Yes, I'm still writing letters. I just haven't gotten around to posting them. Here's a catch-up post:
May 15, 2010
Hello J
The mailroom is not entirely to blame for slow mail. I always start these on Saturday morning with the intent of getting them in the day’s mail. Unfortunately the family schedule sometimes prevents me from getting it finished before the mail comes. Then because of that whole Sabbath thing, your letter doesn’t hit the mail until Monday.
At this moment, we’re waiting for Elise to wake up. We’re then going to breakfast, then to Menards. We’re ‘building’ a garden today. Someone recently turned me on to Square Foot Gardening (a book that’s all about growing lots in a little space) and we’re going to try it. Hmmm… what to plant? We’re starting small, we’ll see what happens.
Elise’s first soccer game is Monday evening. That could be interesting. At the very least she’ll have the legs for it. The girl can run like crazy. We’ll see how she does with some guidance from the coaching staff, however. I s’pose she’ll be fine. As long as it’s not me telling her what to do, she tends to be somewhat compliant!
Chris and I are ‘running for the ribbon’ (Minnesota AIDS project) tomorrow. I am just now starting to feel like my pre-stress fracture self. Chris and I did a nine mile training run yesterday, and it was the first time in a LONG time that I enjoyed my weekly long run. We left from Chris’ office and ran along the river to Minnehaha falls, and caught a ride from the light rail back downtown.
May 17, 2010 (Happy 8th to Jerod!)
See… it’s Monday evening now, and this thing’s still not in the mail! We got the raised bed constructed for the garden. Due to ignorance, it took the better part of Saturday to get it done. Now we just need to fill it with soil and get to planting.
Chris completed the four mile run in 33 minutes. Holy cow! I didn’t wear a watch and they haven’t posted official times yet, but I was around the 35 minute mark. We were both quite pleased with ourselves! We also got together with our Ragnar team for the first time yesterday. It’s always kind of funny to watch a group of unfamiliar Minnesotans come together… think the NPR ladies skit on SNL.
We just got back from the above mentioned soccer game. The Camels (I kid you not, her team’s assigned name is the camels) pretty much got their camel booties handed to them. But, Elise the Beast scored a goal!! I wish I could have captured the look on her face. Truly priceless… she was STOKED!
Today was the closest thing that ISM has to field day. All the first graders ran a half mile. A cool thing about going to a school where everyone’s super nerdy is that the J-man can pretty much dominate anything that’s anywhere near being athletically inclined. He smoked the competition… completing a half mile in three minutes and 48 seconds.
I’m going to end this with talk of our new family pets. Have we mentioned this? I can’t remember. But, thanks to first grade science, we now have five guppies (which I have taken to referring to as the Jackson 5) and two snails. We were utterly unprepared when they arrived and they lived in a huge beer mug for a week. Today we moved them into their new aquarium (which will hopefully filter out the fish poo).
May 22, 2010
Hello-
We’ve started the day with bagels. Now the craziness begins. Chris is currently with Jerod at soccer pictures. Once they return Chris and I are going to take off on a nine miler. Following that will be haircuts for the boys, piano for Jerod, soccer pictures for Elise, and then dinner with some neighbors. I am not complaining, simply stating a fact when I say that weekends are nutty these days.
Chris and I saw Colin Hay (formerly of Men at Work) at the Cedar last night. I had no idea what to expect. I’m pretty much completely unfamiliar with his work and only bought tickets because ‘Beautiful World’ is one of my all-time favorite songs. He was so fricken funny. Turns out he’s hilarious… pretty much did two to three minutes of stand-up comedy between songs. We laughed and laughed and laughed J
We also took in Talking Volumes (NPR/Star Trib) book club at the Fitzgerald last Wednesday. It’s something we’d wanted to do for a long time, and Chris bought the tickets a while back. Unfortunately I was not crazy about the book (In the Kitchen by Monica Ali) at all. But, it was still fascinating to hear an author and see what Keri Miller looks like.
