridiculously fast swim, we managed to bring home the win for the second year in a row, plus an AG award for Amy.

I spent some time being pretty cranky about my 40K time (just over 1:20ish)(no one is surprised), but then as the results started rolling in, I discovered that my bike split was faster than the fast split in my AG - and in quite a few other AGs around me. Maybe the extreme bike taper was a good idea?

The wives of the mafia also had a pretty great day, although their chip times got all screwed up and the poet managed to set an American record for the 10K. 2 weeks after his marathon without running a step. That's just how we roll.

The rest of our weekend goes without recap, but it was full of friends and rest and celebration (somehow) and I was extremely sad to have to get on the plane yesterday afternoon.

How was your weekend? Did you race in tropical paradise like we did?

November recap: I cooked the squash!

2011-12-02T07:13:00.002-05:00

Let's take a look at November goals...

November Goals
Get back on the bike after Richmond. This gets a check, I've been on it twice since Philly.
Take 2 on the squash vegetables. I made butternut squash risotto and put it plus eggplant on a pizza! Huge win.
Maaaaaybe stop drinking so much on weekends. Maybe. Definitely a check, 2 weeks of being sick knocked this one right out.
Check out that photography class thing at some point. Bah, giant fail.
Keep the speed workouts to 1x a week and most of the miles easy. That definitely happened - I did track Tuesdays only for speedwork this month and lots of easy miles.
Wear shorts as long as possible. 45º is not cold! I wore shorts yesterday - but a few warm weeks definitely helped this one.

My plans for the month derailed when I got sick a week before the Richmond Half. I decided to bail on it and instead race Philly the following weekend. Even though I didn't hit the ridiculous goal I set for myself for the half, I left every ounce of myself out on the race course and am more than pleased with how my fall racing season wrapped up. More importantly, I was there to cheer on the poet as he completed his first full, and I couldn't be more proud of him for sticking to his training plan and executing to the best of his ability on race day. And I haven't yet said, "I told you so," as he's gotten pumped to do it all again in the spring.

Pushing my half marathon back left me with very little recovery time before IM training started, but I nipped that pretty quickly and was able to tack on an extra week of rest. Starting next Tuesday, I'm handing things over to my coach, but I'm hoping to ease back into training to keep the burnout bunnies away. It's December, and we're coming up to my favorite holiday of the year by far. I know going in that making time for everything is going to be a challenge, but I'm trying not to stress about it and take everything week by week. It's so great to be able to look back a year and see that last November I spent the entire month walk-running 5Ks as I worked back from surgery, with my longest run of the month around 5 miles. This November I ran almost twice the amount of miles I ran last November, and that included two races much longer than a 5K. I've come a really long way in the past year and I'm definitely closing in on the longest amount of time in my life I've been able to consistently run without injury. My running isn't perfect and it might always be a work-in-progress, but I'm not staring angrily out the car window, wishing I was the one snorting my way through the 30º weather just to get some miles in. I'm the one out there, and I can't do anything but be thankful for that.

November
PRs set: 2
Rest days: many
Miles run in something other than shorts: 7
Hot pink science shoes purchased: 0
Adrenalines thrown in the trash (donated): 1
Time spent discussing and/or trying on running shoes: hundreds of hours
Cupcakes eaten in a single day: 5
Christmas ornaments eaten by a puppy: 1

December Goals
Make sure to keep getting enough sleep and good food as training ramps back up.
Don't be afraid to ask for rest if you need it, but don't be a lazy bum.
Get the bike fit straightened out.
Plan a mini-vacation for somewhere in the middle of IM training. You'll appreciate it when it shows up.
Spend more time in the pool than any other month in 2011 (14+ miles).

only two things thursday

2011-12-01T09:05:00.000-05:00

1. After several days of complete rest, I'm 100% sure that I was completely burned out. The first two days I didn't want to do anything. I woke up on day 3 wanting to get back in the pool (but I didn't, see: narky shoulder), and after doing a short but hard V02 max run test last night, I'm almost ready to get back on the bike (I know this doesn't make any sense). I'm going to continue resting and sleeping and eating the good food through the weekend, but I already feel a bit of my mojo creeping back. I'll ease back into training starting next Tuesday, and I'm almost rested enough to be looking forward to it. Almost.

2. My 10ish days of complete rest were briefly interrupted last night by a V02 max test (more on this soon) and will again be briefly interrupted this weekend when we return to Key West to defend our triathlon relay title. Last year I did the swim - my first ever open water swim - and the Mafia musical chairs have put me on the bike leg this year. I am absolutely refusing to make any goals for the bike other than to enjoy it. I've done enough 20 mile TTs to know what I should be able to do for a 40K bike leg, but I've been on the bike twice in the past 6 six weeks so I also know that won't happen. I'm just going to go out hard, try not to get too pissed off at the wind, and be really happy that I'm somewhere cycling in just a tri kit instead of a giant pile of winter layers. That's it. No matter what happens, ~~at least we didn't cheat~~ I KNOW we are going to have a blast down there this weekend. Lots of sunshine, good food, friends, a tiny triathlon and the occasional margarita. I'm hoping that this finishes recharging my batteries and I return on Monday ready to eat IM training alive.

