run this amazing day

wordless wednesday: ass and puppy

2012-02-29T09:53:00.001-05:00

You guys probably don't realize how much work it is to take a decent ass picture. I was the creeper in the locker room for about ten minutes trying to get this shot right.

I finally just gave up and took this one.

I'm also extremely excited about my sexy new bake-and-wear bike shoes.

Sadly, there was garlic bread in the oven so I couldn't make shoe casserole last night.

However, the puppies all approved of the new addition to the shoe family.

Ass and puppy, with a side of new bike shoe.

Happy Wednesday.

don't call it a comeback

2012-02-28T10:41:00.000-05:00

If you thought for a second that I could triumphantly return to running without documenting every little tiny insignificant step, well, then you're a fool.

I was granted ten minutes of running at my PT appointment yesterday morning, and I tried to wait until the conditions were ideal to head out: sun shining, wind gently whipping my sunglasses off and into the street, stomach the perfect combination of "I ate too much pasta for lunch" and "feed me again, please."

The poet made sure to commemorate the occasion by taking at least six photos for every glorious minute I was permitted to bounce down the street.

Indeed, it was a family affair.

I started out pretty tentatively, but after a minute or two without shooting pain up my leg, settled in and it felt oh-so-good. Heavenly, even. Big ups to my calf.

Sadly, 10 minutes and 47 seconds was definitely enough for the first day, and I woke up sore and stiff and limping just a bit, but I'll take it. Don't call it a comeback, baby, I've been here for years.

that light had better not be an oncoming train

2012-02-27T11:47:00.001-05:00

I get to try 10 minutes of running today! I hope it feels like this:

But it will probably feel more like this:

But I don't care! I'm so cracked out on the fact that I'm healing that I almost can't deal with myself. The pink boxes are back, bitches! (That's the Training Peaks boxes for those not in the know).

Happiest of Mondays, friends!

random friday facts

2012-02-24T11:20:00.000-05:00

1. I can't sleep with socks on.

2. Having the hiccups makes me really angry.

3. There is a mouse living behind the washing machine, and he is smarter than several different kinds of mouse traps.

4. I changed my mind a lot in college, but eventually graduated with the same major I started out in.

5. I like that my smoothie is pink.

6. When I first moved to DC, I was mad because I liked it so much I thought I could live here forever. I wished I had moved other places first and settled here. Now I don't think that anymore.

7. In any situation, I really appreciate good manners.

8. I think white spandex is a terrible invention.

9. Sometimes I worry about who is going to take care of me when I'm old.

10. My favorite kind of tea is Earl Gray (decaf).

11. When something makes me laugh, I repeat it over and over.

12. There is no peace like waking up with a puppy snoring in your ear.

13. I bought calcium chews and glucosamine this morning. I'm getting old.

14. It's been so nice to ride outside this week. I can't wait to get back out to Skyline Drive and do a few hours of 8mph climbing.

15. IMCdA is four months from today.

16. Right now, Sofie is doing what's called "blowing her coat," probably for the first time in her life. This much hair comes off of her 4-5 times a day, every day.

17. I think you can tell how good or bad my day was by what I cook for dinner, and whether or not there is music playing in the kitchen.

18. My goggles have been leaking for weeks. I bought a new pair, and those were leaky, so I exchanged them for another pair, and THOSE were leaky, so I exchanged them for another pair, and now I'm afraid to try them out.

19. I think I could eat pancakes every day.

20. I like obnoxiously-colored workout gear.

21. I only own one pair of dress pants, and they are too big.

22. We are terrible about recycling, but now that we have the big blue bins, I am trying to be better about it.

Happy Friday, friends! Leave me something random about you or let me know if you RFF'd!

three things thursday

2012-02-23T10:41:00.000-05:00

1. The "what the hell is wrong with my leg" trainwreck Q&A I've been playing for the last week was abruptly halted yesterday with a diagnosis: partially torn soleus. The soleus is the big calf muscle that lives inside of the outer calf muscles and runs up the back/inside of your lower leg. I came home and googled it and every single symptom, every single one fits, it all just clunked into place. The symptoms of a gradual tear due to overuse or tightness, the pre-tear symptoms, all the various places my leg has hurt since this all happened, everything. Essentially the tightness in my shins that was caused by all my gait changes was exacerbated by my failure to transition into my Newtons properly along with an increase in running volume (NOT intensity), and eventually that tightness turned into a tear which grew until I couldn't run anymore. Hindsight is such a bitch.

2. My PT is overjoyed about the diagnosis because it finally all makes sense. He said that the tear was what caused all the inflammation in my outer calf muscles, which he broke up last week and caused all that sweet bruising. Now that the outer calf muscles are no longer swollen and ridiculously inflamed, he could feel the knot of scar tissue surrounding the tear. And nothing to do with a knot of scar tissue except rip it apart with the Graston tools. It caused the kind of pain where I can no longer be tense and pull away but instead can do nothing but just give up and succumb and let it wash over me. However, when he was done, I got up and could walk around without the pain shooting up from my heel for the first time since this mess happened. It feels like he ripped my calf muscle in half - which he sort of did - and I'm rocking a pretty serious pimp limp. But it also feels better, it's hard to explain how I can be in some pretty serious post-Graston pain AND feel better, but I feel like it's healing, like he did good work and now all the inflammation and scar tissue and crap just needs to be washed away so the muscle can heal.

