Rock Bottom

Well that is quite a dramatic blog title. I ran a local 5K this past Saturday. It started about 1mile away from our new house so I figured, why not? I convinced another friend to run it and his 14 year old son (who doesn’t run, but plays lacrosse, who of course beat us both and broke 20min) also came. They met me at the house and we jogged over to the start.

My training, if you can call it training, has been pretty hit or miss for quite a while at this point.  I have been running like someone who is just trying to stay somewhat fit, with the occasional tempo/fartlek thrown in.  Mileage-wise, definitely less than 20 per week, probably right around 15. Now that we’re more settled in the new house, I am ready to get back into it and start to feel more like myself on the run. This 5K was a perfect benchmark to see how bad it was.

It was bad.

And I don’t mean to say this to get people to say to me, oh that is not that bad, and you still won and did great and blah blah blah. I ran a 20:40 on one of the flattest courses you can get around here and it felt HORRIBLE. So there you have it. Marty has begun writing me a schedule again and I’m determined to follow it and get faster. I’m going to target the Wrightsville Beach half marathon in March but I’m not committing to any time goal just yet. I’ll adjust my goals as the months go by. I’ll also jump into more local 5Ks and hopefully they will start to feel better.

Incidentally, I actually reached out to a coach who just does specifically run coaching.  I don’t actually know him, but know he coaches some fast people and have read some of his race reports before (he’s very fast, too) – and he seemed funny yet serious and his rates were low as he has a full time job and just coaches for the fun of it (at least that’s what his website said). Of course, Marty could write me workouts and has always done so but he can get very busy and has to take care of his real clients first.  On the flip side, it is sometimes too easy for me to blow off workouts since it’s my own husband writing them.  So I figured I’d email this guy and see what he said.  He said that he was pretty full with clients but he would like to coach me, so I responded: awesome, here is my background and my goals and what’s next?  But that was 3 weeks ago so I’m thinking he is not going to coach me, haha. But under that haha is definitely an irked Bri as geez an email telling me you really can’t take me on would’ve been nice.  I just can’t imagine having someone inquire about coaching and not give them a straight answer (immediately) back.

The rest of Gaal-life has been full steam ahead.  We had a swim clinic at the pool this past weekend, and then tried to take Logan to a car race which was really freaking far away and upon driving up to the gate we found out it was cancelled due to (non-existent) rain.  We took a quick trip down to Florida last weekend to celebrate Marty’s father’s 80^th birthday.  We still have a garage full of boxes that are waiting patiently and messily to be unpacked or stuck in the attic. Marty is in full high school cross country mode and Logan is as cute and fun as ever.  Although I do hear myself  yelling correcting him more and more. Boys will be boys, I suppose.

 

 

Instagramming a picture automatically makes it look 10% better

We got to one last Durham Bulls game. Beautiful night and no crowd.

With cousin Jamie

If we're not careful, Logan's hair can look like this.

Oh, You're Still Here?

We moved into our new house 2 weekends ago, and the past week has been spent trying to unpack essential boxes while continuing to clear out the old house. It is unbelievable how much crap we have. And I knew this going into the move from prior moves – when you think you are almost done packing up everything, there is still MUCH more to go.  But we are finally at the point where we should hopefully be putting our old house on the market by the end of the week.

It’s been a long time coming. Our old house was great – good location, nice neighborhood, but we were just bursting out of it and needed more space (and a garage).  It was maybe even a little tougher since Marty worked from home and our only spare bedroom was taken up – and without having family close it always made it difficult when someone wanted to come visit.  We had a small walk-in water heater closet outside and it doubled as our bike closet, which was ridiculous. 

Anyways, this is a two paragraph explanation of why, once again there has been radio silence here.  I have been trying to keep up with a few runs a week, one swim, and zero biking.  No more tri’s in the future for me this year, but I would like to increase the run volume real soon so I can do some road racing this fall.

In other news, Logan’s awesome, Marty’s awesome and I’m absolutely loving the Outlander book. OMG. I had heard of this book from a coworker years ago but never got around to reading it until last week – probably my memory was sparked since the cable Channel Starz has picked it up and there’s been a lot of buzz about it.  Incidentally, anyone know how I can watch this since we don’t have a Starz subscription?

Lots going on

Things that have happened since I last updated:

• We bought a house – same general area but I am now only a 4 min drive away from the Kari Mayhew. Next up will be selling our current house.
• We went on vacation to the Jersey Shore, which I actually hate saying because everyone thinks of the awful MTV show.  We rented a house in Ocean Grove which is a quiet, super cute little beach town. It was lots of fun and Logan has said he wants a beach house. We’ll get right on that, kid. We might be able to afford that once you are no longer in daycare.
• I did a sprint triathlon, which was quite a disaster in reality, but at least I didn’t end up in the hospital or throwing up across the line as some others. 
• Logan gets more and more verbal each day and it’s quite amazing to hear what will come out of his mouth. Here are some recent favorites: 
•  What’s that? X 1,000 – literally, we have hit that stage where he asks what everything is.
•   What doing, Mommy? Or What doing, Daddy? Again, all the time.  He started saying this suspiciously to me last week when he would wake up from his nap and find me in the living room with cartoons on.
• No, my do it! – he is getting quite independent
• He calls any type of dessert item ‘Happy Birthday’ which is quite adorable (except when I ask him what he wants for breakfast and he responds with ‘Happy Birthday’ and then gets mad that I won’t let him).  On our drive back to NC on Sunday we asked him what his favorite part of vacation was and he said, “Ummmmmm, happy birthday!” I guess he did get a lot of treats during the week.
• He is obsessed with cars.  OBSESSED.  Other moms have said to me, oh yeah, so-and-so loved cars too, but I have yet to meet another little boy at this point that wants to play with cars as much as Logan.  Even at the beach he was constantly playing with cars, and every little kid would get a car courtesy of Logan so they would play with them. But inevitably, after a short time the other child loses interest and wants to do something else.  Logan is content playing with cars anywhere, which is really quite great sometimes for us.  If you begin to watch, a lot of pictures include cars in his hand.
• Today is Tassie’s birthday – 8 years old!!  
• And now, pics from our vacation:



