Quick note: I set a new PR yesterday – 2:06:29.

I’ll write a full race report soon – things are really busy right now!!!

That pretty much sums up my activities today.

The movers are coming around 10, then we’ll drop everything at the house and start arranging the furniture and what-not. We’ll be back in the city tonight so I don’t have a long drive for tomorrow’s race! I have everything ready to go for tomorrow and just have to charge the Garmin and iPod. The essentials, you know!

Hope all of you have a wonderful day!

It’s funny how sometimes you can wake up, read your email, and be immediately annoyed. This is part of why I dislike the reliance on electronic communication and really miss just talking on the phone. It’s easy to misconstrue what you are trying to say (or what the person writing to you is trying to say). I’m not going to get into the details, but suffice it to say there have been little things this whole week that have, to be frank, pissed me off. I think it might be time to take a step back and refocus my energies on things I can control.

I forgot to post this yesterday, but this is the song that helped motivate me through my run:

What is your “power song” right now?

Today was my last run “around the ‘hood.” No more running down cambered sidewalks, no passing homeless people peeing on trees, no catcalls in front of the laborers’ union, no stopping for street lights, and no more really, really steep hills.

I’ll miss it… but at the same time, I won’t.

I think last runs before race day are the best – there’s the delicious feeling of anticipation that makes you want to just burst forth and run like crazy, but the sane part of you holds back and saves it for race day.

Today’s run: 4 miles
The route: A little different; I went up to The Castro and tackled some hills. (Hills seem to be a theme lately; see yesterday’s post.) I felt the spirit of Harvey Milk with me as I ran past the former site of Castro Camera.

[Random aside: If you've never seen the movie Milk, I highly recommend it.]

On my way back down, I saw two women running about a block and a half ahead of me, so I decided to have a little fartlek fun and try to catch up with them. I almost got there – I was 1/4 block behind them at Dolores Park, but they turned and I had to go straight. Bummer. It was fun to fly down 18th Street at an 8:45-9:00 pace, though.

I got home at a decent hour, had some chocolate milk, stretched, foam rolled (ow), and got on with the business of Thursday. I’m so glad it’s almost the weekend!

Three days until race day!

Spin is finally starting to feel somewhat easy again… not to say that spin is easy, but it’s not killing me as much as it did in the beginning. I tried something new tonight and brought Accelerade to class in addition to water. I think that made a difference because I didn’t feel hungry or fatigued as much as last week, and I ate less for lunch today so I expected to be hungry. I love Accelerade and Accel Gel. Both products have that “ideal” ratio of carbs to protein, much like chocolate milk, so it makes excellent fuel. I used both at my first tri and felt like I fueled very well. The only trouble is that the products are hard to find; not all the local sports stores carry it.

I also made a new gym friend today, which was cool. We have the same name, we’re the same age, and we’re both blonde, though I’m super tall and she’s 4′11″. I struck up a conversation with her because she had a D-Tag on her shoe; I asked what race it was from and she had run the same race I did back in November. That got us talking about other races, and she’ll be at Kaiser on Sunday running the 5K. It really is a small world.

Not much else to report, work was busy as usual but it felt manageable today instead of insane. We’re getting ready to kick off our next training season so I am learning the ropes and getting things ready. We have two kick-off meetings next week and two the week after that; they are at 6:30pm so we’re talking some long days. I’ll most likely start later to make up for the later evening hours. Sleeping in and missing morning rush hour are full of WIN.

Time for some dinner – I really can’t wait to go grocery shopping!!! I feel like Old Mother Hubbard these days.

If you’ve never seen this video, then “le tired” will be lost on you. It’s pretty funny. Lots of cussing, so NSFW or NSFS (for those of you watching in school).

I worked from 9:00am – 8:00pm today. I also drove to all of our stores, which was about 80, 85 miles and took almost 3 hours. Good times, good times. However, as productive as it was I am exhausted. I came home and packed a couple more boxes in the kitchen – coffee mugs, baking pans, etc. I feel like I should be doing more but dangit, I need a break. I still have tons of books to pack, knick-knacks, and other odds and ends. Thankfully it’s only Tuesday… I guess. I have until Saturday morning to get it all done.

For now, I’m going to bed. I have wild ambitions of getting up and going to the gym tomorrow before work!

Alliteration is cool, too.

