Saturday, April 15, 2017

Do What You Need to Do

Day 1

It's 5-1/2 months until aquathlon nationals and I'm ready to commit.  I started the day off strong with a run test.  It's been since December since I had a run test and then I was coming off a terrible cold and was just beginning my marathon training.  This time I am coming off of the marathon and starting to feel like myself again.

The test is 3000m on the track as hard as you can go.  I started out fast, probably too fast, but I was doing what I could to hang out.  Several time I had to sort it out in my head.  My brain struggles on the track.  I would do much better if the run test was a race.  I clocked in my first "mile" (the garmin never matches up to the track) at a 6:14.  Holy pajamas!  I haven't run that fast in years!  I pushed and pushed and came away with a 12:41, which is like a 6:49 pace (although my watch read 1.99 miles for 6:22 pace).  This was a 45 second improvement over the last run test I did.  Hopefully this translates into some speedy races this spring/summer.

So now I have a baseline for a little while, which includes new heart rate zones and paces.  Most of my workouts have one or the other so lots of updates to come soon as to if I can hit these new zones/paces.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Vacation Pictures

Yep, I promised them last week, but I suck.  No, I'm adulting.  And adulting is hard.  I'm exhausted.  I have a hard time finding time to do my workouts let alone blog about them and the rest of my life.  But today we cancelled our cable which means I'm gonna have lots of time (I'm kind of addicted to tv).  I'm gonna try harder.  I swear.  I SWEAR!!!

Two weeks ago we went down to Florida for our annual spring break with my parents.  My parents, now retired, are staying down there for a little over a month so we went and visited and stayed with them.  Here's a few pictures (mostly of Anderson) from our trip.  (And if you're my Instagram friend, you've seen most of these.)

The day we flew down to Florida was Anderson's 4th birthday.  We had gotten up at 4:00am and the little dude did not take a nap all day.  He was nearly asleep as we lit up his cupcake.

Looks like he still enjoyed his cupcake, though.

Our family friend who lives in the area got Anderson a kite for his birthday.  He loved it!

This is probably my favorite pictures from the trip.  I made this my lock screen on my phone. 

My boys. 

Sunset at the beach.

Oh yeah.  I was on this trip too.

Weirdos. 

Immediately after he got to the park he tripped over the root and landed on his face.  Hence, the dirt on his face. 

These are out of order.  On the way home, the captain invited Anderson into the cockpit, let him sit in his seat, and even wear his hat.  Um, I was jealous. 

It wasn't all beach (although it mostly was).  One morning Anderson enjoyed running through the fountains in the middle of Venice.

My sister is down there this week and my parents come home in a few weeks.  I have done this trip every year for as long as I can remember.  It's fun, although with a toddler now, it is a lot of work.  There's no more taking a nap on the beach.  Next year we will probably not get to go since we will be going to Boston for the marathon.  It's time for a change, though.  Maybe the break's not such a bad thing.  Either way, anything has got to be better than winter in Ohio.  Happy spring!!!

Thursday, April 06, 2017

Oh, what a night!!!

We took a family vacation next week (pictures to come!!) and arrived home very late Sunday night/Monday morning.  Our flight got home after midnight, which after getting out of the plane, getting our luggage, riding the shuttle to our car, and driving home, we got home around 1:00am.

Because our dog now has special needs, we needed to hire a pet sitter to come to our house several times a day and empty her bladder, etc. instead of just kenneling her like we normally do.  The company was very thorough and even took out the trash, checked our mail, brought in the newspaper, and whatnot.  When we got home we tried to get inside and the back doors were locked, something that is not normally done as we don't have keys to those doors.  Our garage is locked and it is connected to the back doors so there you go.  Anyway, I told Dave, hey, just go unlock the front door?!  As he walked out of the garage he quickly came back - the pet sitter had his key and my key was hanging in the kitchen.  Awesome.  My parents have a spare key.  I called them and of course, it was on their key ring and it was in Florida.  So, we spent the night (can we really call it a night if we only slept 3 hours??) at my parents' house.  I finally fell asleep sometime after 2:00 and woke up several times throughout the night. 

The alarm went off bright and early at 6:30 as we had to hurry to Anderson's 4 year old well check at 7:30.  We were wearing the same clothes as yesterday and at least I felt, icky.  The doctor went well, we dropped Anderson off at preschool, and Dave and I drove clear across town to get the key from the dog sitter.  We finally got into our house just before 10am Monday, 9 hours after we got in from vacation.

We opened the door and OMG!  The house smelled like we had 17 dogs.  They did do a good job, but being that our dog now pees on pads instead of outside, I would have liked to have seen them empty the trash or put the pee pads in the outdoor trash can.  We emptied the trash and mopped the floor, and I sprayed air freshener all over the place.  Sloopy also got a bath and now it smells much better.

With only a few hours of sleep, we got showers and went off to work. 

But wait, there's more!!!

I am a very punctual person.  Being on time is being late; being early is being on time!!!  Having a toddler means we get to places barely in time no matter how much time we allow.  So when we left for Florida we were running later than we wanted to be, which meant when our gas light came on in the car we just continued to drive to the airport.  When we returned a week later we sort of forgot we had no gas in the car.  At 1:00am we didn't exactly want to stop for gas, but were nervous about the gauge being correct and time constraints in the morning, etc., that we decided to stop by the gas station a mere spitting distance from our house.  We were one of three cars - a car parked at the store portion of the gas station with a gentleman outside smoking on the hood and a police car with the officer inside the store. While Dave was pumping gas, the officer came out talking on his walkie and taking his goods to his car.  He put the bags inside the door and then went back into the store, entering from the far left door.  As he went in, a woman scurried out of the right-hand door.  She had a small coat wrapped around her and it sort of looked like she was stealing something.  The cop stopped her and made it her come back in the store.  That's when it got interesting.  See, she was wearing thigh-high stockings and high heels and when she turned around we noticed she was wearing nothing else.  NOTHING!  I got to see a "full moon", if you will.  Now I don't know if she was "working" or if she was just up to no good but I really don't like seeing that near my neighborhood nor do I like having to explain to my son that, "maybe she wasn't wearing pants because she had an accident."

Back with some vacation pictures hopefully this week.