Major Award
Monday I received not one, but two major awards.
Sunday was Mother’s Day. A little known fact is that Monday was Cat Mom’s Day. Mo informed me of this on Sunday when I asked him when I was getting my Mother’s Day gift. I really thought I had dropped enough hints. Even Never Contrary was dropping not so subtle hints for me. I was pretty pumped that I would be geting my very own holiday.
Our vet held a Cat Mom of the Year competition and I submitted an essay (along with a bonus photo collage–lucky them!) and….. I WAS RUNNER UP! WHICH MEANS I’M THE BEST CAT MOM EVER.
When I got back from boot camp Monday night, Mo had this waiting for me. I’m keeping that photo forever.
The second major award was more fitness related. After a recovery week of sorts last week, I was feeling a bit lazy. I ran Monday morning, but almost skipped boot camp Monday night. I ended up going because I know it’s the only night my swim partner Brian would be going. We had a pair of subs and they did an awesome job!
The last activity of the night we did was a conditioning activity that one of the leaders does for MMA. There were a row of cones set up maybe 30 feet from the sidewalk and you just had to run to the cones before time was called. But the rest between each set got shorter and shorter as did the amount of time you had to run and if you didn’t make it to the finish by the time it was time to turn around and go back, you were out.
The first ones were actually the hardest for me, when there was a rest at the end of the run. As we kept going and there was no break at the end of each run, it was a lot easier for me to just keep going. Plus, I like any activity that involves a lot of running at a steady pace. Anyway, I hung in the longest, so I won a t-shirt!
One day. Two major awards. Three beers? (Just kidding)
We are giving awards at my school for my 7th graders. Does anyone have any creative ideas for fun awards? Have you ever won a major award?
Weekly Workouts #6
Last week was a bit slow. It was teacher appreciation week, so this happened more than once.
I was kind of sick and tired, so we didn’t cook much and ordered out instead, so this happened too.
kitten to go!
On the other hand, very little working out happened.
Monday: REST
Tuesday: 4 mile run
Wednesday: 1200 meter swim
Thursday: Boot Camp
Friday: REST
Saturday: Bad Weather
Sunday: 12 mile bike ride
The bad weather on Saturday meant that both the boot camp I was planning on going to got cancelled and the boot camp competition got cancelled. Double Bummer.
I needed the down week after such an intense week of training along with Jazz Fest and the wind down of the school year.
And now I’m looking forward to this week with a lot more energy!
What do you do to re-energize?
At the corner of a Camry and my knees
One year ago today I got hit by a car while I was running.
Looking back on it, Mo and I rationalized the incident in part by saying, as many miles and as many years as I have been running, the odds were in my favor to at some point be in a collision.
It was a hot hot morning and I had been pounding the pavement before work. I was crossing a street at around 6:30 or so. The light was red and I was crossing in the bike lane when a car turned left and struck me.
In a lot of regards I was very, very lucky.
1. The driver was turning. He was not barreling down the road at an ungodly speed.
2. He stopped. Which is always the first thing people ask me about when I tell them I got hit by a car. He was very apologetic and lent me his cell phone to call my husband.
After the car hit me, and I went down, I pretty quickly bounced up. In a panic, I did a quick self assessment. All limbs were attached, nothing felt broken. With the adrenaline coursing through my veins, I briefly, insanely considered, “Should I just keep going?”
Fortunately, a neighbor I see regularly out walking his dogs yelled at me from about 50 feet away. He clearly could see what I was thinking.
“SIT DOWN. YOU GO SIT DOWN ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD RIGHT NOW.”
Yes sir.
The driver called 911 and we got Mo to come meet us. Then I took a tough turn.
Either from heat exhaustion or shock, my blood pressure dropped and by the time the ambulance got there I had my head between my knees and could barely stand up to get on the gurney. I felt dizzy and nauseous. It was all I could do to close my eyes and concentrate on not being sick to my stomach. The EMTs were very kind and told me that I would be admitted as a trauma patient because of my blood pressure. I’d never ridden in an ambulance before or had to go to the emergency room, so I was a little freaked out.
But by the time I got to the hospital my blood pressure had rebounded and I was feeling a lot better. I still had a full work up with X rays and a hospital gown and the whole bit. Luckily everything came back ok and the doctor wrote me a prescription for some pain pills.
my intersection
It took me a few weeks and then some to really bounce back. Although I was lucky and didn’t have any broken bones, I did have some painful bone bruises and was pretty overall sore from the collision for quite some time.
I was angry and frustrated at the setback in my fitness, a lack of support from my boss after the collision, and the general unfairness of it all.