What are you doing this weekend, friends?

wordless wednesday

2011-11-30T08:00:00.002-05:00

The poet took the time to hook all you guys up on Saturday morning at the race.

Especially since race photographers apparently don't care about my best side.

But don't worry, the poet had it covered. Just like me, he's got your best interests in mind.

Turkey Burnoff 5 Miler: race report

2011-11-29T08:00:00.002-05:00

I had originally planned to do the Alexandria Turkey Trot since it starts in my front yard and covers my usual run routes. After making the switch to the Philly Half, I wasn't sure if I'd be recovered by Thursday, so I didn't register. I woke up Thursday morning and desperately wanted to run, but a short jog down the block revealed that I was still pretty sore. So instead, we spectated, but the turkey trot itch was there.

I remembered Thursday evening that Amy had mentioned a 5 miler on Saturday up in Maryland. Registration is ONLY available on-site, so I figured that if I was feeling good by that morning, we'd go up and I'd race. I've never run a 5 miler before, and I've only run the 8K once (with a giant hangover), so I knew that no matter how the race turned out, it would be a PR. I decided fairly ambiguously that I could probably come in somewhere around the 42-43 minute area without a lot of effort. I spent Friday night discussing race strategy with my friends.

The website warned that parking was scarce and to get there early, so we did. As it turned out, they were just trying to terrify everyone into doing exactly that, so I had time to visit the porta-potty 12 times and read my Harry Potter book before the race started. I spent an equal amount of time stressing about what to wear and then it was time to go.

I lined up with Amy but lost her in the first shuffle of people. Assuming she was ahead of me, I ducked and weaved trying to find her...only to have her come up behind me about a mile in. After running the first 10 steps over the line, I realized that my body was still pretty tired and mentally readjusted my goal to 45:00 - 9 minute/miles is slightly more difficult than easy but definitely not race pace. By the time Amy caught up with me, I was considering re-readjusting my goal to include walking and/or making someone pick me up and drive me back. The course was far hillier than I would have expected for Maryland...

I decided, as I usually do in races, to manually lap my watch at the mile markers. The first mile marker, though, came up REALLY early - there was just no way that I went out with an 8:15, even with some of those downhills. The second mile seemed true and the third mile was as long as the first mile was short, so I didn't really have a good idea on my pace. I just tried to maintain my effort level up and down all the rollers and not get passed by too many people dressed like turkeys. The mile 4 marker is right before the last large hill, so any idea about kicking into the finish was gone. When I rounded the corner and saw how close the line was, I realized that I could probably squeak in under 45 minutes, and that's what I did.

Unfortunately, I wasn't careful about starting or stopping my Garmin properly because we had shoe chips, but as it turned out, they forgot to lay down the mats at the start so only gun time was recorded. However, as an experienced professional spectator who needs to know when to be ready for picture-taking, the poet recorded my official time.

As for the rest of the race, there was one well-manned water stop that you hit twice - roughly mile 2.3 and mile 3.9 - although I avoided it both times. The post-race spread was amazing, especially for a race that was this inexpensive ($10), and the volunteers were fantastic.

It's definitely a great race to burn off all that turkey and pie, especially if you choose the 2-loop 10 mile option, but not a PR course due to the elevation. Hills are rude, especially when it's the first time you've run since you blew a hole in a half marathon.

However, it was a gorgeous day, I got to run with my partner in oft-injured-Dr. P-stalking crime, and I was able to shake off the race itch. The last two races have really made me realize that I have a long way still left to go in fixing my form, as it collapsed pretty early in both. I'm actually excited to return to a training schedule that has lots of easy running in it so I can keep chipping away at my injury-free life. But this week will still go down in history as the "I PRd twice in one week" week, but hopefully also the "I set 2 PRs that should be incredibly easy to beat" week.

How was your Thanksgiving, friends? Did you trot with turkeys or just eat your weight in pie?

the fire is out

2011-11-28T08:00:00.003-05:00

I had my turkey trot race recap all ready to go this morning, but I'm going to save it for tomorrow and instead talk about what's going on today. I think I'm just a tiny bit burned out. Or suffering from some pretty serious post-race blues.

My plan after Waterman's was to basically shut down the bike and concentrate on the run for the 5 weeks leading up to Richmond. After Richmond, I was planning on taking two weeks almost completely off to get rested and ready to jump in with my new coach on December 1. But then things went a bit screwy. I got sick, and I took 3 days off, but I spent those 3 days a) sick and b) stressing out about what to do about the race. Once I decided to bag Richmond and run Philly, I jumped back in - probably just a hair too soon - to squeeze in a few runs before race day. I'm completely happy with the decisions I made going into the race, but I definitely didn't consider the ramifications of pushing back the race on my recovery.

