A4bats

19.12.11

Driedel Da- ... where is the bathroom?!?

Hee hee.

Today was the Dreidel Dash. It was fine. It's a race for which I've been notoriously under-trained in the past and this year was no exception. To add to the hilarity, I chose to run a 10K instead of the shorter course (seemed like a good idea at the time). I think I'd run about 4 four mile runs in the past 3 weeks. Oy.

At the start line, getting the course ready. They couldn't put the start line together until right before the race because of a road closure issue.

It's a good thing I've run so many marathons in the back of the pack. Because I was dead last when this race started, and I stayed that way until about mile 2 when I started hunting people down. I've learned to get comfortable back there and not panic. Although that was far back, even for me.

As you may be able to tell from the title, I really had to make boom boom the entire time. Maybe for next year we can have a port-a-pot? That resulted in some walk breaks to avert disaster. It's good to know that my stomach still hates me. I should've planned better. Whatever.

Even with the walk breaks, I did about as well as I did at my first ever 10K, several years ago. With all this cross training (thanks Circuit, Pilates and High Intensity Water Running), my legs are much stronger than they've ever been. So strong that they want to go really fast. My cardiovascual system can't always keep up. Pace yourself!

I had an awesome cheering section at the finish line. We had two people from Team:Work run the 5K. The rest of Team:Work sort of dropped like flies before the race. One hurt her hip, one had knee surgery and then a second, somewhat less planned surgery, one went on a cruise (lame excuse) and one had an emergency that pulled her out of town. A couple 'thought about it' but wound up not signing up. (Also lame.)

Team:Work runners in our Team:Work visors. BJ made those personally for us. Even though her grown kids said they were lame, we thought they were cool and her kids were just jealous.

See if you can guess which one of those trouble makers had, um, a special treat for me at the finish line. (Thanks Irina! Made my whole day!) Shortly after that boss lady number 1 was heard saying "ok, I have to leave so I can go watch the Vikings". Wonder how that turned out?

After the race I headed over to see my Pooky Bear and the Qat Lady. Pooky Bear was in full "Christmas cooking baking" mode. (Good for you.) I asked for the job of decorating. The Qat Lady would tell you I'm not really allowed to bake anyways.

My Pooky Bear made that apron. We had to pin the straps to the right length because apparently all aprons have the straps too long. Pooky's apron was pinned in similar fashion.

When I got home I ate (notice how I hadn't mentioned that in my day?), did laundry and then talked to Mom and Dad. Usually Christmas Eve Dinner and Christmas Day Brunch are my responsibilities. I've been given a directive for brunch that we must use the 30 odd chicken fingers (these chicken fingers are so big they have their own zip code) for brunch. They can't be used for Christmas Eve because those people already ate them today. Chicken Salad it is! I wonder if I need to take the breading off. Really I think the breading will just add to the general awesomeness of the salad.

When I was talking pictures of the cookies, I got a picture of the spill tray that my Pooky Bear said would be a good computer wallpaper. She's kind of right. Here's one of the photos, as a bonus.

18.12.11

Wordless Weekend

In the headlines:

Huh?!?

Friday:

Saturday all from the same lake, taken during the same 3 mile walk:

Sunday:

Taking a moment to feel grateful

Today was a birthday party for a good friend. While it was a really nice party, it was weighed down by sad news from more than one person at the table. I'm much more aware of people who are sick and families and friends experiencing losses this year than almost any other year of my life.

I'm taking a moment to feel grateful, just in general.

I've similarly decided that while tomorrow may not be my fastest 10K ever, I can be grateful then too. My plan is to feel good running. Running typically makes me treat myself better, it makes me like myself better, and I can be nicer to other people when I run a lot.

Here's some music to suit my current mood:

Poco - Keep on Trying.
Tom Petty - Alright for now
Lizz Wright - When I Fall
Emiliana Torrini - Beggar's Prayer/li>
Jon McLaughlin - We All Need Saving You make me what I'm worth.

15.12.11

Not what I had planned - but still a good day

12:50am ::Phone rings:: My brain tells me that I must answer the phone and sound awake. Stay awake! I answer and talk. Stay awake! Be nice! Keep talking. (Be nice. The words "I'm about to fall asleep" may never leave your mouth.)

6:30am Alarm went off. Ha. Running Intervals class is going to have to wait.

8am Alarm goes off again. This time I actually have to get up.

920 I hit the road. Yes, sometimes I can go in late to work. I was actually going to a training today. Thrilled that I-94 is not a parking lot.