May is the month of events for us this year. Next week we’re going to see James Taylor on Tuesday and then we’re catching a show at the Guthrie on Thursday. Our entertainment budget will be shot for awhile!
I really have no other news!
May 29, 2010
Hey there!
My content’s admittedly been a bit lacking lately, so I thought I’d cut and paste the latest entry from my running blog. It’s been a somewhat tough week on the running front. I’m having to get used to the ‘heat’ (or what Minnesotans call heat, anyway!) and we had some late nights. My body has been rebelling!
Elise has found her soccer groove. She scored three goals in last Monday’s game. I think she’s uber happy to have found such a physical outlet. She’s a bit of a ball hog, but no one seems to mind as long as she’s scoring goals J
I haven’t yet caught one of Jerod’s games, but he seems to be having an ok time. Not great, but ok. They misspelled his name on his jersey (Jarod) and I put in a request for a corrected one. I got an email this week saying that Jerold Holt’s jersey is ready for pick up. I haven’t gotten it yet, so I don’t know if it’s an email typo or if they actually screwed it up yet again. Groan.
We got to go to the Twins game last night. They beat the Rangers 2-1 (which means I got to talk a little smack to my Texas relatives..woohoo!). It was a beautiful night… outdoor baseball at its best.
We are seven days away from our half marathon. After the rough training week, I’m a little nervous, but pretty excited.
It’s weird pet people week for me. In addition to the dog story that you’ll read from the blog, this random lady walked up to me on Tuesday night when we were leaving the James Taylor concert at Xcel. She proceeds to go on and on about the number of people there and then tells me that there are far fewer people when she comes for the cat show that takes place during the winter carnival. Ya think?? I wonder why that may be… hmmmm. She went on and on and on, telling me about the difficulties of carrying cats and all their cat booty for such a long walk. She then proceeded to tell me I should really check it out. Imagine, 300 some odd cats in one room. I refrained from telling her that it sounded like my worst friggin’ nightmare! Your brother, my husband, as most would predict, pretty much left me in the lurch and sped up. Jerk!
Anyhoo… here’s some bloggish fun for you:.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Seven Sans Coffee/Keep Your Effing Dog Away From the Water Fountain
I ran a seven miler this morning and the only good thing I can say about it is that I survived. It was supposed to be a tempo run with five miles at 8:54 pace, with one mile of warm up and cool down on each end. I anticipated this would be a tough workout, but I did not anticipate not being able to complete the miles at the prescribed pace. I had kind of been looking forward to it. I like a challenge, we've been having super running weather, and Thursdays are preschool days (so I get some me time). I thought all of that would combine for a splendid running experience. Being that I have delusions of returning to my previous sub-two hour half marathon form (and I thought I was on track), I really thought this was manageable.
WRONG-O!
SPLITS- THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (I'll let you figure out which is which)
Mile 1 9:59--A great start... perfect pace for a warm up mile
Mile 2 8:56--Certainly close enough
Mile 3 8:59-- Again, close enough
Mile 4 9:38-- WHAT THE FUDGE??? (see WATER STOPS below)
Mile 5 9:28--I dunno. There was no water stop involved, so I have no excuse
Mile 6 10:58--Utter despair and complete defeat (again, see WATER STOPS below)
Mile 7 12:35-- Yes, it was a cool down, but COME. ON.
SOME NOTES ON THE ROUTE
We've got a great little trail about a mile from our house that's a two mile loop. It's paved, shaded, and has just enough pedestrian traffic to make one feel plenty safe to run alone in the woods. And, there's a water fountain (big time bonus in my book). The only problem with this little slice o' running heaven is that it's in a bit of a valley (i.e. pretty much a downhill trek to get there *yea* and pretty much a straight uphill trek to get home *BOO*). My plan was to run the mile there as a warm up, run twice around for four of my five tempo miles, head towards home for the final mile of the tempo portion; then putz around for a cool-down mile near the house. Pair these notes with the splits, and it's fairly easy to see where the wheels came off on this particular run. The last tempo mile was straight uphill. Flippin' genius, Anne. Seeeeeeeriously. How do you spell idiot?? That would be A-N-N-E.