3. I've been trying really hard to not fall in the pit of injury despair about this over the past two weeks. Last year when I injured my back, I literally climbed in bed and ate nothing but Oreos until my girlfriends showed up without warning and dragged me down the street for Thai food and injury tales of their own. It's so tempting, and would be so easy to let it rock my boat, but the lesson I'm trying to teach myself this time around is to not let it fuck with me emotionally. That doesn't mean I haven't had bad moments, that doesn't mean I didn't get off the trainer yesterday morning and throw my bike shoes on the ground because of how mad I was that it hurt to push hard in a low gear, that doesn't mean I didn't start crying in my office when thinking about all the gorgeous weather running I am missing right now. But I'm trying, I'm working really hard to keep a good outlook - not only externally, not only to my friends, not just keeping a brave face on it, but internally as well, really staying calm and breathing.

And the support that has been zinging my way from everywhere has been amazing. It feeds me where I need to feel strong, it reminds me that I'm not alone.

I don't know why either, but I've said before that while I don't really understand why this is my journey, I'm going to own it. In the big picture of my season and even the little picture of the next month, this is a bump in the road. So I'm going to just bump right over it and roll forwards. It really is hard sometimes, to be an easily-injured klutz in a sport that is so hard on the body, but it's who I am now and I'd certainly rather this be my life than watching it pass by from the couch. Sure, I wouldn't have a torn muscle in my stupid leg, but I would have missed out on so much happiness as well, and I'll take it if it means that I get to wring myself dry in the pool and fly down a mountain on a bicycle at 50mph and cross that finish line over and over and over. To the universe: if this is the deal, if these are the trade-offs, than it's worth it. I accept.

wordless wednesday

2012-02-22T10:08:00.000-05:00

Tennis balls are a serious business.

Who will emerge victorious?

Molly, duh.

a jumble of semi-related thoughts

2012-02-21T11:59:00.001-05:00

My trick collapsing leg is still being quite the trickster, and as such, I haven't run in over a week. I've done a handful of 10-20 second test runs, each slightly less painful than the last, but I'm still getting quite a bit of pain in my ankle shooting up my calf and into my knee on impact. Pool running doesn't hurt, but it irritates my hip flexors, so I'm staring down a pretty serious swim+bike block until my body gets its shit together. I've been giving the angry calf plenty of attention in the form of the weird salt bath, compression socks, ice, and continued torture from Dr. Paul, which has left me rocking this bad boy.

As most of you know, the weather was nice enough outside this weekend that I could take my new crank out for a spin, so we decided to head into Arlington to test that sucker out on the Tuesday night Conte's hill loop. 2.5 loops plus some bonus climbs in and out of Falls Church later, I'm pretty happy to say that I've regained the ability to climb without mashing my brains out. It does mean that all of my gears are in a different place yet again, and I need to re-re-learn how to control the bike as I climb and descend, plus the bike itself is still fairly new to me and I'm figuring out how to eat and drink and take pictures of myself without crashing. But it was the kind of ride where I can't do anything except feel thrilled to pieces to be alive, and almost quiets the part of my brain that is angry about being unable to run.

I was fortunate enough to have Monday off, and I was ~~stupid~~ reckless enough to tell my coach Sunday evening that I was feeling extremely rested and would love a big day in the pool and on the bike. She was happy to deliver, and after finishing my swim workout (description included lots of the word HARD) and getting my calf mashed up, I bundled up and headed into Maryland to climb lots of hills and play chicken with idiots driving silver Mercedes'. This wasn't a HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY ride, this was the kind of ride where I learned a lot about where I am and got a good strong reality check about how much work is ahead of me to get where I want to be this season. Being mostly inside on the trainer for the past few months, I've lost a lot of my good habits as related to nutrition and hydration.

By the end of last fall I had it down to a science and it worked. I knew how much and when to drink and how much and when to take in calories, and it's been a really long time since I've bonked on the bike. But bonk I did, yesterday, bonk bonk bonk all the way to the bottom of a long descent where I pulled over and ate every last calorie I had in my bottle, my pockets, stuffed in my bento box and hidden in my seat bag behind the spare tubes. 25 minutes later I still had the glassy-eyed slow-pedaling detachment that I associate with a serious need for fuel and pulled into a gas station to throw some more fat calories and caffeine down the hatch. I had been tracking pretty carefully since the beginning of the ride and didn't think I was short, but the wonderful thing is, your body doesn't give a flying fuck about the math. If it wants fuel, it wants it, and no amount of me thinking "but I've had 240-250 calories per hour, what's the problem?" was going to change that. I think I failed to recognize that I was starting to ride at 11:30am instead of 5:30am and had only eaten about 500 calories so far in the day, I had done a swim with lots of hard effort and I wasn't taking into account how much work my body was doing to fight the pretty hard winds and not-cold-but-definitely-chilly temperatures. I only had liquid calories with me, which is usually fine, but I probably should have eaten more non-liquid calories before leaving on the ride to give my stomach something to do the first easy hour. I was able to spend a great deal of the ride in aero, including every single long climb, but I think that works against me in terms of nutrition. It's all a balance, I just need to figure it out again. I also got a good feel for where my climbing ability and endurance is at right now, and it's both slightly depressing and extremely motivating. So, lots of work ahead, lots to be done on the bike, but I'm ready to put my nose down and bull forward. When I finally rolled back up the driveway just ahead of the setting sun, I was worn out to my core but pleased about all the good stuff I had been able to work on. Yes, my jacket can been seen from outer space and I don't care, it was 70% off last April and it keeps me warm despite extreme ugliness.