I ran Philly on Sunday. On Monday I did 20 no-resistance minutes on the spin bike and then maybe as many as 6 laps of kicking in the pool to shake my legs out and help flush out the crap - this is my pretty standard day-after-a-race routine. Tuesday, completely off. Wednesday, a not-short-but-not-long-and-definitely-not-hard swim, but one that set my funky shoulder twanging and it's been irritating me more than a little ever since. Thursday, 40 easy no-resistance minutes on the trainer (latest House episode to watch). Friday was the first day I did a "regular" workout, and it was a fairly short ride with some intervals just to get my HR up a bit. I was thrilled to be back on the bike, which was a good feeling because I've been dreading it lately, and the ride didn't tire me at all, but by Friday night I was feeling pretty blah. Blah enough to be in bed before 9 on a night when I didn't have to get up until 8 the next morning. I ran the turkey trot Saturday morning and was thrilled to be running, but once that race itch was satisfied, I was back in the dumps. Sunday was a gorgeous and unseasonably warm day, and I had no plans other than Christmas tree decorating. Saturday night I started considering what I'd like to do on Sunday afternoon - a medium-long ride and a swim - and I just felt drained and flat.

So instead, I watched some movies, I read a book, I went Christmas shopping with the poet, and we made spaghetti for dinner. I didn't get on the bike or in the pool, and I definitely didn't even think about running. I don't think this is a long-term blah - after walking around outside and being out of the house for a while, I started to feel a bit more chipper. But I think that I need some more recovery time before jumping into IM training. I'm hoping to pow-wow with my brand-new coach once she's done recovering from the very serious ass she kicked yesterday at Ironman Cozumel (and hopefully before she reads this.....), but I think I need another week off to recharge my batteries a bit. And then to ease back in instead of doing a header straight into 15-20 hours a week of swim/bike/run.

We're going to Key West this weekend to defend our relay title from last year. I'm hoping that lots of recovering this week - good recovering, with healthy eating and vegetables and lots of sleep and maybe some light yoga and not too much beer - plus a vacation trip that includes a fun, no-pressure triathlon will get me pumped to jump into IM training. I do know that if I get started down the path that is going to end up in Idaho next June with anything less than "ridiculously excited" as my mojo, it's going to be a long and tough cycle and I'm not going to make it.

And more importantly - I'm trying to remember that I do this for fun. I'm not a pro, and I never will be. It's not my job, it's something I do because I'm absolutely in love with the sport, and I want to make sure that I keep loving it. When I was training for Waterman's, I was so pumped to get my workouts every day, and to go out and execute them perfectly, to a T, to the heart beat. I couldn't wait to bust ass and then rush home and upload my workouts to my coach with a note that said, "completed perfectly as described!" I'm not excited like that right now. Instead, I don't even want to look. I'm dreading it all, and that's not okay. But I'm hoping that by recognizing it, like I did the last time I was feeling burned out, will be a big step towards being excited about it all again, being ready to work my ass off, being hungry and ready to eat all this fat aerobic training right up. Because I want to rock this cycle hard, but right now my fire is out. I see that, and I'm listening, and I just need to figure out how to find my way back.

things to be really, really thankful for...

2011-11-25T15:33:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

things that are weird and or disgusting

2011-11-23T09:20:00.001-05:00

Just some more post-race notes...

I did what I thought was a great job of hydrating in the days before the race and all the way up to the race start, with mostly water and the occasional powerade zero. I took a Gu just before mile 4 with some water, and I felt the boost a few minutes later. I took another one around mile 7 because I wanted some oomph heading up the hill, but I never felt it. About 2 miles later, I reached for something and realized I couldn't close my hands all the way. I looked down and my fingers were swollen to almost twice their normal size. I freaked out a little, but didn't want to tell Beth because I didn't want to stop (race logic at its finest). I tried to take another Gu around mile 10, but only got a little bit in my mouth before I dropped it because I just couldn't hold onto it.

Looking back through all the video that Jon took, I can see that in the later miles of the race, I'm puffy and swollen everywhere - not just in my fingers, but in my arms and face. In the moment, I had no brainpower to troubleshoot the problem, but as soon as I got home, I asked Dr. Internet about it. The internet (which is obviously always right, just like your Garmin) thinks that it's a problem of not enough salt possibly combined with too much water. When this happens, your body can lose the ability to absorb calories properly, which might be why I didn't feel the boost from the Roctane, and also why I horked a bunch of it up at the finish line - it was just sitting in my stomach. The other internet thinks that it could be over-heating combined with one of these issues. This is the first time I've ever raced in warm weather with only Gu - other races I've used a combo of EFS/Perpetuem/Shot Bloks - and I wonder if maybe I wasn't getting the electrolytes that I needed since I was sweating more than expected. In triathlon racing, I usually take some Tums along the run as well (calcium = electrolytes), which I didn't do on Sunday. But this kind of swelling has never happened to me before. You guys are part of the internet, what do you think?