One year later, I ran a route similar to that day’s. I crossed the same intersection twice, and didn’t feel a sense of panic when crossing intersections that I did in the weeks following the collision.
Instead I felt blessed. Mo was there with me the whole day of the collision. I received lots of texts from concerned friends. And for weeks when I would run in that area, people would tell me they were glad I was ok. I hadn’t realized how many people had seen the collision and were kind enough to speak out to me. And of course there is my immediate and extended family, who are amazing. I was lucky enough to have insurance to make the recovery process easier and that the driver had stopped and been responsible about his mistake.
So one year later, I am celebrating my fitness, the miles I’ve run, swum, and biked since then, the mental, emotional, and physical obstacles I’ve overcome and all of the support I’ve received along the way.
the bayou, this morning
Weekly Workouts #5
This was an exhausting training week for me. I finally hit every workout I wanted to and looking back, I overdid it. Grass is always greener on the other side, I guess!
Monday: 4 mile run/ Boot Camp
Tuesday: 6.19 mile run
Wednesday: 4.1 mile run/ 1600 meter swim
Thursday: 4.05 mile run/ 10 mile bike (trainer)
Friday: REST
Saturday: Boot Camp/1000 yard swim
Sunday: 16.65 mile outdoor bike/ 2 mile run
I ran 20 miles, swam twice, biked twice, and went to boot camp twice. And I’m exhausted. I wrote about the Thursday Push, which I feel normally, but when I woke up Saturday morning, I still felt tired. Halfway through Boot Camp Saturday morning, I decided I was too tired to swim and wanted to bag it. By the end I was feeling a little better and started making deals with myself.
“I’ll go swimming IF the indoor pool is open.”
So I drove out to the pool and guess what…the indoor pool was full of swim teamers. The lifeguard promised me the outdoor pool was warm, which it was, so I figured I’d suck it up Buttercup and swim 1000 yards (4×100, 1×400, 2×100) and GET OUT OF THERE.
The guy in the next lane and I swapped some tips on using the Garmin 910XT in the pool. He suggested that if you wear the watch on the side that you turn at the wall, it thinks you are still stroking and won’t accurately calculate your distance. It seemed to work, so I’ll be moving my watch from my left arm to my right arm, or turning more often on my right side.
Saturday night, Mo and I saw Ironman 3 in IMAX 3D. The last time we tried to go see a movie in IMAX 3D it was sold out at two different theaters for just about all reasonable times, so we got to the theater an hour early to get tickets. Jazz Fest was drawing most of the crowds away from the theater though, so we were pretty comfortable.
Sunday morning is when I started to fall apart. We set out for a 20 mile ride and were desperately failing to stay out of the wind. It was a pretty frustrating wind and I felt strong until I realized that my watch was set to metric units instead of statute.
Stupid, I know. I NEVER set my watch to metric, but sometimes it flips itself and I didn’t realize it had. My good mood was gone because now I was staring down significantly slower numbers than I thought. I just couldn’t get it together after that and at around mile 14 I slowed down to take a break but didn’t unclip first and fell. Poor Mo didn’t really know what to do because I was just a ball of frustration on the side of the path. I didn’t want to ride in the wind anymore and I wanted to ride faster than I was.
We turned around because at that point, he was pretty sick of riding into the wind too and my chain was making weird noises. When I stopped to look at it, I put my foot down in an ant pile. This did nothing really to improve my mood, so when Mo had finally managed to pull me together for a second time, we just headed back to the car. I ran a brisk two miles and then went home.
We rushed to brunch and then Jazz Fest. We saw my sister E’s boyfriend’s awesome band Feufollet play at the Fais Do Do stage and even got special Artist’s Guests passes which was so much fun. We set our chairs up at a different stage to listen to the Black Keys and I promptly fell asleep. Twice. Since I was such a fun date, and Mo was starting to get burned, we headed home after that. I barely made it up til 9:00 but I laid out all my clothes with the intention of running this morning.
At 5:30 this morning, I made the conscious decision that I needed more sleep. Like a lot more. So I skipped the run and now I think I may have run myself ragged and am trying to avoid getting sick.
This past week has me seriously looking forward to this summer and using the Time Crunched Triathlete program. I’ll be posting more about that program soon, so now you have something to look forward to.
Goals for this week:
1. Don’t get sick
2. Run 4 times, swim 2 times, bike 2 times, boot camp at least once
3. Kill it this weekend at the Boot Camp Competition
Did you see Ironman 3 this weekend? Who is your favorite superhero? Mine might be Eve for running Boston, or maybe Never Contrary for being a mom of two and hilarious to boot (shameless blog plugging here).
Thursday Push
Thursdays are my tough days. I usually take Friday to rest and sometimes even get to have a handsome breakfast date.