This is the first time I've really been injured in any way in the midst of full-blown triathlon training, and it's interesting how my responses are different. I can bike and swim almost completely without issue, but there's a hole in my life where running usually is - and it's a different, smaller kind of hole than when I've been injured before. Ever since college, I've felt secure in classifying myself as a runner. I wasn't fast, I didn't do it a lot, but it brought me a great deal of joy and I wore that proudly. I had special pants and knew how to wear my iPod headphones down the back of my shirt and had loops and routes and gave myself little pats on the back every time I got out the front door. And when I got injured and couldn't run, I had nothing left. It sent me reeling into a pretty deep depression that made it harder to climb out the back end. Now, not being able to run is still creating a void, but it's tinier and harder to see and isn't a black hole. Part of that is because I can still swim and ride, and my schedule can be filled up with those things to keep the itchy parts of me happy while I wait for the leg to heal. Part of it is definitely because my coach is being pretty zen about the whole thing and not turning on all the panic stations, and that is calming. And I think part of it is just because I'm not a runner anymore. It's not what defines me. I've become one of these crazy multi-sport athletes, a triathlete, and not only am I happier here than I ever was as a runner, I'm steady. I never thought I would like being in the pool, but I find a lot of peace in the water and get real giggly when those 6K swims show up on my training plan. I've loved the bike since the first day I rode it, and the only thing I don't like about heading out for a ride is how annoying the trail is the first 40 minutes I roll away from my house. Running will always be how I got started, but I think I've finally stepped away from the roller-coaster love affair I've had with it for the last ten years. So don't call me a runner, not anymore. I'm putting down some pretty serious roots in the land of swim-bike-run, I'm thrilled to be here, and I'm never going back.

random friday facts

2012-02-17T13:44:00.000-05:00

1. I don't like scented candles that smell like cookies, vanilla, sugar, anything like that. I like the light flowers and the minty stuff.

2. I think someone wrote my phone number on a bathroom wall somewhere. I've been getting a lot of very interesting picture texts from wrong numbers.

3. This is the first house I've lived in since I left for college that has curtains in it.

4. I really like my boss.

5. I have a very difficult time choosing furniture.

6. I got my ankle realigned this morning. Stupid hypermobility.

7. I found a pair of running shorts with a pocket. And it zips closed. Why don't more companies do this?

8. I find it hilarious that my dogs bark at the mailman.

9. I wish my house had more windows and natural light.

10. It makes me happy in a way that I can't describe when all the puppies snuggle up together.

11. I don't buy groupon-type deals.

12. I feel like my electric toothbrush is sad when the batteries die.

13. I hate when men wear pleated khaki pants.

14. I am absolutely terrible at remembering to send birthday cards to friends.

15. I'm still hungry and in love with the pool. MOAR SWIMMING PLZ!!!!!

16. I've been wearing my change-every-3-month contacts for at least 6 months now.

17. Still stuck in a cooking rut, but at least I'm eating more veggies.

18. I've gone almost 4 days without drinking any Powerade Zero.

Happy Friday, friends! Share your RFF's with me, and have a great weekend!

three things thursday

2012-02-16T09:41:00.000-05:00

1. The first thing has got to be ow. Lots of strange things have been happening to my legs since my appointment last week - first it seemed like it was healing, then I had a perfectly good long run, then some weird calf pain came back, then my knee felt like it was 8 times bigger than it should be, more collapsing leg, all kinds of fun stuff. I plunked that hot mess on the desk of the fabulous Dr. Paul, and from that he deduced that my posterior chain is just real pissed. (Note: any medical information told to me goes through the cheese grater of my ability to remember so it's possible that this is all wrong.) My solaris muscle (one of the hamstrings, apparently there are many) was really tight and pulling on my knee from the top, and my calf was a giant mess of inflammation-turned-clumpy-scarlike-tissue that was actually glueing my two calf muscles together and yanking on my knee from the back. So that's the recipe for collapsing leg, in case you are trying to make it at home.

Anyhow, out came the giant metal toothbrush. The solaris gave in pretty easily, but I think that the re-separating of my calf muscles might nudge out the shins for the most painful Graston session yet. It essentially felt like someone used a knife to slice open my skin, poured salt and gasoline in the wound, set it on fire, and then rubbed it up and down for about 10 minutes with a handsaw. This is the first time I've actually tried to use my safe word ("stop") in a session. When he was done, my magical collapsing leg had fled, though, so I'll take it. I generally don't bruise from these sessions but I'm sporting a sick black-and-blue from this one. He recommended an Epsom salt bath (I did it although I have no idea what it is supposed to do), lots of ice and stretching and I go back in tomorrow for another round. I'll try to keep the blood-curdling shrieks to a minimum this time.

2. I decided to balance my desire to lay in bed eating spinach and blueberries and grapefruit all week with a night out with some of my favorite girls. Despite the fact that several of them have blogs of their own, I somehow managed to escape without a single picture being taken of my food, our table, or the group shot where we are all leaning over weirdly and have the flash reflecting off of our foreheads. I had a blast and was able to sneak in some good-for-recovery foods (limes, tomatoes, beans) and did not even one time have to hold up my fingers to show how miles I ran that morning. I continued to behave like a responsible athlete by climbing directly into the Epsom salt bath when I got home, showing admirable restraint by only eating ~~one~~ ~~two~~ ~~most~~ a few of the chocolates from the 70%-off day-after box that the poet picked up after my frantic pre-dinner phone call from the sold-out CVS in Dupont Circle.

3. The bike refit I did a few weeks ago is almost perfectly good. My shoulder pain is staying away, but something was done to my saddle that means the seam of my bike shorts is now perfectly aligned between my sit bones and the edge of the saddle. I've never had saddle problems before - only one instance of having a sore lanced and that was from wearing old chamois-fraying shorts - and I'm not interested in starting now, so I might be tootling back to the shop today or tomorrow to get things adjusted yet again. But I'm wondering, lady friends, if it's not so much the position of the saddle but the shape. I've tried multiple pairs of shorts and the chamois seam seems to ride constantly in the same place, which makes me think that maybe the back of my saddle is either slightly too wide or slightly too narrow. Before I was refit, I was constantly sliding back on my saddle, which I was told was because it was too far forward. Now that the saddle is in the correct place, I'm wondering if maybe it's not right for me. I really don't want to set fire to any more cash in the name of triathlon, and I'm more inclined to pursue the fit route before I pursue the expensive new-saddle route, but if you've had similar sit-bones/seam/saddle issues, I'd love to hear about it. My current saddle is whatever came on the QR - some kind of Adamo.