The intense swelling that went on also caused my feet to poof up - which usually happens a bit on long runs like it happens to everyone. But this time, they were so swollen that it caused about 6 different kinds of blood blisters on my feet. (Avert your eyes).

I felt my feet start to burn a bit in these places around mile 8 or so, but didn't realize how bad it was until I finally got my shoes off after the race. I had the imprint of my socks in my feet for about 30 minutes. I could feel my feet expanding as I sat in the cool morning air, and getting my feet back in my shoes to jump in with the poet was not a happy experience.

Part of it was my fault - we were running a bit late on time in the morning, and I didn't get to do the pre-race body glide session that I like to do. On a regular basis, I don't use body glide, but I like to lube everything up before a race. I did borrow a smidge of Beth's chapstick (she was thrilled) to grease up my inner thighs, but I didn't get the chance to do my feet, my HR strap/boobie area, my hip (where the Gu was pinned), or my underarms, and I have chafing in all of these places, plus my inner thighs anyway.

I certainly don't want to point at any of these factors to "explain" my race on Sunday - I had the race I did because I went out hard and fast and blew up - but none of it has ever happened before. It would be easy to chalk it up to a weird day, but I want to think about it so I can prevent it moving forward.

The other odd thing that happen is shoe-related. In the weeks leading up to the race, I was fairly convinced that my shin problems were stemming from too much running in the Ravenna - the lightest stability shoe in my rotation right now. Based on that, I didn't run in the Ravenna but instead ran mostly in the Asics 1260 and occasionally the Adrenaline. My shin problems continued, but I figured that was because they needed time to heal. On Sunday, I raced in the Ravenna. Not only did I not have any issues during the race, my shin splints have magically disappeared since. I haven't been out running yet - that'll be a fun project for tomorrow or Friday - but all of the ache and point-tenderness I had is completely gone. So maybe the resident mafia shoe expert was right all along and it's time to trash the Adrenalines. I did find an incredibly cheap pair of the Saucony Guide, so I think I'm going to run in those and the Ravenna for a while and see if my legs can deal with the so-little-stability-it's-almost-neutral shoe. Which is exciting.

So, hit me with your science. What do you think?

Philadelphia Marathon: race report (guest post)

2011-11-22T10:05:00.004-05:00

To most people they were just flags in the road. Some thin wicking designed with the Philadelphia logo, a rounded curve of a thing meant to mark distance. To me, they were a sign that I was still moving, that I had not yet quit. For some reason, during the longest parts of the course, these mile markers were the sentinels I will remember. But, what I’ll remember most is the generosity on display. You wouldn’t think that. If you start cynical and work back you see the shoe companies making money and the expo making money and the race management companies making money on this activity which is essentially people running around in large circles in competition. But I have yet to meet a selfish runner. And what made the day for me was this feeling that everyone, family, stranger or friend, organizer, cop or medic, was pulling for me.

Lesson #1: Generosity is at the core of the marathon.

At sunrise we parked (potentially illegally) in a lot with a bunch of other runners and everyone was concerned for each other’s cars. “But, they can’t tow all of us,” was the general mindset, solidarity with everyone in the lot. And so we, Katie and Beth and Jon, with our first bunch of new friends walked to the starting line. And this great logistical machine began. We found our friends. We peed (thousands of people in a line, no one complaining). We lined up in our corrals. No one argued. No one shoving. And we were off to do something really difficult.

Lesson #2: Never forget that a large group of like-minded people can shut down your whole city (and that we will pay for parking when we are done).

First, let me say this, Allison is amazing. She and I chatted about our plan and how fast we were going to go out. She pulled us back at times and pulled us along at times. We pointed out signs to each other, some awesome, some misspelled, some rather inappropriate. What does a woman holding an “I’ll chafe your nipples for free,” sign want? At about the 12 mile mark I could no longer keep up with Allison’s pace. I had been falling back and catching up for a few miles, and it was too much for me, so I told her to go.

Lesson #3: You have to run your own race.

Soon after that point, the race split off, HALF MARATHON to the right, MARATHON to the left (I saw that sign about 50 times from miles 11-13.1). At that point several things were supposed to happen. First, I was supposed to start speeding up. That did not happen. There was no speeding up from this point forward. Second, I was supposed to get a call from Katie on how her half went. I actually expected the call before I reached the 13 mile point because I failed to account for “getting out the corral and just wanting to sit down” time. But soon after 13 she called and told me her time. I was so proud, but wished I could have talked to her more.

Lesson #4: This is something you do by yourself, but you are not doing it alone.

My next highlight was seeing my sister, who had brought her husband and five year old son halfway across the northeast to cheer for me. I knew she was at mile 16 on the way out (23 on the way back). I was in pretty severe pain by the time I reached her. I asked her to run with me and to “lie to me and tell me I can do this, I look great and you are proud of me.” She ran with me, in boots, without asking a question and reassured me. My nephew stood on the side of the road with his toy trumpet tooting people along.

