Accountability

Anyone who has been reading here at all must already know that I have a tough time making my running a priority. I have to try and get it done at the beginning of the day because my evenings are usually all filled up with hauling teenagers around and the like.

Yesterday, after our Manager's birthday lunch, a coworker and I agreed that we both have a problem getting in our needed activity (running for me, walking for her). After much complaining about it, we decided to actually DO something about it. Both of us come to work at 7am-ish. Her hubby actually has to be at work at 6am, so her alarm goes off every morning at 4:45am. She will start getting up with the first alarm and calling me to make sure I'm getting up. If I don't hear from her by 5-5:15am, I will call her and ask her why she isn't up. In addition to this, we are journaling what we are eating.

This all started today. My alarm went off at 4:45am. I turned it off and laid back down, hoping that she wouldn't follow through.

She did.

I continued to lay there for the next few minutes until I decided that I was being ridiculous and I needed to just get up and get out the door!

I did.

Yay! Then, I came home and packed a healthy lunch, with several snacks to last me all day.
This is the best idea, just one step away from an actual training partner.

Pictures from Saturday

Kirchenfest 5K picture:

Hidden Lake Winery:

Next week... 7th grade football pictures.

I know, you're on the edge of your seat for that.

Kirchenfest Strassenlauf 5K

This weekend was the annual Kirchenfest Strassenlauf in Highland. I celebrated with some friends by running their 5K race on Saturday morning. I knew I was in trouble when we got out of the car and jogged up to the church to pick up our race packets and was immediately drenched in sweat. Talk about your HUMID days!



The race started promptly at 8am, after the sun had already risen. The course is mostly through shaded streets in town, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The course had a couple of small hills, but nothing too bad. I felt good throughout the run, but my lack of training kept my heartrate higher than normal and left me with an "official" finishing time of 29:47. Good enough for 6th place out of 15 in my age group. Eh, I can deal with that.



After the race, there was a long time to wait. There was a 2K race that started at 9:30am. The awards ceremony wasn't until after the conclusion of the 2K race. We kept ourselves busy much of the time visiting with other runners and handing out flyers for Barbie's race next weekend.



And then, we happened upon the free beer.



After the awards finished up (Barbie won 3rd place), around 10:30am or so, we decided to stop by a winery on the way home and just do some tasting. Angie had heard a little bit about the place and wanted to check it out. Little did we know, they were having a wine festival with all kinds of vendors and live entertainment.



Ai-yi-yi.



Stay tuned - I'll have some race pictures later this week.

Catching Up...

Gah!

That's me, gasping for breath, now that I finally have a minute to myself.

I took my daughter to Chicago on Friday for a Tokio Hotel concert. I know what you're going to say next... Never heard of them, right? Don't feel bad, that's what everybody says. They are a young German band, that recently released their first album in English last year. My daughter has been following them since well before that, even though she couldn't understand the words.

The concert was at the House of Blues in downtown Chicago- the closest venue to us that they will hit during their North American tour. We drove up that afternoon, and stayed at a hotel within walking distance. It was CRAZY! Put a couple thousand screaming teenage girls in a small-ish bar, standing room only by the way, and imagine the fun. My ears are still ringing. It was good, though. If you know me, you know that I managed to elbow our way to the front, we could almost have reached out and touched those boys from where we stood.

Now that Tokio Hotel is becoming more mainstream, my girl is looking to other bands from Germany to follow... never one to follow along, and I'm glad.

Saturday, we drove back home, and off to a Miners baseball game. My son didn't go to that game. I managed to get him a ride to his football game that night with one of his coaches (they lost :-(.
The Miners won, in the bottom of the ninth, 8-6. Every professional baseball game I've gone to this year has ended up with my team winning in the bottom of the ninth! I should have gone to more Cardinals games this season, obviously...

Sunday morning, I got up and went for an 8 mile run with Angie. It was our first time running together, and it worked out really well. I was pleased that I've finally started to break out of my laziness rut and got out the door. Thanks to Angie (and Barbie who instigated the whole thing).