Happy Thursday friends! Let's talk us some crotch.

wordless wednesday

2012-02-15T07:38:00.002-05:00

I'm honored and more than a little intimidated to be included on this list of pretty ridiculously awesome athletes.

It's not just about the ass shots anymore, boys and girls.

Okay, it's always going to be a little bit about the ass shots.

on resting

2012-02-14T13:55:00.000-05:00

It's rest week now. I'm a little torn about rest week, because on one hand, I have all this free time and should make all those dates I haven't been able to make for the past three weeks because I've been a hamster on a Training Peaks wheel. But on the other hand, rest week is about letting all my little broken parts heal so they can be stronger for the next three weeks. So I'm trying to compromise. Yesterday and today I am treating my body like the little tired solider it is. Lots of time drinking tea and resting with my legs up and having toast instead of a protein smoothie for breakfast. I've got plans for later in the week to spend time with some friends, but for the most part I'm going to really try and rest. To heal.

I came out of this block with some pretty pissed off legs. I think I've zeroed in on what caused the problem (a hard run in some shoes I wasn't completely adapted to yet, followed six hours later by a not-so-short run). I got pummeled by the evil steel toothbrushes last week, which got me through the weekend, but now it's time to let the blood cells carry away the angry black monsters of inflammation. I took a day away from poking things with a sharp stick and today I'll just gently foam roll to get the blood moving. I'll get Graston'd to death again tomorrow and later in the week I'll try a test run, but right now I feel like the best thing I can do for my body is to be gentle with it and let there be peace.

The wonderful thing about training properly - periodization, the fancy folks call it - is that by the time recovery week rolls around, I'm truly ready for the break. My workouts are all pretty short and light and I can execute them without a lot of physical or mental effort and then move on with my day. Last time I didn't start itching for the hurt again until the weekend rolled around, and I feel the same way now. I'm not bouncy and twitchy and dying to go hammer some bitches. Watching the "who can go faster" competition roll by on twitter barely interests me. For such a long time, my training was going all hard all the time, and I never properly rested, and while I made progress, there was no master plan. There was no thought into a bigger picture of any sort. Instead I just got caught up in what everyone else was doing, and that's definitely what is not best for me. Sure, there have been times in the past few weeks where I've been really lonely in training, and where I've tried to schedule workouts with friends to get out of that funk, where I've tried to move my life around to make it so I don't have to spend another three hours in my head. And when I've subsequently been blown off, it does piss me off, it does hurt my delicate little pink feelings, and it definitely makes me appreciate the people who will join me for a run here, or a swim there. But I believe in what I'm doing, I believe that the path I'm on is a good one, and if I have to travel it alone, then those are the sacrifices I am choosing to make.

So if you're looking for me this week, I won't be on the bike. I won't be in the pool and I definitely won't be out stomping around outside in my running shoes. I'll be on the couch with my legs up. I'll be cooking good strong muscle-building dinners and going to bed at 8pm. I'll be showering in my own bathroom instead of at the gym for the sixth time in five days. I'll be having a quiet date with my number one fan, the one who never lets me down but instead is unfailingly supportive of the crazy life I have chosen. But most importantly, I'll be trying really hard to let go of all the noise that wants to surround me and suck me under. There is a lot of it, right now, and it is pretty noisy noise, and what I need is not to fight against it, but instead to let it roll right by me, let it roll off me and away while I sit in the peaceful place I am trying to create for myself. It's right here, it's the mental work I need to do while my physical parts rest, it's the other kind of toughness I need to be building.

Love The Run You're With 5K: throwback race report

2012-02-13T11:07:00.002-05:00

New Year's Eve 2009 brought the first time I had run any distance since November 4th. I had been jumping through hoops with a multitude of doctors in those two months, all who told me to stay off my right foot with the weird pain. I had a couple of cortisone injections and a bunch of x-rays, but finally had been cleared to run. After the NYE race, I began running just a little bit, on the treadmill at the gym where my boyfriend had purchased us gym memberships for Christmas. By the time February rolled around, I was running at least two and sometimes even three times a week.

I signed up for the 5K. My boyfriend had been running pretty regularly for a while now and he signed up as well, his first race. The original date for the race was Sunday, February 14, but the race was postponed after a huge snowstorm hit the DC area.

I was actually pretty glad to have another couple weeks of runs under my belt and even got in a long run of 5.5 miles one week before the race. I was ready. I also managed to convince my good friend and new running buddy Rudi to sign up. I After huddling in the Starbucks for a while pre-race, we lined up and went. Rudi and I started together and the poet started a little bit further back.

I remember so clearly being thrilled to be in a giant pack of so many runners. The first song on my 35-minute playlist was the Ke$ha song about brushing your teeth with a bottle of Jack, and I was singing the lyrics out loud to Rudi (standard) as we turned the corner and headed up the huge hill. My only real goal for the race was to run the entire time. I had forgotten my Garmin (Forerunner 50, no GPS) at home so I just tried to stay extra steady on the hills. Somewhere after the 2-mile marker, Rudi took a quick break to grab some water and I just kept going. I couldn't believe how far away the 3-mile marker was, but I enjoyed running back down the hill and around into the finish. 34:14 was my final time.

Rudi and the poet weren't far behind me. We took some post-race pictures in the parking lot and celebrated.

Someone taught us (probably a blogger) that crossing your legs makes your thighs look thinner.

The poet decided that since he had run a race, he would buy real running shoes and stop running in the ones he bought at Target. So we went to Pacers, stopping at the house first to let our little puppy outside.