Lesson #5: Your family will be there for you when you are at your worst.

The next highlight was the 20 mile turn around. I made a promise to myself that I got to listen to music at the 20 mile mark. There was a town, and people and cheering and a beer stand. All of which passed by almost unaware. It was just a “keep going" mindset. But I did get my music. And my music always kicks me into another gear. And that gear was... I didn’t have another gear. I had whatever gear I had. Somewhere back with Allison the 3:50 pacer went by with a cadre of people. Somewhere before the 20 mile point the 4:00 pacer with by with a bigger cadre of people. Now it was just a matter of moving forward. The music helped, not my body, but it calmed my mind. At 22 Katie called again, and it was great to hear her voice. At 23 I stopped to hug my nephew. And on that long strip from 20 back into the city I saw people in pain, walking and lying on the side of the road. All of us patting each other on the back and shouting encouragement.

Lesson #6: You will get there. You will use any resource at your disposal. Just keep going. You will get there.

We finally started to hear the sounds of the city. We finally started to see signs of civilization. And I had a thought that running a marathon is like climbing an ever steepening hill. It never turned from a hill into a wall for me, but it kept getting steeper. Within the last two miles I saw the two best signs of the marathon, confirmations of the generosity at hand. The first one read, “This mile marker is further than most people will get in their entire lives.” I almost hugged the woman who wrote it, but I was still moving. The second, near the 26 mile mark, said, “This was still a good idea. And you look amazing(ish)."

Lesson #7: Our worst moments show our true nature, and we are a caring, humorous, generous people.

Katie picked me up around this point to and ran with me for as long as her blistered feet would allow. And for the first time since mile 14, I ran. I didn’t walk/run. I didn’t give in. I was going to finish this race running. For Katie, for my sister, for the woman who couldn’t get water at one of the stops, for the Korean dude lying on the side of the road, for all the people who shouted my name and “Way to go Mafia!” I told my ankles and hips and knees to shut the f* up and move. And then, I was done.

Lesson #8: The best fuel is love.

I will admit here, if you have read this far down, that it was emotional. That I felt amazing and terrible. That I felt like I had disappointed myself and others for falling apart and not executing. That my first sentient thoughts in the last three hours were not flattering. And now, looking back, I know I was harder on myself than I needed to be. Everyone congratulated me. Everyone was impressed. Even Paula Radcliff said good-job (on my Nike+ app).

Lesson #9: We are our own worst critics, even when we do something beyond what we could have possibly imagined.

After the race we found our car, which was still there. We went to dinner with my sister and nephew and brother-in-law. We drove home talking to friends on the phone. And I went to work yesterday, where more people congratulated me. And, where, many people could not fathom why I (and 39,000 of my closest friends) would do such a thing. I have thought about that a lot. Why would you run a marathon? I think I have come to this. There is no reason to do it. It is beyond the point of exercising, or staying healthy, or staying young. It is more running and a longer distance and more time than serves any reasonable purpose. And that is why we do it, because it is beyond what we need to do.

Lesson #10: We run marathons for no good reason. But for a great reason, because it is more than we think we could possibly do.

Philadelphia Half Marathon: race report

2011-11-21T09:48:00.003-05:00

Beth and I did our final shake-out run on Friday afternoon. We chatted about pacing and the race plan and who was going to wear which watch and it was over far too soon. I spent Friday night convincing myself that I had multiple stress fractures in my leg. I did the tried-and-true test (hopping up and down), which irritated my IT band. My foam roller is flat so I grabbed the next best thing to roll that sucker out.

Grumpy, tapered, carb-loaded and under-exercised, the poet and I got to the expo mid-morning on Saturday. It was a bit of a disappointment - I was hoping to empty my wallet at Brooks and Saucony and Nike and possibly Newton Running, and they either weren't there or had a tiny closet of a booth with no shoes in my size. So we took some pictures and ran.

I had a great time hanging out with our friends on Saturday, talking about running and triathlon and all the things that go along with being part of these ridiculous sports. But pretty soon it was time to get tucked into bed, freak out once more about the race plan, and snooze the night away.

We managed to make it to the start with minimal stress, other than leaving our cars in a questionable parking lot and nearly choking to death on bottled water. I checked my bag full of spectating clothes and then spent 25 minutes doing jumping jacks in the porta-potty line, trying to get things moving. To everyone that heard someone yell, "YESSSS!" from inside, sorry, that was me, but really, are you that surprised? A round of hugs and good lucks and we split up. We were ready.

I bent down to adjust my shoes one more time once we squeezed into the corral. I was listening to my Al Pacino speech and just trying to blow away all the frenzy of the morning. When I stood back up, I felt calm. We were going to do this, or we were going to blow a hole in the earth trying.