That means by Wednesday night I have started counting down the number of workouts til I get a break.
Often we swim Thursday nights, so I’m pretty beat, but we swam last night instead and I was so happy to have a bit more energy. Especially because Coach C had us do a version of a ladder to work on endurance. It included a 400 followed by a 300. It looked like this:
Warm Up: 3×100
Main Set: 2×50, 1×100, 1×400, 1×300, 1×200, 1×100, 2×50
Cool Down: 2×50 pool walk
Getting warmed up and going straight into the longer stuff was great because then I could swim ‘faster’ on the other end without worrying about wearing myself out before the ‘long’ set.
As I swam, I counted down the workouts along with the laps, “Ok, finish this swim, then one more morning run and one bike trainer session. A brick sounds great, but I might be too wiped…”
Don’t get me wrong. I love to work out. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it, if it wasn’t enjoyable to me.
But I like to rest too…
I love breakfast dates. I’m a sucker for pancakes and shrimp and grits. Do you like to cook breakfast or eat breakfast out? Favorite breakfast foods?
Got a swim workout you are loving right now? I’d love to steal it for my weekly Coach C-less swim.
My Boston Strong Bic Band came today and made the ‘Thursday Push’ better. Bic Bands is donating the entire purchase price to One Fund, which is pretty cool. And a cat picture because I’m that cool.
Watch out NOLA
This is a public service announcement for New Orleans drivers.
I upgraded from cage pedals to clipless pedals.
What does this mean for you?
I will be falling. A lot. Around New Orleans.
Ultimately, I will replace the old Trek 1000 with a new bike, but that is several months from now and I really wanted to change the pedals to something that I could take with me to the new bike and so I could ride a little faster.
In comes the good guys at Bayou Bicycle. They are really so nice every time I go in and I never feel bad for being a bike novice. We picked out some triathlon shoes and they ordered my size. I put off putting the new pedals on until the shoes came in so I could ride a few more times.
Mo and I brought my bike in so that they could change the pedals and show Mo how they did it, in case we ever want to put the old cage ones back on. Next, Ross put the cleat on the shoe and showed me how to clip in and out. He assured me that I would fall and that’s ok.
Actually, everyone told me I was going to fall. Thursday I swam with Coach C and Eve and Eve told me, yup, I was going to fall. Sunday morning I watched a youtube video on riding with clipless pedals, and even a stranger who had never met me, assured me I would fall.
In my defense, I did two bike trainer sessions with the new pedals and shoes and they went great. They were fun and I rode fast. I practiced clipping in and out a lot. I watched the aforementioned youtube clip. I felt prepped.
I’ll save you the suspense. I fell.
In the bike’s defense, I completely ignored the advice of the very professional looking cyclist in the slick video, mostly because he assumed I would be falling. He suggested clipping in first with the leg you push off with and clipping out first with the opposite leg.
I thought I knew better. I thought, huh, he doesn’t know me. I push off with me left leg and stop with my left leg.
Mo and I went to an empty City Park parking lot to practice Sunday morning. I clipped in rode around, clipped out, both with left leg. Easy. Everyone clearly underestimated my grace.
So I clip in again, ride around and clip out with my left leg. Except when I went to stop, I naturally leaned to the right and that foot was still clipped in. Down. I. Went.
Mo didn’t see my fall, but he heard it. I was wearing my helmet. (I always do by the way, because my mom says to. She also says if I ever smoke a cigarette she will rip my lips off and I believe her.)
My neck is still a bit sore too, I think from hitting my head, but other than that I just have a terrific scrape on my arm. After that, I wasn’t sure I wanted to ride anywhere but the parking lot, but Mo suggested I give it a minute before packing it in and yup, after ten or so more minutes I was feeling ready (moral of this story: everyone knows better than me) and we went for an easy 7.5 mile ride around the park.
So, clipless pedals are on, wear a helmet folks, and heed the advice of professional cyclists in slick videos.
Happy working out this week!
Weekly Workouts #4
Monday: NOLA Runs for Boston plus extra- 5.66 miles
Tuesday: Run with my dad! 5.2 miles
Wednesday: 3.15 mile run / 10 mile trainer bike
Thursday: 3.16 mile run / 1200 meter swim
Friday: Rest! Jazz Fest
Saturday: 3.17 mile run / 11 mile bike plus 1.75 mile run
Sunday: 7.44 mile bike
Runs: 6
Bikes: 3
Swim: 1
Boot Camp: Dead Week
This is a training week I’m proud of. I got a little bit of everything in and felt much stronger than I did just a week ago. Plus, I’m excited any time I get to run with my dad!