He was pretty proud of us.

random friday facts

2012-02-10T12:00:00.000-05:00

1. I remember reading something somewhere a while ago that said something to the effect of, while you are training hard, you aren't growing brain cells. That sentence should prove that this theory is correct.

2. Two separate women stared at my crotch this morning in the locker room. I'll get a bikini wax next week, RELAX.

3. Yesterday I tried to eat conversation hearts on the trainer. It's a pretty bad idea.

4. We bought one of those $20 digital-rabbit-ears thing for the TV a few weeks ago. I still watch ~~all~~ both of my shows online, but it brought the NFL back into this house.

5. I buy my compression socks one size too small for some extra leg hug action.

6. My eating has been totally out of control this week. I'm trying hard to make sure I'm putting down GOOD food (for the most part #3) but the sheer amount is kind of startling.

7. I wish I had a prehensile tail.

8. The best thing about fixing my broken ass? I don't have to wear spandex shorts anymore.

9. Still no itch to race.

10. I don't care about Valentine's Day.

11. If I don't read before bed, I don't sleep as well.

12. I miss being outside on the bike. I even miss sweating my brains out when it's 102º at 6pm and I'm in for an hour of chasing NCVC ass desperately up another hill.

13. This blog post has been sitting open for over two hours while I try and think of another fact but I'm pretty sure my brain has shut down for the day. Instead, I shall post it. Let me know if you RFF'd so I can read some posts that are less lame than this one.

three things thursday

2012-02-09T10:41:00.002-05:00

1. My cranky shins started barking extra loudly earlier this week after a double-digit double-run day, so I went to see my "strength is important and oh this is actually going to really hurt" PT for some relief. My left shin/calf was aching every time I put weight on that leg, my IT band/hip was sending zip zaps of pain all over the place and my knee kept buckling inwards for some reason. His diagnosis is that none of it is anything too serious, but it's all related and slowly crawling upwards from my foot. My shin crankiness has been around for a while, and is largely from my body adjusting to the changes that happened to my gait once my glutes started firing last summer. In the past 2-3 weeks, I've run a higher volume of weekly miles than I probably ever have in my life, so that contributed, and I'm in a peak week of training right now, where the name of the game is loading up the training stress. I also started wearing a pair of extra-comfy new pink shoes about six weeks ago without taking the time to transition into them ~~correctly~~ slowly. Add all those pieces together and I've got a stack of angry body parts. So he Graston'd my shins, my adductors, my IT band and my hamstring, did some ART on my hip flexors, realigned my sacrum and sent me packing with a prescription for ice, stretching, and less Newton-running for a little while so everything can just calm down. This morning I feel like someone beat the shit out of me, which is usually a good sign. I've got four more hard days of hard training to get through and then I can sit on the couch for an entire day and call it rest.

2. I've always kind of poo-poo'd the idea of getting a regular massage - mostly because I'm usually in and out of PT so often that I don't need anything extra. But before yesterday, it had been almost six weeks since anyone had smashed my bits. I've started to consider the idea of getting a massage done, maybe monthly or even bi-weekly if I can afford it, going forward into IM training. I've collected a handful of recommendations of people who will pound the living crap out of me, and I'm hoping that starting in March this can fit in the budget. I'm curious to hear from you guys - do you get regular massages as part of your training? Where in the cycle do you get a massage and what magic does it do for you?

3. All of that said, it's confession time. For the past two months, I've done a really crappy job of stretching, sticking, icing, foam rolling, or really doing anything except fluttering my eyelashes at the poet and asking him to rub the knots out of my back. I KNOW. For some reason I decided that I would just wear compression socks all the time and eat more spinach and that was all I needed. Sadly, this is very obviously not the case (see items #1 and #2), so I'll be trying to make friends with my foam roller on a daily basis instead of just chasing Molly around with it (she barks her brains out, it's hilarious). I know most people say to just do it at night while you watch TV, but I don't ever watch TV and I pretty much go straight from the dinner table to bed. I know you're jealous of my incredibly exciting life. I also probably need to finally invest in a decent desk chair since I've been working from home for almost three years yet am still sitting on an old kitchen chair that I inherited from my uncle in 2002, which can't be helping my cranky sacrum at all. But does anyone honestly ever remember to foam roll every day? I'm going to try and roll, stick, and do some light stretching at least once a day. We'll see what happens, I'll probably either pull a muscle or poke my eye out with the stick and that, dear blog friends, will be the end of that.

wordless wednesday

2012-02-08T09:53:00.001-05:00

It might be slightly crazy a lot of the time, but it was totally and completely worth it.

the bars, the bars

2012-02-07T11:33:00.000-05:00

Like it or not, I eat some kind of protein/fruit/granola/something bar about once a day. They are quick and convenient and for the most part, better than eating a candy bar when I'm in a hurry. And just like everything else in my nutrition life, there has been an evolution. I used to only eat Kashi bars, especially the chocolate ones. Then I started looking at nutrition facts. YIKES. So now I have a big pile of different brands/flavors that I rotate through, and they all serve different purposes (for example, this box was on sale at Costco). I thought it might be marginally interesting to talk about it (it's February and I'm not racing, cut me some slack, there isn't a lot else going on).

Clif Bar
The Clif bar, for a long time, was my wake-up-and-go-exercise bar. No matter what I was doing, it would go in the mouth and I'd be out the door. My favorite flavor was Cool Mint Chocolate, but then I discovered it had caffeine in it so I switched to Crunchy Peanut Butter. But then I discovered that these suckers have a lot of carbohydrates in them, mostly from sugar. So now I only grab a box of these if they are really on sale, and then I save them for pre-longer/tougher workouts. They are also good if it's two hours until dinner and I'm trying not to graze on everything in the pantry.