We went out fast, which was the plan. A sub-1:50 means only one mile can really start with a 9, and it was the first one. It felt hard, but I knew it would, and I was trying to keep calm. I had configured my Garmin to be showing me only "calories" on the main screen, so I had no information about what we were doing, other than it felt - well, just fast. I was manually lapping the miles throughout, and I did a so-so job of it - some markers I hit right on, some I hit quite late, but all that really mattered was the time on the clock at the end of the day.

I felt Beth push just a little after the first mile marker. I was hanging off her left shoulder, which is the best way for me to pace off of someone - just go into ponytail focus mode and zone out. Miles 2 and 3 came fairly quickly, and it still felt fast, but manageable. I had no HR info, no pacing to freak me out, and I had no idea how far behind the clock we started, so even though I caught a few course clocks, it really didn't mean anything to me. Which was exactly what I needed.

Miles 4 and 5 are down a huge street in Philadelphia, and it was a big boost. We saw plenty of friends cheering, and I was SO happy to see George in this stretch - I love my CAR family! Somewhere in mile 5 it started to feel not so great anymore. I knew that Jon was going to jump in somewhere after the 10K mark, and I was counting down the blocks until we could pick him up. I also knew that mile 7 was a big uphill, and I planned to put my music in when we hit that marker, hoping that it would carry me up and over. Jon was ~~rude~~ kind enough to video a bunch of the race, and when he jumps in, you can hear him ask, "How are you guys doing?" Simultaneously, Beth chirps, "Great!" and I say, "I HATE YOU."

Mile 7 was hard, and I was tired, and I was worried about it feeling so hard and tired with 6 miles to go. My beautiful form collapsed into a humpback slump as we worked our way up the hill. I took my first Roctane at the water station right before the hill started and plugged in my music, and neither of those things helped at all. When we finally hit mile 8, I was dragging hard and I knew we were slowing down. I basically just tried to focus on the ~~feet~~ ~~ponytail~~ ass in front of me and ignore everything else.

There was another long and steep hill right after the mile 9 marker, and it whipped my ass. When we hit the water stop at the end of this mile, I pulled out my emergency backup Roctane, opened it, and then started walking to take it. Somehow I dropped it, so I just poured some water over my head, but I couldn't get started running again. I walked the whole length of the water stop and then some, and Beth said to me, "Just a 5K to go!" and I said, "My legs are done."

I finally got going again, and a good chunk of the next mile was some sweet downhill. I managed to find a second (fifth?) wind somewhere and sped back up, but it was short-lived. I started playing the "finish this song and then you can walk" game with myself, and probably took 3-4 "5 second" walk breaks in the last mile. We finally turned to run up the hill and under the overpass which I knew meant the finish line was close, and Jon turned me me and said, "Time to empty the tank! Let's go!" and I yelled back at him, "MY TANK IS EMPTY."

I found some energy somewhere (dark magic) and came booking out from under the overpass, only to discover that the finish line was NOT in the same place as it was for the September half which is just incredibly rude. Instead it's about another quarter-mile further back around. I can't even remember running this distance, I just remember looking up and seeing the finishing mats and hurling myself across them. I immediately stopped and spat slash slightly vomited on the ground.

So that was my day. In reflection, I am not unhappy about how it went down AT ALL. We went out fast and hard, and it ended up being too fast and too hard and my splits definitely show that. And I don't regret it. We went out at that pace to see if I could hold that pace, and I couldn't. But what if I could have? There was no way I could have known unless I tried. Could I have started out slower and run a more conservative race and probably shaved a few minutes off of my final time? Absolutely, but that wasn't the goal. The goal was to try something crazy and see what I could do. In my entire life, I have never once gone out too fast in a race and blown up, and I've spent plenty of races slightly pissed because I didn't feel like my tank was empty at the end of the race. Not this time. I went out hard, and I blew up, and it was everything I hoped it would be. And Beth and Jon get huge props for pulling me through. I couldn't have done it like this alone.

This is also the healthiest I've ever been at the starting line of a half marathon, and that means a lot. It was my fifth, but it's the first one where I really was able to race the distance. I learned so much about running and racing yesterday. I'm so fascinated by the middle distances, and now that I've raced one, I'm dying to do another, ~~possibly in three weeks~~, but maybe with proper strategy and execution based on my current fitness. More importantly, I'm thrilled that running is finally finding a way to love me back, after years and years of injuries. I turned myself inside-out on the course yesterday, and if it means that I only PR'd by 8 minutes instead of 18, then I'm fine with that. This is my journey, and this race only reflects the decisions I made on a single day in my life. It does not define me.

No excuses. No regrets.

(Beth, you win! Email me!)

random friday facts

2011-11-18T10:17:00.003-05:00

1. I actually don't really like cheesesteaks.

2. I know that I should get really excited about historical places and monuments and whatnot, but instead I'm just really really bored.