10am-12pm Training number 1. It was kind of interesting, but the research on which they were reporting was ultimately flawed. I guess I did learn something in that research methods class. The crux of the research was case managers rarely refer to two specific services for family caregivers. (We love caregivers.) They didn't measure the actual unmet needs. The survey results failed to acknowledge that case managers refer to other services, besides the two in the survey, that meet the same need. (I was like this in school too.)

1250pm - Who the hell tries to make a tax exempt purchase at Chipotle!?! I got a buy one get one coupon for being behind that guy and still trying to be nice.

1:30pm Training number 2. A Webinar! Oh look! My computer has spider solitaire!

4:45pm Still at work, grabbed my gym bag and tried get ready for circuit. Where are my pants! Get on the road to go home to retrieve said pants. Meet the mother of all traffic jams on 62. Hit the city streets instead. I need my pants!

5:29 I rolled into circuit class with seconds to spare. This week's theme was "double duty". My hamstrings hate me. They hate the teacher's exercises. They hate medicine balls. Oy. Then we got to do bosu burpees. Ask me how I feel about burpees. Although it is an "I hate you but will feel like superman once you are conquered" feeling.

6:45 or so is when I realized that I was in a totally bad mood becuase I was hungry and tired. I attempted to calm my shit down. I'll let you know how that works out.

A watched pot - about to BOIL!

I was poking around the internet last night, still baffled by the number of hits this post seems to be getting. And I noticed something else.

Dude - I'm getting close to 10,000 views. I think that's actually "10,000 since someone started keeping track", but whatever. I looked back a minute later.

Okay. I'm going to stay up until it hits 10,000. It's like knowing where you are when your car hits 100,000 miles right? Check back. Check back. Why are there no more hits? Keep on checking back. WTF, I just got like 10 hits in 3 minutes? Why is this taking so long? A freaking hour later....

Boom.

When I got up this morning, it was back to a non-interesting number that I would never have even noticed.

13.12.11

In which is disgusie doing very little as "productivity"

I worked out last night. Hard. At Circuit class we warm up on the track and for some reason I always run much faster than my normal pace. (I fear the instructor.) By the time Pilates rolled around my hamstrings had surrendered. I meant to get up this morning and go for a run. So didn't happen.

6:15am Let's turn that light off and sleep some more. Okay.
8ish Much more reasonable time to wake up. I hit the shower then ran out to buy bread for breakfast. (I am a snob and can only have fresh bread from the bakery.)
9am WebEx training. For work. From home. What this means is I turn on my computer and "watch" the screen, and have my phone on speaker. Doing it from home means I can do stuff with my hands and plod around my house while listening. (It's much better this way.)
12:20 I rolled in to work, long enough to grab 'holiday' gifts. (It's a Jewish agency after all.) I packed the presents in my car and headed off to play Santa for a while.
1:15pm Why is Qat Lady calling me while my GPS is on? Good to know my phone allows that.
1:16pm I am a bad friend because I'm trying to listen to Qat Lady and figure out where the hell I'm going. Because the phone is still telling me where to drive. Sort of. Even though I'm talking to someone. Finally found a place to pull over so I can just talk to Qat Lady because that's what I really wanted to do.
2:30pm I showed up for the St Paul and Minneapolis Senior Workers Meeting to hear Former Vice President Mondale speak about public policy. I will now refer to him as Walter "I made Medicare" Mondale. Heck yes you did.

4:00pm The speech and discussion ended and I thought I'd leave. But I wanted to say hello to my boss (notice I hadn't seen her yet today).
5:00pm I actually left after talking to the boss and a community partner for a while.
5:30pm Check my messages from home. How did that many people call me? The message with the words "fall" "paramedics" "ambulance" and "hospitalized" was actually the calmest message I got. My job is so interesting.
7ish I talked to my Pooky Bear. It became clear I wouldn't be hitting the gym tonight.
Now Someone please tell me why this post has 86 hits in six days. Most of my posts don't have that many hits ever. I'm not complaining, more trying to figure out how to replicate the success of that one and a couple other posts that seem to have tons of hits.

11.12.11

Well this is going to be ugly

The Dreidel Dash is coming up. I'm doing the 10K this year. Let's look back at how much I've been running recently. Go ahead, let's check some old posts. I'll look too. Hmm. I couldn't find anything about running other than intervals on the track either. Oy.

I did hit the snow for a workout today. I ran 4 miles. Without stopping. I mention that because it was touch and go for a while. I must have done okay because I did it in about the same time as this run. Thanks to circuit and Pilates, my legs are stronger than my endurance.

At the end of the run I thought I was going to die. I can't decide if it's more embarassing to get sick in front of people or just pass out in front of everyone. I was concerned that both were going to happen after that run. Perhaps I should drink water more than once a week. Or run more. (Let's blame hydration.)