Luna Bar
The Luna bar was my original bar love. Chocolate Raspberry and Lemon Crisp are my two favorites, and they also were a wake-up-and-go bar for me. I also spend most of my first year as a cyclist eating them on the ride. But the Clif bars are a little more filling and have a tiny bit more protein in them, so I eventually stopped buying these.

Luna Protein Bar
When I first tried this bar, I thought it was gross. I think I tried the Cookie Dough flavor, and it was thick and tasteless. So I avoided these for a while, but then the Mint Chocolate Chip came out and I gave it another try. Oh, this is a great bar (note: I'm fairly sure they changed the recipe). A solid amount of protein, not a TON of sugar, and keeps me feeling full through longer workouts. The only problem I have with it is that it has a lot of fiber in it, which makes it a definite no-no before high-intensity workouts. It also doesn't have any ingredients with the word "syrup" in there anywhere, which is something I look for in a bar. I had one of these this morning before an hour run and wasn't hungry when I arrived back home.

Clif Mojo
I bought a box of these at Trader Joe's one week out of idle curiosity, mainly because the "Peanut Butter Pretzel" flavor sounded amazing. I found that, for whatever reason, they didn't fill me up at all and I'd be hungry again 30 minutes later. We buy them occasionally when they are on sale at Costco but I mostly keep them in my purse as the emergency back-up food and put them in the pile that the poet is allowed to steal from.

Powerbar Performance
This one was recommended to me by my former coach as a pre-race meal. This bar looks like a weird gummy lump of ooge. It's very chewy and feels like it's probably going to pull my fillings out. I'm not a huge fan because it's obviously really processed. However, it has the right balance of carbs/protein/fat that I need pre-race and is low in fiber so I don't want to whoops in my pants after running hard. After testing it out in training and racing last fall, I pretty much reserve this one for race day because it's just weird, but it works.

Larabar
These I just like because they are delicious, and my RD friend approved them to stay in my diet as they are actually made from real food. I'll eat one in the morning before a not-long workout, or between two back-to-back workouts that require driving (long run then swim, for example) or snack on one in the horrible empty time between my fifth breakfast and lunch. My favorite flavor, Cherry Pie, has three ingredients: dates, almond, cherries. It doesn't get a lot simpler than that. The Key Lime Pie flavor is pretty brilliant, I have no idea how they make those five ingredients equal tasting like pie.

PureFit Bar
I recently got some PureFit nutrition bars to try. These are advertised as all-natural, gluten-free, wheat-free, dairy-free, vegan, kosher, high in protein and diabetic-friendly. Whew. That's a tall order. These little guys have a ton of protein in them, but also a ton of fiber. I tried the granola crunch bar first, and it left me feeling a little heavy going into my morning workout. The chocolate brownie flavor was pretty good, and much more tasty. I think I'd keep these in the rotation as a pre-long-low-intensity workout bar - the amount of fiber scares me a little bit too much to have one pre-race.

I also didn't realize until I started writing this just how much of it comes from one source: Clif. I try not to eat more than one "bar" a day in my current quest to rid my diet of highly processed food. I'm also trying to figure out what I can make at home that will do the same thing these bars do. I attempted to turn this pre-workout pumpkin bread into a muffin recipe and it was a dismal failure. I know that I can "make" my own Larabars but I feel like that defeats the purpose a bit (and I'm lazy). So, question time, blog friends. What do you eat pre-workout? Where can I get it? Do any of you make your own pre-workout foods?

ass and puppy

2012-02-06T13:32:00.000-05:00

I got in this weekend to get refit on my bike. Of course I documented every step for you all.

Yes, I do have enormous thighs.

Sunday afternoon I spent inside hiding from the nasty weather, watching old episodes of the Biggest Loser and chatting.

With a tiny little cheerleader.

Sarah approved the guest shot of her ass.

My appetite for the past week or so has been pretty depressed, despite my training volume. I'm pretty sure it caught up with me Sunday evening, but I beat it into submission with homemade chili and probably less than half a bag of M&Ms. How was your weekend?

random friday facts

2012-02-03T10:15:00.000-05:00

1. The yoga class with the teacher that I really like meets on the only weekday that I have a meeting over my lunch hour and can't go. It's hard being me.

2. We finally figured out why Sofie smells so bad after four baths and cleaning her ears out every day for a month. Double ear infection and massive skin infection.

3. My company doesn't do direct deposit, and I really miss it.

4. I wish I could mute people on twitter.

5. I love NFL football, but I really don't care about the Super Bowl this year.

6. I have absolutely no itch to race (or sign up for races) right now.

7. I made muffins last night. With a hammer.

8. I got up early(ish) this morning to swim and didn't realize until I was in the water that I actually could have slept in another hour.

9. I am still not planning anything for after IM in 2012, but I've already had rather vague thoughts about what I'd like to do in 2013. This horrifies me.

10. I had a bunion surgically removed on my left foot when I was 15.

11. When I moved in here, I went from my own huge walk-in closet to sharing a tiny half-closet. Now I can't imagine having more clothes than I do.

12. Graham just jumped up next to me and started licking my ear. He says hi, blog land.

13. I think it's weird to have a master bedroom in the basement, but we're thinking about moving things around.

14. I hate it when people put smile faces in work email.

15. Our couch and matching chair don't actually match.

16. I finally tried a Gu flavor other than the chocolates (raspberry, mint, etc).

17. Every time Molly yawns hugely it makes me really happy.

18. I probably own about 20-25 cookbooks and have never opened a single one.

19. I want airy white curtains for our bedroom. I also like sleeping in complete, solid darkness.

20. Yesterday I hit the highest HR I've ever hit on the trainer (spoiler: not high at all). Thanks, Limp Bizkit.

21. Our washer/dryer is really tiny. It makes washing sheets a royal pain in the ass.

22. I'm not sure my MBA was worth the stress of dealing with student loans. Hopefully I won't always feel this way.

23. I'm tired. I'm not complaining about being tired, but I am, in fact, tired. I'm almost 2 weeks into what I think is a 3-week build block, and this is the point where there aren't enough recovery tricks in the world for me to feel bouncy again.