3. That said, I'd really like to go to Scotland. Darn you, Diana Gabaldon!

4. We buy a giant bunch of bananas probably every other day.

5. I don't think I could own too many Nike half-zips.

6. I really wish I was 6 feet tall so I looked better in jeans. My little stumpy legs don't get it done.

7. It's 36º out. I'm wearing shorts and have the space heater blowing right on my legs.

8. Almond milk scares me. How do you milk an almond?

9. 2 weeks ago I tried chocolate raspberry Roctane Gu. Roctane basically has speed in it and is amazing, but it tastes JUST LIKE the chocolate raspberry vodka I love, and when I burp, I feel like I've been out drinking.

10. I don't own a grown-up winter coat.

11. I can deal with the sight of my own blood, but not from anyone else.

12. I never buy candy, but if it's right in front of me, I will gobble it down.

13. I think dried flowers are really creepy. They are DEAD, throw them away.

14. I had to get out of bed to pee SIX times last night.

15. I get really irritated when people fail to execute.

16. I'm so excited for this weekend that I want to vomit. Just a little.

17. I could quote the entire "Ghostbusters" movie from start to finish. And do. Often.

18. I'm not sure I've ever played a poker game and not stolen chips from someone. Usually from the poet.

19. I take a Flinstones vitamin every day. My favorite is purple.

Happy Friday, everyone! Good luck to everyone who is racing, especially in Philly - I'll see you there!

Today's RFF packhounds:
Rock the Dogs
myDC
SwiCycloRun
That Pink Girl
The Run Around
Swim.Bike.Run.Life.
Dietitian On The Run

three things thursday

2011-11-17T08:38:00.001-05:00

1. I am FINALLY starting to feel better. Yesterday the urge to stomp around saying, "NOW WHAT?!?!!" arrived (i.e. complete rest day), and this morning I got in the pool to swim for half an hour and didn't want to stop. Now I have some serious ants in my very unserious pants. I'm feeling healthy and the LAST thing I want to do is sit around for another 3 days until Sunday morning rolls around. But I will, and woe on those that have to be around me until I finally cross that starting line.

2. In continuing my never-ending quest to have an excuse to buy new running shoes, I think I'm going to work a few more pairs into the rotation. I really do love my Ravennas, but because they kick up my cranky shins after a few weeks, I can't be in a committed exclusive relationship with them. I put a pair of Asics 2160s in the mix a few weeks ago, and they feel pretty great for short workouts, but I wore them for my more recent 10 miler and they tore the shit out of my feet. Plus they have a chunky heel which I think lends to my old-stride bad habits, but the amount of stability is pretty perfect. The resident mafia shoe expert recommended both the Saucony Guide and the Brooks Defyance as possibilities. I've already stalked their prices online, and I'm hoping to find a great deal on one or either at the expo this weekend. Every PT in my corral has told me that it's a great thing to be constantly switching in and out of (similar but not identical) shoes because it keeps your muscles guessing, so I'm going to do it. My dream is to be just like Dr. Maggs, who said he has at least 6 pairs of shoes in his current rotation. 6 pairs! Swoon. Maybe Graham doesn't go to college after all. Mama needs her fix!

3. I'm going to carry my teeny tiny shuffle with me on Sunday, but I plan to not plug it in until mile 6-8. I could probably listen to "We Found Love" for the entire second half of the race, but just in case I can't, please drop me some music suggestions in the comments. Oh, and if you want to feel REALLY bad about your body, go watch the video for that song. Girl is RIPPED. Go listen anyway, and try to tell me that if that song shuffled up when you were dragging hard, you wouldn't get a serious second wind and fly down the back side of the course. I dare you. So share your favorite good trashy pop beats that will light a fire under my sub-1:50-seeking ass.

Happy Thursday!

mostly wordless wednesday

2011-11-16T07:42:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I checked off a goal from ~~September~~ ~~October~~ November! It started with this.

Plus a bunch of this.

And ended up (with a LOT of help) like this.

But I can't not mention the rest of my day. This is why you don't give tapering triathletes free frozen yogurt coupons.

And somehow I woke up this morning and saw the mythical racing weight on the scale for the first time in a few weeks....it's a Wednesday miracle!

two puppy tuesday

2011-11-15T10:25:00.002-05:00

Otherwise known as, I have nothing else to talk about except how I'm feeling (better but still tight in the chest) and the race on Sunday (as if enough blog posts haven't been dedicated to that already). So here are some pictures of my pups!

At the dog park:

Wondering why we suddenly started feeding them dinner an hour later last week (the food is in that cabinet).

This is where Molly sits while I cook, little fat muffin.

When we finish a peanut butter jar:

It was a clean sock.

Helping me feel better. Yes, I did wear those sweatpants for 3 solid days.

Good night...

Happy Tuesday!

trying to breathe...

2011-11-14T10:39:00.003-05:00

...and believe.

I was a lot more pumped than sad when all of the awesome race results started pouring in Saturday morning. All of my teammates had seriously strong races, and the collection of PRs that showed up in the newsletter this morning only made me slightly wistful that I had been there and nabbed one of my own. Instead, I stayed put in bed for most of the day, venturing out to the gym to do some core and booty-busting work to wake up my glutes that had been allowed to sleep for a solid week while I coughed and wheezed.

