Sleepy, Frustrated...Looking at the Rainbow

I got my new Runners World this weekend. Oh yeah! I love diggin' into a new magazine. I read one article about how your day can sabatage your running. One thing they mentioned was of course getting enough sleep at night. Well, I read that article while laying on the couch as Chuck watched some King Alexander movie on Scyfy... and reading how you should avoid TV and computers up to 30 minutes before bed. Well, I wasn't really watching the movie, but I figured I'd get up and go lay in the bed, get comfy, and read the rest of my magazine.

So, I get to an article about a girl (Tera something) that has had chronic insomnia for years, she's a little younger than me. The article was good. I related becuase I am prone to insomina myself. Not very bad. But I'd say at least once a week I can't fall asleep. And at least once a week I'll wake up at 3 AM or so and not be able to go back to sleep. Sometimes it will be 3 days in a row, sometimes I'll go 2 weeks and sleep just fine. I guess it's anxiety... I don't know for sure.

After reading this article, wouldn't ya know, I turn off the lights & try, but I can't freakin fall asleep. I got up at about 11 PM and took a half a dose of benedryl... knowing it would make me groggy in the morning. But I was tired of laying in bed tired, but wide awake.

And I have to get up at 5 every morning for work. So I got six hours of drugged sleep. Not enough I feel, since I usually log at least 20 miles a week.

All day today I've been blah and sleepy. Then other personal & financial issues are just nagging at me... mostly bothering me only because I'm tired.

I was all hyped up about running and biking more, and planning on getting to the pool to swim one day this week... all energized mentally. Now I just feel drained. It's only monday afternoon.

It's hard to balance everything. I guess I do a decent job at the balancing. I'm a libra... it's my nature : ) But, sometimes I wish things were a little easier.

I'll get my run in tonight, and get my miles logged for the week... Reach those goals and try not to put to much effort into throwing any kind of pity party. I have exactly 2 more months till my first half marathon. I'm super excited about that. Plus, yesterday Chuck found a cool race I've never run in Savannah... Savannah River Run. It looks to be even more challeging than the Gate River Run (my fav of the year). So, that's in December... something else to look forward to.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

It's monday... and back to work I go.

I throughly enjoyed my vacation. I had never been to Jekyll Island before, so I was pleasantly suprised. I just thought it was so neat that it is so laid back there. No fast food joints, no traffic, no hussle and bussle. I didnt even get in a car for 4 days. We walked where we needed to go since Chuck was actually there for a conference, they had lunches and dinners planned on site at the condos we were staying in. It was perfect. I finally got to run on the beach on Sat. morning. The tide was usually in when it was cool enough to run, so I ended up running bike paths for most of the week. Which was perfectly fine with me. I would love to go back there some day. It was great.

Yesterday, our first day back home. We ran the XTerra 10K out at the Pig Trail in Macon. It was a great run. Well, they had done a lot of logging out at the trail all month, finishing it just a few days before the race. So the landscape was shockingly changed. It was sorta depressing, but I know these things happen for a reason. I started out feeling froggy. Ran great in the first half of the race. The last half, the hills and heat got to me. I ended up finishing right over a 10 min mile. I was very pleased with this time considering the crazy trail terrain and hills. My time was much better than my Trail 15K up in Jackson. That was horrible!

Now, I've got to put together a plan for the week's workout. I've discovered that I can start training some at the Cantrell Center pool. I though I'd have to get a membership, but I can swim for $5.00 a visit... which will be more cost effective for me since I won't be able to go very often. I'm excited to start a good swimming training base, so that I'll at least have that under my belt when I get ready to train for the sprint tri next spring. I found one in Jekyll actually... I'm going to look more into that very soon.

I just cant decided where I want to put all of my effort... a marathon or a sprint tri? I know I have to pick one due to the fact that I dont have tons of time to train. We will see : )

Jekyll Island

I am in heaven! Really! I havn't felt this relaxed and carefree in a long time. I'm always rush rush rush... on a schedule, working 10 hour days, pushing miles on the treadmill.... ahhhhhhh. Well, not this week. I'm in Jekyll with my sweet man Chuck for the week. He's got a gang conference for work which really only lasts 3 1/2 days... but we've turned it into a week vacation.

So far, I've had a blast livin' it up and chillin' with a bunch of crazy fun lovin cops. We've been hanging out on the beach, in each other's condo's, grillin out and enjoying the get away. Chuck and I got up early both mornings so far to run. I got 4 in yesterday and 5 this morning. Both runs were great, we just did an out an back on the bike trail that lines the island. Tomorrow I've got my sights set on 6, then probably a rest Thursday morning.... because Wed. night is probably going to be a late night.