24. People preach about spinach being super food so much that I feel like I should get a Roctane-type kick in the ass when I eat it.

25. I wish I knew how to build an addition on our house.

Happy Friday, friends! Let me know if you RFF'd today so I can come check it out.

three things thursday

2012-02-02T13:00:00.000-05:00

1. Like everyone else in DC, I've been enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. If I could find a part of the country where it was 55-75º and sunny/partly cloudy year-round, I would move there. Ideas? In the meantime, I'll be really happy to keep wearing shorts and a teeshirt in January and hope that if we do have a ridiculously hot summer because of the mild winter, it at least has the decency to wait until after June 24th to get really bad.

2. For a long time, I couldn't eat leftovers. Once a hot dinner got cold, I couldn't stomach it again. I'm not sure why, it had something to do with the smell. There were a few things that I could deal with if I plugged my nose while reheating - pizza, chili - but in general, ugh. One of my pet peeves is seeing food go to waste, but fortunately I live with the poet, who will eat just about anything as long as it's food. However, as I'm getting deeper into training, I'm starting to get better about it, if only because it's so much easier to cook a dinner that serves six and then eat it for lunch the next two days (I say this while eating Tuesday night leftovers for lunch). However, I think this needs to cross over into the day that I work downtown, because it's the only time I ever eat lunch out somewhere, and while I almost always get the same mediterranean chicken salad (lettuce chicken hummus tomato cucumber eggplant feta with some pita bread on the side), it inevitably leaves me feeling heavy and bloated and disgusting for the rest of the day and into the next. I'm not sure why, as it's not tremendously calorie heavy and IS heavy on the veggies, but after 3-4 weeks of having it for lunch and then having a crappy evening workout and an even crappier long run the next morning, I think it needs to go.

3. Without trying to be deliberately and obnoxiously obtuse, some things have happened in my home life recently that have the poet and I butting up against a few somewhat-big life decisions. NOTHING IS WRONG, but we need to decide on a direction to head in, and it's (of course) stressing me out, and I think the reason that I haven't been sleeping well the past few weeks. I've always had a hard time making big decisions, and this is no different. And no matter what we decide, nothing will happen immediately, which makes it even more difficult. So, I'm sorry to be one of those incredibly annoying people who allude to something without explaining it in full because that would really piss me off to read it on someone's blog, but it's weighing heavy on my mind and making me crabby and I just wanted to get it out there. Sometimes big decisions are easy - run directly at the thing that equals the most joy - but sometimes there is joy in both directions and that's when it gets hard.

Happy Thursday, friends.

head down january

2012-02-01T10:57:00.001-05:00

I made goals for January?

January Goals
Keep wearing the Christmas tree swimsuit until it wears out. Still wearing it, although it's starting to turn into a droopy transparent parachute.
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?). I managed to mostly avoid this mess, mostly because I went during off-hours.
Eat spinach more often. It worked for Popeye and appears to be one of the possibly-missings in my diet. This month brought a lot more greens into my diet!
Clean out the iTunes library. No one needs this much Genesis. Cleaned out and moved to an external HD. My computer is so fast now!
Learn to cook eggplant in a way that does not involve pizza. Well, that's a big fail. Do I get credit for cooking the cauliflower?
Keep rotating shoes despite a love bordering on obsession for the new pink ones. Shoes have been rotated with military-like precision.

I didn't get a lot of sleep last night and I'm sitting here in a bone-deep exhausted haze, which I think says a lot about how January went. I survived my first peak week in base training, I enjoyed the crap out of rest week, I did not get injured and I weigh exactly the same as I did on January first. Can I just end the post here?

I'm finding a lot of sweet peace in the water right now. My swim volume has dropped a bit since I'm no longer preparing for a 10K swim, and it's settled into a routine that I'm actually quite happy with. I still don't feel like I'm getting faster, but I do feel like I'm staying strong and consistent. My bike situation is still a hot mess. Swapping out my rear cassette and crank was a big step in the right direction, however, as I discovered on my ride yesterday, it totally screwed my fit. So I'm going to be back in the bike shop sooner rather than later to get that straightened out. I couldn't tell from that one ride if the new components made a huge difference, but I'm planning on a good solid long ride this weekend, hills included. And running is what it always is for me - a battle against my body's inclination to explode into dust upon contact with the road. I ran four days in a row last week - and more importantly, 30 miles in those four days - and have lived to walk another day. Even more notably, I ran over 100 miles this month for the first time in almost a year. I've got little cranky niggles up one side and down the other, but nothing game-ending. That's the best I can ask for at this point.

Nutrition got another major kick in the ass this month as I continued to experiment with veggies I had scorned since childhood. Brussels sprouts and lots of spinach and squash are all here to stay, but I'm not sure I'll repeat the cauliflower experiment. I've been trying hard to find ways to drop some of the processed foods out and replace them with real food - a good example is trying to swap out my Clif/Luna/protein bar addiction for Larabars. I think I'm starting to notice actual effects of a better diet on my training - and what happens when I veer into 5 billion grams of sugar in one day - and that's enough of a reason to keep me trying to clean things up. There's still beer and ice cream and there always will be, but there was a whole lot less of it this month and honestly, the harder I train, the less I want it. My life is starting to veer back into a place where all I do is wake up, eat, train, eat, work, dive immediately into my sweatpants, climb under the pile of puppy and go back to sleep as soon as I possibly can. And I love every moment.