Today "officially" starts marathon training for the Memphis Marathon. I'm still thinking that I'll run Columbus, since it falls on the same weekend as my second 20 mile run. Maybe a miracle will happen, and I won't have to run Memphis at all! (not holding my breath)

So, I'm catching up on my running. I spent Sunday afternoon getting my house cleaned up enough to make it presentable (it's amazing how much stuff piles up when you're gone so much). And, I'm catching up on some of the things I've been procrastinating on at work.

Good times.

My Newly Adjusted Plan and Did I Really Let Her Do That?

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday who I hadn't seen for a few weeks. He is a bike nut, but he's been a bit out of it lately. Sound familiar?


He asked me if I was still running a lot. (Yeah, right, he probably noticed how fat my ass has gotten and already knew the answer).


I told him I was "Re-Adjusting my Plan". Yup, that's got to be it. It couldn't possibly be that, "I was lazy and now I have to recant on my original goal".


Oh, I told him he could use that as his reason for getting lazy lately, also. It's a good time to re-adjust your goals!


My new goal race will be the Memphis Marathon. I'll likely still run Columbus as a training run. My Memphis marathon training will start next Monday, the 18th. This will allow one 20-miler before Columbus, and I can run Columbus as a training run if I decide to go along with the other girls. I'll then run Memphis as my goal race. This is assuming that I can get it together between now and next Monday. Ugh!


I don't know if it's lack of sleep, stress, or pure laziness; but I'm still having trouble getting out of bed in the mornings. I've got to get that under control.


So, now, Did I Really Let Her DO That??


Ummm, yes, yes I did. She's a good girl, gets good grades, doesn't get in trouble much, so I figure if she wants a piercing, what the hell!

She would kill me if she knew I was posting this picture... she had just gotten ready for bed and doesn't have on any makeup or her signature dark eyeliner. Plus, she has a sunburn from the previous weekend. But, check out that lip piercing! (barely noticeable, huh?)

Cobden Peachfest 5K

I may as well just admit it now.




I am a jinx to all of the area races this summer.

I've had a long weekend. It all started Friday evening- I left work early and took the kids to the 4pm show of the Dark Knight. Awesome. Movie.

Friday night at midnight, I took my daughter to get the book "Breaking Dawn". She HAD to have it for the weekend, since I was going to be out of town all weekend. So far, she's disappointed in the book- she doesn't like the way it's going.

Saturday morning, Barbie showed up just after 5am to head to the race. I had been up since 4am packing for the weekend. We went down and picked up her son and went off to the race.

It was SO hot and muggy. Luckily, they managed to find a less hilly road to have the race- it seems that entire area is super hilly, but the race course wasn't so bad. The race started at 7:30am and had water in 2 places. It was an out and back, so you technically could have gotten water 3 times (1 was at the turnaround). That was really nice after the Hoyleton race where they ran out of cups on the way back!

I felt pretty good during the entire race. Before I reached the turnaround, I saw Barbie's son in 1st place, and Barbie was the 1st female. They did wind up winning 1st overall Male and Female. Such a neat accomplishment! When I came up to the end, where the clock was set up, I noticed the clock was sitting at 0:00. Yup, they didn't have professionals, and they had messed up the clock. No "official" finish times- lucky for me, I had Garmin.

This was truly a small town race, complete with the popsickle stick method of results. In case you've never been to a race like this, they hand you a popsickle stick with a number on it, your finisher number (I was the 38th person to finish). You then go over to the race director, where they manually find your name on the paper and write down your finishing number. High tech.

I won my age group, yay!

Later, we got all cleaned up and went to the winery's grand opening. Barbie's son is working there (he's a college student). He's in the yellow, wishing his mom would quit taking pictures.

After a full day of drinking wine and going out for pizza with the boys after the winery closed, we woke up at 5am, later than we hoped for our long run. We slept on an air mattress on the floor of the spare bedroom at Barbie's son's house. Needless to say, my heart wasn't in the long run, and my planned 16 miler turned out to be a 10 miler. But, in my defense, those HILLS down there are killers! My legs feel like I ran 16 miles!

It was a great weekend, but I took a long, much-needed nap on Sunday, and I'm pumped for my 18 miler next week on my relatively flat course at home!