WATER STOPS
I don't speak for all runners, but my 'runner's best friend' is hands down a water fountain. It's just a fact that this game dehydrates a person. If you're fortunate enough to run where there's a fountain, you don't have to break out the camel back (which is super handy, but a complete pain in the keester to clean) or a bottle of water. YEA for water fountains! Today, however, the water fountain caused me two problems. Number one was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Number two... judge for yourself.
1. My garmin watch has this handy dandy auto stop feature that stops timing when you stop moving. For some reason, when I made my first water stop during mile four, the clock rolled on. It's annoying, but ultimately provides me with a pretty stinkin' good excuse for failing to run mile four in the goal time of 8:54.
2. Somewhere either in the late part of mile five or the early part of mile six, the despair and defeat of this run were firmly entrenched in my psyche. I was tired, I wasn't meeting my goal times, and I was oh so thirsty. Alas, my beloved water fountain was near. Despite the negative energy now surrounding the run, I was confident that I would take a good, healthy water break and finish strong. Not at goal pace, but strong.
I come around the corner and there's a woman with two dogs. She's taking a drink. No problemo. I can wait my turn, and the extra rest while waiting seems like a gift from above. Then, after she refreshes herself, she picks up the little pooch and proceeds to let him/her take a drink from the water fountain. When I told my husband this story, he responded with "Are you serious?". I responded with, "How could I make that up?".
Being the facebook junkie that I am, I immediately came changed my status to: OK... I know you dog people are goofy about your dogs, and that's cool. I don't get it, but it's cool. Still, I must cry foul if you lift your pooch to the water fountain for a drink while my stinky, sweaty, thirsty self is standing right behind you waiting for a drink.
Honestly, in the immediate moments following, I thought, maybe I'm being too hard on the dog people of the world. Maybe I'm freaking out over nothing. However, the responses have indicated that's not the case.
I wish I could tell you that I just skipped the water and came home for my liquid refreshment. But folks, I was in a bad way, and, have I mentioned, I was thirsty?? Really, really thiiiiiiirrrrrsty! I let the water run for a good 15 seconds and took a hit. Gross gross gross gross gross GROSS!
After this, I gave up. Just completely and totally gave up. In my running life, it rarely happens, but it sure as heck did today. "Don't give up" is something we preach pretty consistently to our kids; and ultimately I'm just glad they weren't around to see me doing just that.
DEBRIEFING
Now that I'm a few hours out from this epic fail experience, I am gaining some perspective. I'm definitely thankful for my dailymile support community on such days. How did I ever live without them??!! I'm also choosing to focus on miles two, three, and four as victories... they were a little off, but once water time is subtracted and you factor in some hills, they were ultimately quality miles.
I'm also giving myself a little wiggle room because this week is just crazy busy. All good things, but I didn't get home until after midnight on Tuesday, and was up past 11 yesterday night. By my standards, that's two pretty short nights. And, the two beers I enjoyed while sitting on the porch last night were likely (definitely) ill-advised. Lesson learned.
And lastly, I'm experimenting with drinking less coffee. I already drink half-caff, but drinking it at all just holds less appeal for me now that the weather has warmed. I skipped it this morning thinking that it would pay a dividend of me not feeling the need to pee the entire time I was out running. In reality, I probably needed the fuel. I am going to continue experimenting with this, so look for more coffee related posts in the future.
I'm spending the rest of today/this evening re-hydrating, re-fueling, and getting ready for tomorrow's 10 miler. It's the last long training run before the Minneapolis half. Woohoo!! Just for the record, I'm not giving up on running it in under two hours. We shall see...