Thursday’s swim was rough, since it was the first time I had seriously swum in maybe 3 weeks. Coach C was out of town and it’s obvious I don’t have the drive in the pool yet to make myself swim.
Friday was my rest day for a good reason: it’s Jazz Fest in New Orleans! This is a huge musical festival across the whole city, but primarily at the Fairgrounds. John Mayer played Friday, and several friends and I went to see him.
(True Story: the last time I saw John Mayer play live was 12 years ago. That makes him really old. But clearly not me. Additionally, we decided that no one should ever, ever date John Mayer. It will end unfortunately)
Saturday I had to work and I managed to get a quick morning run in and day dreamed for most of the day of coming home and putting in a quick 30 minutes on the trainer. Mo wasn’t home when I got there was I texted to tell him not to hurry and jumped on. By the time I finished, I knew I wanted a banana so I texted him again, not to worry, I was going for a 1 mile run. One mile stretched into 1.75 and I’m sure all of the grocery store patrons appreciated my sweaty butt showing up to buy a $.23 banana.
went back and stocked up so that I wouldn’t have to literally run for a banana
This week I am really looking forward to getting back to boot camp. My goal is to run at least 20 miles, swim twice, bike twice, and boot camp twice. Oh, and get back to Jazz Fest one more time!
Any great spring activities going on in your city?
What’s the smallest purchase you ever made at a grocery store?
Do you set weekly fitness goals, or are your goals centered around upcoming races?
NOLA Runs for Boston
Tonight was the NOLA Runs for Boston 2.62 mile run at City Park. I can’t remember how I heard about it, but it was probably over Facebook. Several of the local running groups came together to put it on.
The weather was perfect and since it is also Earth Day, it seemed appropriate to run the 1.5 miles to City Park. Plus, I get really grumpy looking for parking. I met up with several Steel Magnolas once I got to the festival grounds.
and this was after yesterday’s Half Ironman!
There was a prayer and the National Anthem and then we were off! There were tons of runners and walkers. A lot of people were sporting Boston Marathon shirts from over the years and I even saw a few saved marathon bibs from years past. Some people were Boston Red Sox shirts and most people wore some kind of gold and blue.
And it wouldn’t be New Orleans if there weren’t people drinking during the race!
I was thinking that since the run was free, it would be nice to donate the $25 I would have spent on a race entry to onefundboston.org.
Weekly Workouts
Monday: 5 mile run
Tuesday: 3.15 mile run; boot camp
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: 4 mile run; boot camp
Friday: 3 mile run
Saturday: 5 mile run
Sunday: 20 mile bike
Runs: 5 times; 20.15 miles
Swim: 0
Bike: 1 time; 20 miles
Boot Camps: 2 times
So good things: I got my running mileage way up from last week. Our Sunday bike ride is the longest we’ve done and I made it to two boot camps this week so I made it to every boot camp I signed up for this session. I also took my bike in for a tune up and it looks beautiful and rode much smoother. Josh from Bayou Bicycles is still my special bike guy!
The ugly: I only biked once and I should have biked twice. I didn’t swim at all and I’d like to swim twice in a week. Boo and hiss.
This next week is dead week in our boot camp cycle so no classes til nex week. Which means I need to take the opportunity to get back into a running/swimming/biking cycle again. I’m calling you Coach C because I need you to kick my butt around the pool! Especially because we (read: I) polished off this bag over the weekend
***
Tonight is a 2.62 NOLA Run for Boston in City Park at the new festival grounds at 7:00 if you live in the NOLA area and would like to participate.
What to do when the workout JUST DOESN’T HAPPEN
Nothing. Nada. Zip.
That’s how much I worked out today.
This morning was my fault though. Tired from last night’s boot camp, I pretty much rolled over when I saw that the humidity was 100% and asked Mo if he wanted to go get coffee before school. By the way, how can the humidity be 100% and it’s not raining?!
Plan B was to pack my running shoes and go to the pool. If the pool was full, go for a run and wait til the indoor pool opened. If the outdoor pool was available, swim and then run. All day I was pretty excited about this plan and pleased with my cleverness.
Then I britta’d it.
I forgot my running shoes and was forced to stare stony eyed at the lanes full of kids swimming until I finally gave in and asked a nearby parent when the swim team would be getting out. Turns out not for another hour. And now that I had waited for lanes that were not going to empty, I couldn’t pick my bike up from the shop where it had been getting tuned up.
At that point, I still had options. I could have driven by the swim hole and tried to catch the Steel MagNOLAs who were swimming in the lake. I could have gone home and run. But I felt defeated and decided the odds were not in my favor.
So I did the next best thing. I called Mo and told him we were going out to dinner.
Plan C: Work out like a fiend for the rest of the week.