So, for the dash, I'm thinking about throwing a couple of walks in, at least in the beginning, just to save myself some frustration and embarrassment. I'm also thinking about going for a run or two this week. It's harder to fit that in than you might think. It is dark and cold and tomorrow we're supposed to get ice. Oh joy.

Wordless Weekends

Thursday at training - it was that boring.

Friday - adding ambiance to the living room thanks Rope Lights and Lifehacker.

Saturday - reading.

Sunday - running. (So afraid I was going to get sick and pass out at the end of this run. Maybe I should've kept reading instead.)

6.12.11

Running in the snow - brrr!

These past two days have had a lot of working out. (Really I'm hungry and I'm trying to balance that out.)

Monday:

Circuit class - involved basically a two mile warm up run with some stairs thrown in. Then we went to planks. It's always at that point that I'm seriously afraid I'm going to pass out (or die) right in front of everyone. (Why is my heart beating so fast!?!) And then we went back to the workout room and did the circuit workout.
Pilates - we got to "arm circles" which are part of the *warm up* and the teacher is all "raise your arms over your head" and I was all "are they up there? I can't feel them".

Today:

Run 1 - I went to the gym at the crack of dawn and ran a pyramid "speed" workout. (I was still tired from last night.) Honestly, I needed to get bread for breakfast and knew that I wouldn't leave the house just for bread, but if I grabbed some on the way home from the gym, that was likelier to actually happen. (See? I said it was all about eating.)
Run 2 - I headed outside with Team:Work, only one person showed up (yeah for her but boo to everyone else). The person who came is a hard worker and the one who reliably will try just about anything I suggest (want to run up this huge hill?) so it was fun. We did part of the Dreidel Dash route and part of the river road because we both love a plowed sidewalk as much as the next runner. From tonight I learned that in the winter, runners need to wear your reflective gear. No excuses.

Favorite music from these workouts:

Shinedown - Diamond Eyes. Don't let the beginning fool you. This song moves.
Will.i.am Feat Jennifer Lopez and Mick Jagger - T.H.E.. You can go hard or you can go home!
Taio Cruz - Dynamite. I came to dance!

5.12.11

Weekend winter weather advisory

Brrrr I'm slowly admitting that it's winter here in Minnesota. No pictures of snow yet because I think I did that enough last year. See here, here, and here for examples.

We did get "four inches" of snow yesterday. (It wouldn't be No Coast if it wasn't snowing.) No snow emergencies yet so it couldn't have been a true four inches. It was enough to take notice though, according to the headlines from the Strib.

Just what I like when it's cold.

Training - I am sort of training. In my mind I keep thinking about running the whole marathon at the Flying Pig. Another part of my brain screams NO! It'd mean snow training and specifically snow long run training. I am still planning on Dublin, and trying not to get fat before then. So I did head to the gym today and spent a long time on an elliptical and then on a bike.

Christmas Shopping - This is where I have the most progress to report. Qat Lady and my Pooky Bear and I headed over to the No Coast Craft Show on Saturday so baby cousin and toddler cousin are shopped for. Pooky Bear - you're also somewhat done as at least part of your present is the same ever year. Surprise!
I have selected pretty much everything on Amazon for Mom and Dad and 4-year old cousin. The hilarity of shopping on Amazon is I also spend a ton of time picking out things for myself. (I know.) I just put everything in my cart and then hit "save for later" so when I do order the stuff for Christmas, I'll probably get myself a little something too.

Home organization - I spent a great deal of time today cleaning and reorganizing. Happily, Qat Lady needed an Ikea trip so I got to tag along. I got some closet organization stuff and one thing for my kitchen.

The new mats in my kitchen from our Black Friday escapade. Whomever put memory foam on kitchen mats is a genius. It took me a while to figure out the configuration of the mats. (Really, there are multiple options.) After years of sweeping and mopping my floor, I decided the industrial strength black mat really does belong under the dishwasher. (Why is it always so gross over there?)

Well I guess the lakes are frozen

Yes, that's right. The lakes are starting to freeze. So is the river. Boo. At least winter starting means winter will end sooner too. On the exercise front - I'm still mostly taking a break from running (brrr) but not from working out.

Wednesday I did the High Intensity Water Running class. I am getting the hang of it. Although this week was packed. Get out of my way people.

source

Thursday I did Circuit Class again. The thing about this class is, I just went one Thursday becuase I couldn't make it to the normal Monday class or something. I never really meant for this class to become part of my routine. I really like the teachers at this class so I keep going back. The two classes are really different. The Monday class is longer, starts on the track, and has a lot more running and pilates moves that I know. The Thursday class is shorter and has a lot more weight lifting moves (different teachers). The weight lifting moves are challenging just because I've never really lifted weights so I don't know how to do them.