I had intended to run 3 miles today but when I looked at the clock and saw 7:15, I knew I’d have to shrink it to 2. So I decided to push and go for a mini-tempo. I find it hard to call 2 miles a tempo run since you’re supposed to theoretically have a mile on either side for warm/cool, but I pushed and finished the run in 19:18. Not my best 2-mile time by any stretch but it worked for how sluggish I feel today.

The best part was running into M, my massage therapist, right after I started running. She’s also running Kaiser on Sunday so it was great to see her again. I love how it can feel like a small town in such a big city. I’ll miss that after we move. I need to go see her again, now that I think about it… perhaps a nice post-race reward.

Tonight I have to start packing the kitchen and the books (our mover guy is dropping off boxes). There aren’t really any inspiring classes at the gym on Tuesday nights, so I might do a double whammy tomorrow. I really need a pedicure, so I may have to make a point of taking care of that after work since I won’t have time tomorrow or Thursday, and I don’t want to push it off until the last minute.

5 days until race day!

P.S. The left knee felt fine this morning.

Everyone else is doing it, so why not me?

The word benchmarking is cool to me. When I was working on my MBA (aka 21 Months of Pain), we wrote countless benchmarking papers. Though I did get tired of the papers, I never got tired of the word. That just shows you how much of a Werd Nerd I really am.

(Another cool word is tubule, but I just heard it in a oral health commercial. Totally not related.)

January was an excellent month in terms of mileage – about average in terms of everything else, fail for the 100 pushups/200 situps challenges, and total FAIL for weight training. I did not make it to a single strength class all month. (I blame longer hours at work and a new office location that is much farther from the gym.)

However, I did attend a couple of spin classes (a start!) and started swimming again (kinda). I really need to get my tri schedule in order. Running alone is not enough, and reading 8 books in January isn’t going to help me get ready for a half-Ironman (7 months and 10 days to go, not that I’m counting).

But, on to the good stuff!

Total mileage in January: 63.6 (goal: 60)
Mileage in January 2009: 19

Number of races: 1

Distance raced: Half-marathon (#4)

All in all, I am generally pleased, if not thrilled, with my progress this month. On to February!

Busy busy weekend. So tired of driving. I have to tell myself it’s almost over, because it IS!!! Here’s a recap.

Saturday, we had brunch at a little organic place in the neighborhood called Universal Café; neither one of us had been there, it was pretty good. After that we drove to Serramonte, the mall in Daly City, and stopped at Zales to finally get my ring sized… AND…I got a really nice Valentine’s Day gift. Photos to follow after V-Day.

We went back to the house, loaded the car with a ton of stuff, met our friend B (she has a truck) and drove up to the house. I unloaded the car while they went to Costco to pick up the new dining room set! It’s gorgeous. It’s dark wood with a leaf and 8 chairs (we’ll keep the extras in the garage until we have big gatherings). The one I really liked was SOLD OUT. Total bummer. After we unloaded the truck we showed B around the house and went to have dinner, then we headed home and packed more stuff before going to bed at almost midnight. You all know about my intestinal distress Saturday night…

Sunday, we loaded up the Blazer with more stuff and headed to the house to meet the painters. They were almost 2 hours late. ARGH! We had made a stop at SB so I got some peppermint tea and oatmeal. My stomach was OK with that. After they finally showed up, we grabbed a light lunch (soup and salad) and drove to IKEA to find guest bedroom furniture and a desk for me. I found both, so we’ll pick them up this weekend. It was slammed and we were both getting irritated. WHY do people insist on walking and then stopping in the middle of the aisle or right at the bottom of an escalator? We drove from IKEA back to SF, loaded the truck AGAIN, and drove back to the house. Did I mention it’s almost 50 miles each way?

We unloaded, paid the painters, and I did some touch-up work on the paint in the living room. After all that, we headed back home in my car, leaving the Blazer in the garage. We stopped for dinner and I had more light fare; grilled chicken and a big salad. Whew. I crashed hard last night and woke up today at 7:30.  We have a mover picking up the rest of our stuff and furniture on Saturday and then we are DONE! No more living in SF…

Just popping in to say hello – the moving adventure continues!

I was supposed to run 10 miles today but something I ate for dinner last night completely disagreed with me, and is still disagreeing with me, so I didn’t sleep well at all and my abdominal region is not at all pleased. I’m not sick, I’m not throwing up or anything else, I just have this constant pain in my midsection. It’s worse, I think, than getting sick or spending hours in the bathroom on the throne, so to speak.

I hope it passes soon. This is a huge sign that it’s time to seriously re-think my eating habits!

Enjoy your Sunday!