Well, the boys just left for class. Poor pitiful me... nothing left to do until lunch except play around on the internet, go down to the beach and read my book, maybe take a walk. Oh, I dont know how I will cope. Hahaha... They're cooking out burgers and dog for lunch. I might end up needing to run 2 times a day to burn off all the extra food and beverages I'm consuming. Oh well, I'm having fun and that's all that matters.

Before I go, check out the pretty pic of our cozy cottage style villa condo. I love it. I could SO live here.

Bon Temps

Weird title, I know. See, I can't do anything without looking for some kind of deeper meaning I guess. Chuck and I have been all into this show on HBO called True Blood, amazingly enough... about vampires. We've gotten the first season on DVD and now we're ready for the second season to be out... since we don't have HBO. Well, the ficticous town that the story is set in is called Bon Temps... which when pronounced sounds more like, bon tom... yeah... try to sound french. I was showering this morning and wondering what that means in french, looked it up, and it's "good times". I like that. Cause isn't that what life is all about? The Good times.

Aside from my ability to say "I learned something new today" (which I'd like to do everyday) first thing in the morning. My day has been great. I spent the morning in with my sweetie, I cooked eggs, bagles, and coffee... ate while we watched the Tour de France. Later, we went to the Cantrell Center for the first time and swam some laps. I went a total of 400 meters. It was a very enjoyable workout. I can't wait to go back.

My running for the week has been alright. My training has been limited to the treadmill, due to the heat. I'd love to run before work when it's not so hot, but I have to leave the house at 6AM and I'm really not interested in getting up before 4 to go run. I used to run early in the am, but not that early! I am planning on going out for my long run tomorrow morining with my mom at about 6:30 to beat the heat.

I went in and edited a few posts and added some pictures I've been meaning to upload. So If anyone is interested, I've got a pic of my new tattoo on the Tat post and some pics on the XTERRA post.

Well, I'm tired and I want to get to bed since I plan to get up early.

All.... don't forget to live it up and enjoy the bon temps!

Tatt It Up

So, this is a first for the year. Guess how many miles I logged last week. ZERO. And guess what else, I'm not even mad about it.

Monday I taught spin, Wednesday I swam 600 meters (may not be a big deal to you, but oh my!) Sat and Sun I rode my mountain bike on the road for a total of 17 miles between the two days. So, it's not like I sat on my butt doing nothing. Oh, and I worked a part time job on Tuesday night, so I couldn't run that night.

Wednesday I got a new Tattoo! It's my 3rd one. I think it's my favorite. I'll try to post a pic of it sometime this week. It put a damper on my running cause my sports bra would rub on it and it was very sore for a few days.

This week I'm going to try to ramp up the miles to make up for what I didn't do last week.

I'm sure I'll be just fine though!

Plans... dreams.... TRAIN

Not much new has been going on as far as my training goes. I’ve been back in the groove of things for the last two weeks, that I’m happy about.

Right now my training goal is the USMC ½ Marathon in Jax. So, my simplistic plan is to do my long runs on the weekend. Increasing my mileage by 1 mile per week, then dropping back down every 3rd week for a rest. I’m working on a tempo in the middle of the long run at my “1/2 pace”. The long run we are doing also consists of a few monster hills on the way out, and the monster hills on the way back again. So, I think that’ll have me ready for anything. By the time Labor Day gets here the hill going up past the interstate won’t be anything!

My running during the week has consited of treadmill (It's HOT outside) and trail runs on Sunday if our schedule permits.

This week I plan on doing 10 miles on Sat. morning. I’ll try to get a tempo in at a 9:15min/mi for at least 3 miles. We’ll see how that goes. We will probably have to get up at 5:30AM to get out there early enough before it gets too hot. Our 9 mile run last week ended at about 9:15AM and we were MELTING!

I’m going to the pool to swim for the first time “for real” today. I say “for real” because I have been swimming in my apartment’s pool for the last few weeks. I have never been taught to swim… I took a swimming class at MSC back in 2000 and I don’t think I fully got the hang of it back then! So, my form started out HORRIBLE and I felt like I was going to die while swimming… I couldn’t understand how I can run for 2 hours, but not even swim for an entire minute!!!!! But, I’ve looked online and gotten some tips on technique and tried to apply them the best I can without a “coach”. I can already feel some improvement with not getting tired as quickly. Oh, and yest I must admit that a good pair of googles makes all the difference in the world!

Back to my swim plans for today…. We are going to a REAL 25 meter lap pool today and I can’t wait. I even had a dream about it last night. My mom had on a clear swim cap and I was all mad because I didn’t have a swim cap. How dare she show up more prepared than I was… Hahaha… I’m nervous about the swimming because I still don’t think I totally know what I’m doing. But, there is only one way to figure it out right?