January
Miles run: 111
Debilitating injuries: 0 (major improvement over this time last year)
PT appointments: 0
Races: 0
New pairs of running shoes: 0
New pairs of cycling shoes: 1
Puppy-poop-floor incidents: 1
Extra-cranky blog posts: 2

February Goals
Schedule a bike fit.
Don't buy any more beer (fridge is full, folks, I'm not losing my mind).
Keep doing the buy-a-mystery-veggie-and-cook-it thing.
Buy another pair of dress pants.
Do a long run without music (maybe).
Take pictures and post the crank for sale (anyone want it?) on ST.
Do a few more clean-out-the-pantry weeks.

What are your goals for February? It's a short month, don't make too many.

[insert crank joke here]

2012-01-31T10:28:00.001-05:00

I got the call yesterday that my fabulous new crank had arrived, so I dropped everything and headed out to Bonzai. Bike components are so beautiful.

Apparently replacing a crank isn't a 5-minute job, so I had plenty of time to kill.

But pretty soon, I was instructed to ~~stop harassing the staff~~ go eat dinner and drink beer. Which I did. By the time I had giggled my way back to the shop, it was ready to go.

Isn't it beautiful?

These somehow jumped in the car and came home with me as well. I've only been lusting after them for two months now. Please ignore the permanent compression-sock-imprints.

As an added bonus, the weather here in DC is ridiculous today, so I get to take my fabulous new crank out for a spin before the sun goes down. How are you enjoying our mild winter that is certain to guarantee a horrendous summer?

the newwwwwtons

2012-01-30T12:15:00.004-05:00

I spent a lot of time back in the fall searching for the perfect pair of pink shoes. As my gait was changing, so were my shoe choices. The Adrenalines went in the trash forever, and at the MCM expo I tried on a pair of these:

I wasn't quite ready to make the purchase. Those darn shoes are expensive, and I really didn't want to invest in a $150 experiment. Unrelated, I really don't like my hair that short.

Through the fall, my shoe rotation was a pair of Asics 2160s that I couldn't wear on long runs because they chewed up my feet, a pair of Saucony Guides that I didn't really have a problem with except that they felt a bit clunky in the heel, and a pair of Brooks Ravennas. But every time I went into a running shoe store, I was sneaking a peek at those Newtons. When I ran the 10K at the beginning on December, I declared to the poet that if I PR'd, I was going to just buy them already. When I missed my PR by 20-or-so seconds, I decided that I was going to just buy them anyway (this is logic rising to the top). I fought an hour or so of traffic out to Road Runner Sports only to discover that they were out of every single shoe in the store in my size. Hrrmph. I later found out that the poet put them up to this so I could unwrap these on Christmas morning.

But as much as they were my dream neon shoe, I reluctantly decided that this particular pair probably shouldn't be my first pair because they are "advanced" Newtons and I'm only a beginner. So I ordered the "beginner" Newtons (Lady Isaac) online but convinced ~~myself~~ the poet that I'd be running in the pink ones eventually so I could keep them. I knew that the smart thing to do would be to ease into them, to wear them for very short distances and work them into the rotation. Which is what I did the first day. I had a MAF test at the track, so I wore my Ravennas for the test and the hot pink ones for the cool down. And they felt...kind of fine. But then these showed up the day before the NYE race...

I wore them to the race, intending to just warm-up and cool-down in them, but ended up racing in them. They felt amazing. And my legs felt better post-run then they had in a while. My knees were noticeably less banged-up then they would be after that kind of effort, and my IT bands weren't twanging at all. Hmmm.

Since then, I've been rotating them with a fresh pair of Ravennas (thanks, Adam!) At first, I wore the Newtons only for shorter runs and the Ravennas for longer runs, but for at least 2-3 weeks now I've been just wearing every other shoe every other run, no matter what is on the schedule. I've run at least four double-digit runs in them. The biggest thing I am noticing is that my lower legs seem to be feeling just much more used than I am accustomed to - and honestly, this could be either from the shoes or from the simple fact that my gait is still changing in small ways. My calves and shins are crabbing, but only a little, and it hasn't gotten worse as my mileage and intensity has increased. The shoes themselves feel very different from all my other running shoes. They are a lot softer inside and feel much kinder on my feet. The toe box is larger and I feel like my toes have room to spread out. I also haven't gotten a single blister or purple second toe from them, and this was a fairly common occurrence in the Asics and the Ravennas. I do wonder if rotating them with the Ravennas is a mistake that is making my lower legs extra-cranky, because the two pairs of shoes are so different, but I'm just not ready to leave the Ravennas behind yet.

As far as the hot pink ones, I've been using them as my walk-around-everywhere play-with-the-puppies shoe, but I'll probably start breaking them in as running shoes in the next month or so. And as much as I like them - and I really, really do like them - I think it's important to say that I don't think they are changing my life. I've been working on fixing my form for a good ten months now, and I think I introduced them at the right time in this process. They help me hold good form when I'm tired and may otherwise fall apart, but I don't think the shoes are actually changing my form. I've seen a lot of pictures of people heel-striking in these suckers. However, I think that if you are working on your form in a concentrated fashion, these shoes will help reinforce those good ideas. It's still a lot of work to run right now, and I still spend almost every single run going over and over my body. Are my shoulders back? Is my core firm? Am I straight up-and-down at the hips? Not crunching? Butt under me? Landing with my knee bent and under my hips? I'm also still working on strengthening my muscle imbalances and tightness-es and everything else that is wrong with me. But I do love them, and once I wear through the Ravennas and rotate the hot pink ones in, I might just be a Newton girl for good.

What are your thoughts on the neon shoes? Do you wear a single kind of running shoe or rotate through a pile like I do?

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!