Sunday morning I set out on one of my favorite runs - the 4-mile Sunday morning recovery loop that I did all spring with Beth. My legs felt springy and bouncy and happy to be running again, and we chatted our way down into the mid-9s without a lot of effort. Around mile 3.5, my lungs started complaining about the slightly cold air and tightened up a bit, but we finished out the run pretty smoothly and I was able to hold my own in the big pancake breakfast that followed. My achy shins? Turns out a week off was exactly what they needed.

My plan for this week is to err on the side of rest. I woke up this morning and intended to go to the gym and do a light swim and another round of glute wake-ups, but after 5 minutes in the pool I realized that my HR was going nuts and I didn't have a lot of energy, so I shut it down and spent my time stretching in the hot tub instead. I'm hoping to get in a light run tomorrow morning (Tuesday), swim easy on Wednesday and do a shake-out run on Friday, and that's basically going to be it. I feel like my legs might get a little stale with all the time off, but I think these 3 & 4 mile shake out runs are going to be enough to keep me fresh for Sunday. At this point, they have to be.

As for my goals... My science project contest is still going for Philly, and you're welcome to make as many guesses as you want based on my physical and mental status throughout the week, and I'll still send beer and chocolate and cookies to whoever gets closest. All this rest has been good for my body but has also given me a lot of time to think about racing. At Waterman's, I let my head get the best of me. I crashed my bike, and physically, was fine. However, I was completely unable to recover mentally, and I managed to drag myself all the way through until mile 7 of the run, and then I crumbled into a sobbing, foot-stamping, why-God-why mess. I've talked before about my athletic abilities, and how the one thing I believe I have going for me is a ridiculous ability not to give up, and that failed me last month. But instead of dwelling on it, all I've been thinking about is how NOT to let that happen in this race.

I set up that science contest because I wanted to make sure that I set a reasonable goal for this race. I haven't had a training cycle dedicated to the half marathon. I actually spent 3 months in a 70.3 training cycle which I truly believe was a bad fit for me, and it took at least 2 of the 4 weeks between these races before I felt like I was myself again once I laced up my running shoes. But it doesn't matter. I had a great training cycle in the spring and it all fell apart 2 weeks before race day, and that didn't matter either. I'm going to try and channel that great training cycle this week while my body rests and heals, and when I toe the line on Sunday morning, I'm going after that sub-1:50 I wanted last March. I probably won't hit it, I might not even come close, I might blow up in the most spectacularly awesome fashion and end up walking it in, but if I'm healthy when that gun goes off, I will turn myself inside-out trying to make it happen. At this point, where my head is, I think I need to go after it this way. Setting a conservative goal that I can definitely achieve and then achieving it? That's not how I roll. I'm going after the slightly ridiculous, the no-way goal, and will I be disappointed if I don't hit it? Sure, but not as frustrated as I'll be if I don't go after it at all. I choked out this mantra to Amy last spring, when I was running one of the many 5Ks I've run coming back from injury after injury, and I'm sure it'll be in my head as I fight through 13.1 miles on Sunday. Your heart is a weapon the size of your first. My heart is full, and my mental game is strong, and I will kick your ass with that. Every time.

random friday facts

2011-11-11T08:22:00.007-05:00

1. I held my nose while swimming until I was.....27?

2. I think compression socks make my knees look fat.

3. The registration page for my spring 70.3 has been open in a tab for at least a month now. I'm not sure why I can't pull that trigger.

4. I don't understand why a gas stove is better than electric.

5. We don't own an iron.

6. Gravy is disgusting.

7. It takes me 17 strokes to swim 25 yards.

8. I love doing karaoke ("Papa Was a Rolling Stone" is always a fave) in trashy bars.

9. I constantly "clean up" the refrigerator by putting things on shelves in an order that I don't really understand.

10. I'm still not completely sure that I'm doing the meters to yards conversion correctly, but it doesn't matter because that OWS always feels long and REALLY boring.

11. I read a lot of personal finance blogs. I wish I could write one but my financial life just isn't that interesting, and I don't think I should rack up $400000 in debt just so I can blog about getting out of it.

12. If I ever popped out a kid, it would be taking piano lessons, on the swim team and going to Sunday school until it got shipped off to college. Life skills.

13. We're thinking about moving.

14. I wish I was the kind of woman who wore really high heels, drank coffee and owned lots of scarves. Instead I'm sitting on the bed in my underpants drinking Powerade Zero and talking to my puppies.

15. I like training for triathlon much more than race day.

16. It makes me really sad when Molly gets the hiccups.

And, not random, but just a fact: I will not be running Richmond this weekend.

Other RFF-ers:
Dietitian on the Run
Keep On Running
Knickers In A Twist
Rock The Dogs
The Run Around
Speed Laces
Miss Zippy
SwiCycleRun