My ultimate goal is to do a tri next spring. I am taking baby steps. The running section will be the easy part hands down. As for biking… I’ve been riding my mountain bike on the trails, which has got to be building “biking” muscles…. But I know it’ll be different on the road. We are probably going to get road bikes at Christmas time… I hope. Then swimming. Well, I guess my goal is to start off slow now. See if I even think I can really do it. Then at least try to swim once a week to keep up a base of training. Maybe up the training more when I get into a serious 16 week out training for the tri. Also, there’s the “open water” thing that I’ll have to learn how to do once I really figure out how to swim. Oh My! But I really really want to do this.

I want to actually BE the BEAST I dream of being!!!!

XTERRA DEEP SOUTH 15K

This weekend ended up quite nicely!

I took Friday and Saturday as rest days. Since I’m still not so much in the groove of things, I wasn’t resisting the rest like I normally would. Chuck and I had all three kids at the house this weekend. We took them to the pool most of the morning on Saturday. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon watching rented movies.

Sunday was THE day. We had been training for the XTERRA Dauset Trails Deep South 15K. It’s been our goal race since the Gate River Run in March. I was putting a lot of stock into this run. BUT, who am I to decide when I get sick, and when I lose my magic running mojo?

We got up at 5:30 AM and went through our normal race morning routine. Shower, coffee, bagel with peanut butter…. We filled up the Camel back and packed up the running gear and headed to Dauset Trails.

I wasn’t nervous about the run at all. I guess because at this point I hadn’t properly trained in my mind, so if I totally screwed up, I would certainly know why. I had only run a total of about 15 miles in 2 weeks, as opposed to my normal 20ish each week. Also, looking back we didn’t run on the trails to “practice” nearly as much as we would have liked.

We arrived right at 8AM. Picked up our packets, visited the potties, got geared up and pinned on the bibs, then stood around for about 15 minutes until the start. At 8:30 we began around the parking lot about a half a mile and finally into the woods. It was pretty, as usual. I was feeling OK, I was telling myself “this isn’t so bad” “I can do this” “It’s JUST 9 miles”… This worked for about the first 4 miles. Then I started to lose some wind. We went up a big hill that I normally probably would have been fine running up. Not this time. I just let the fatigue set in and I started walking. Mom was feeling her fire, so she took off. Chuck, being my sweetheart, stayed back with me and walked and encouraged me to keep on going. I started jogging again. The whole time not wanting to get too fast and trip and bust my face open.

I had my Garmin on. I know it’s not totally accurate in the woods, but it’s usually pretty good. It was showing right past 7.5 miles. I was thinking, less than 2 to go, I can SO do this. THEN… we got to the last water stop. The guy at the stop told us we were at 6.5. WHAT???? Your telling me I have 3 more miles to run??? WHAT? I stopped running and walked and I must admit, whined about it. I really didn’t think I had it in me to run 3 more miles on that trail. But Chuck reminded me that I either had to run it or walk it. There were no short cuts… so step step. I did start running again. Not happy about it. I kept repeating how I was going to finish this race… trying to be positive.

Then right at about 9 miles (according to my Garmin)… the clearing popped up ahead to the finish line. WHAT? The Garmin was right? I had done all that whining for nothing. Apparently the guy was at 7.5, not 6.5. We ran into the finish holding hands. Yeah, mushy! Our time was right at 1:50:59. Did we kick butt & take names. Nah. Did we do our best considering and did we finish! Heck Yeah!

We loaded up in the car and drove back home with the top down. NICE!

Got home, showered, changed into DRY clothes, rested for a bit, and got a sandwich for lunch.

Next Stop…. Bike Clinic 4PM at the Pig Trail. We loaded up the bikes and all our bike gear and headed back up to Macon. The clinic was designed for beginners. Which, I consider myself to be due to the fact that I’ve taken my bike off road only about 5 times. The OMBA put on the clinic, and they did a great job. We went over some routine bike info and then practiced a few skills. After that we were off to the trails for a ride. I really enjoyed the ride, less having to stop one time and being scared to go down the next hill. There were two experienced riders behind me that stopped to help. I felt like a big goober, but they were nice and didn’t make me feel bad. I ended up getting down the hill without planting my face into the side of a pine tree. So mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned. I think we ended up riding for about an hour. We all got back to the cars and packed up once again.

Next Stop…. Wild Wings Café. Yes, we went and indulged. We treated ourselves to Hot Wings and Nachos. It was great. We got a sweet tooth after dinner so we had to stop at the DQ in Byron on the way home and get Blizzards.

Once we got back to the house and showered AGAIN… and got the bikes and gear put up then cleaned up the apt. a little, we were spent.

Off to bed we went, only to start another work week.

I hope this week I am more focused on my training. I guess it’s only a matter of what I have time for right? Hopefully I’ll have more to report soon.