Wow! What a whirlwind couple of weeks!

As if having a child this year wasn't enough....

The husband is a person who loves his job, is good at his job, and has been super-devoted to his job.  He has worked at the same tirelessly in the same role year after year, change after change, since college.  We have crossed our fingers and rolled our eyes and felt elated and felt dejected at times during his tenure.  Working for a start-up company, in my opinion, has become harder as the years have passed, as we've grown up, as we've welcomed our family.  Unfortunately, about 6 weeks ago, the company's doors were closed and Dave was without a job for the first time in a long time and without much warning.  He worked like a crazy mad man, like it was his new full-time job, to find a new job.  He networked, he sent resumes, he interviewed and a short four weeks later he had several offers.  In the end he took the one that made the most sense to both of us and that would benefit our family.  I could keep my job.  His commute would be only about 15 minutes.  The pay was good.  And on Monday he starts his new job.

A year ago, before we had decided to move to California (and thank goodness we didn't!!!), we had started looking for a new house in the same city we live now.  We had wanted to downsize a little, have a bigger yard, more privacy.  We have been living in the same house for 10 years and just wanted something different.  We were ready to move on.  But then we had decided to move to California, then I got pregnant, and everything changed.

When Dave accepted his new job just a few weeks ago, I popped on Zillow for fun to see what was out there.  I was actually looking out a town just east of here that we have drooled over for a long time.  But after spending a time chauffeuring my son to and from my sister's house (who lives in the middle of NOWHERE!!!) we decided, no, we do not want to move that far.  So I started poking around in the current town we live in.  I was searching only by a certain dollar amount, but Dave clicked on one that was just outside of that range.  By the pictures it was cute and had potential.  We talked to our realtor and had him arrange a showing.  We viewed it and it was immediate: we were home.  This was the house in which we were supposed to raise Anderson.  It's a ranch, with a partially finished basement.  It has a big yard (almost an acre) with part of it fenced in.  It needs a lot of work but has tons of potential and all of the work is cosmetic.  And maybe my favorite part, it is on the bike trails through the town so we will be able to bike commute everywhere including work, which is less than 2 miles away.  We set up a second viewing with the realtor and took my parents with us.  They saw things that we didn't, but again, totally doable.  We thought about it for a weekend, called up on realtor on Monday and put in an offer.  By Tuesday afternoon, we had a counter offer.  We countered again on Wednesday, and this evening we found out they accepted our offer and we're in contract.  Holy cow!!!  Two weeks ago I looked at a house on Zillow and today we are in contract. 

Part of buying this house is the contingency of selling our house.  We only have 45 days to do so or the contract is void.  We have a great realtor and live in a neighborhood where houses sell quickly, so it's looking good. 

We are so excited.  It feels right.  It feels like fate. 

Columbus Half Marathon 2013

Where to start....where to start....???

This was supposed to be my "A" race where I was going to try for a 1:35 or better.  But I quickly found out that I wasn't getting my speed back post-baby any time soon.  Then I got injured and actually thought of pulling out of the race.  Finally I decided I would just do it for fun.

Because of increased security, the pre-race instructions asked all participants to be in the corrals by 7:00am for the 7:30 start.  We left the house at 6:00.  It usually takes 15-20 minutes to get downtown.  We knew exactly where we wanted to park and there were a couple different exits we could take to get to the parking garage.  We were a little nervous about some road closures so we took the most obvious exit, as did every one else.  For 45 minutes we sat in traffic at that exit, past 7:00am.  I knew they weren't going to shut out all those people, but I was nervous and antsy.  Once off the exit, Dave took a side road and I urged him to let me out so I could walk to the start.

And then I got so lucky.  I was walking to the start, found an open Subway, which had a clean bathroom with no line.  Score!

I got into a corral as close as I possibly could.  The starting gun went off and no one moved.  At all.  But there seemed to be commotion on the side of the corral.  I found my way over there and I see that I'm in the wrong corral.  I was in corral B and I was supposed to be in A.  So they let me in and I was one of the very last people to start in corral A.  I never saw Dave or Anderson before I started the race.

It was cold race morning and I went back and forth about what to wear.  I eventually went with shorts, a t-shirt, light long sleeve shirt, and gloves.  I have the gloves off by mile one.  I had the long sleeves off by mile 3.  I saw a lot of overdressed people.  Or I just overheat quickly while running.

I got a new watch a few weeks ago (I swear I'll blog about this sometime) so I wanted to test out it's GPS abilities against a measured course.  For the first 5 miles it was dead on.  After that it got a little off.  In the end I was at 13.2ish miles.  Not bad.

Anyway, against the GPS I wasn't really gaining any speed and wasn't really losing any either.  Really consistent but not really as quickly as I wanted to go.  I was having fun, though, and that's all that mattered.

Around mile 9 I saw Dave among the throngs of people and was able to toss my shirt to him.  It's hard to tend to the baby, grab my shirt, and take pictures.  Thanks for the effort, Dave.

Despite not going all that fast, I felt like my form was good and the effort seemed easy.  The miles never seemed to drag on.  I've done a lot of running since Anderson was born and it shows.  Before I knew it I was back on High Street, mile 11, and heading to the finish line.

My overall time was 1:47:08.  Eh, it is what it is.  I had hoped to run faster but I'm just not there yet.  It makes me a little sad that a year ago I was 11 MINUTES!!! faster, but I have done zero speed training this year and have spent most of the last couple of weeks on the elliptical machine.  I'll get my speed back.  Patience.

Decisions....ugh, I hate them

I have two more races on the calendar this year: a 4 mile fun run with the family on Thanksgiving and the big giant 50K in December.  I have been internally debating the 50K every day for weeks.  During the marathon and immediately afterward I said absolutely NO WAY!  That shit was hard!  But a few days later I thought, it can't be any harder right?  What's 5 more miles?  Sure, I can do it. 

But really what's holding me back is my shin.  Ugh!  That damn shin!  I have babied the heck out of it - icing, PTing, moving most of my workouts to the elliptical.  Then when it's feeling good I do one run on the treadmill or the trails and BAM! It hurts again.

I threw it out to Facebook a while ago about deferring to next year as that was an option for this race.  Every single person who responded said to defer.  I didn't want to defer, though.  Who knows what I'd be doing next year?  Plus, I'm already registered and already trained.  So, I didn't defer.  The money's already spent.

This is my last big week of training I could put in before the 50K.  I had hoped to put in a solid week of training including another 20+ miler on the trails this coming weekend.  Right now, though, I'm hanging out on the elliptical and doing some pool running. 

Truthfully, I'm really torn about this race.  I guess I'll just see how this week unfolds.

2014: The Year of FAST!!!!!

As the 2013 season comes to a close I've been thinking about where I want to go with my running next year.  I enjoyed the challenge of trail running this year and it was nice to get the monkey off my back with running a marathon (race report soon), but truthfully, I love to road run and I love to run fast.  I haven't done a whole lot of that this year and I want to get my speed back.

I declare 2014, The Year of FAST!!!!!

No more marathons, no more trail racing (maybe), no more long trudges.  Everything will be a half marathon or less.  I want new PRs in the 5K, 10K, and half marathon.  I want to get lean, get muscular, get fast, and be one BAMF!

And to do this I'm going back to working with a coach. 

Now if I could just get my stupid shin to heal...