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  At the bounce house

  
  

  

  Enjoying some happy birthday

  
  

  

  Burying legs

  
  

  

  The weather was great, the water was freezing

  
  

  

  Beach day every day

  
  

  

  Favorite beach game: throw the ball into the waves

  
  

  

  Some of the houses in Ocean Grove

  
  

  

  Getting ready to watch the last lifeguard competition: the very exciting Beach Flags!

  
  

  

  They all start face down, lying down. Whistle blows and sprint 60 yards and grab a flag. Like musical chairs, there is one less flag then people.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  On the Ocean Grove boardwalk looking toward Asbury Park (any Bruce Springsteen fans out there?)

  
  

  

  Heading toward the beach Saturday morning to watch Daddy in a biathlon (or aquathon)

  
  

  

  Lucky shot, right in the middle of the pic

  
  

  

  Marty ran super fast and was 6th heading into the water

  
  

  

  He finished in 5th place

  
  

  

  Logan and his trophy

  
  

  

  Dinner in Asbury Park

  
  
  
  

  

  Happy Birthday, Tassie!

Happy Father's Day

He really is such a great dad.

Raleigh 70.3

I kind of missed a lot of updating the past few weeks. But a lot did happen – we went to Bermuda for our 10 year anniversary which was awesome. I turned 35 (35!! I still can’t believe it). And this past weekend I did a relay at the Raleigh 70.3. Since I’m old now and can’t remember things, I will talk about the latest adventure since it’s still fresh in my mind.

I knew after last year I didn’t want to do the entire race again. I am not a long course athlete. Yes, I can do well at the distance, if I train properly, but I honestly don’t like ‘going long.’ I am happy doing sprints and Olympics and know myself well enough that I would not have enjoyed (again) the training involved.  Not to mention Logan is so, so fun and I mostly want to hang out with him when I do have spare time.  I luckily had some friends who were also not wanting to do the entire race (because they would be doing Eagleman next weekend) so bam, the One Step Beyond Babes were born. Back when we signed up I had good intentions of getting in really good half marathon shape and throwing down an awesome time, but blah blah blah, training for this went on the back burner and my longest run since the Myrtle Beach Half in February, was 11 miles.  Woopsy.

But let me tell you, doing a relay is where it’s at! You get all the hoopla without all the pain. And put yourself on a fast swim-bike relay team and you end up on the run course with lots of other athletes.  Alysia (swimmer) broke 30min and Mary (biker) had the fastest bike of all females in the race. Boom. Sorry guys, I really hope to break 1:50 but will be super happy with a 1:40.  Because although I’m a runner, I can have some spectacular meltdowns at the longer distances. And I knew I was under prepared for this so just didn’t know what would happen. Two things that were going to help me: 1) they changed the run course from last year so we wouldn’t have any BIG hills, just some smaller rollers that would be repeated, 2) the weather was about 1,000x better this year, topping out at 79 degrees with much lower humidity (90s and humid last year). It was a bit windy which made the run nicer, but apparently the bike much harder this year.

I also was experimenting a bit with my nutrition as I have had some trouble all year with my stomach and longer runs. I made sure to get enough calories the morning of in the form of two Honey Stinger waffles and a gel and then ate Sport Beans throughout the race. It worked! No bathroom troubles during or after which is huge for me. I was a bit hungry before I started but I guess I can deal with that if it means I don’t have to deal with bathroom issues.

When I got the chip from Mary I was determined, DETERMINED, not to go off at a pace that was in any way, shape, or form, uncomfortable.  Many of the guys that started off with me (who were doing the entire race) were running much faster than I wanted to. I stuck to my plan. And I saw most of them later on in the course :)  The run this year was two out and backs, run RIGHT by the finish line sort of deals.  Crowd support was awesome again and I knew so many people out there which kept it all interesting.  I stayed steady-eddie for the entire first lap and assessed the situation – I don’t feel bad at all. I had less than 1hr to go and figured I could start picking it up.  The first part of the second lap was definitely the hardest for probably everybody – it was now a little hotter and the hills seemed a little harder the second time.  My attempt to pick it up actually meant I stayed at the same pace, but compared to other splits I’ve seen, this was good. I hit the final turn around and now it was more of a net downhill which is how every race should end I believe. I didn’t have any ‘uh-oh’ moments except until I got to around 11.5 and I started to feel the distance in me (or probably my body was asking, wait, aren’t we done yet?!) I ended up splitting a 1:36:28 which I was very happy with.  Okay, I realize that this is way off my pr but in my current shape this is awesome.  So ahem to the person who looked at me and told me that was slow.

My relay finished 2^nd in the relay division (but of course 1^st for all females!) and my friend Kari absolutely nailed her race which made the day even better.  

I definitely feel like I win the pace-consistency award

The best babysitter ever brought Logan down again to cheer us on. It was awesome seeing him on both loops. I like this picture because of how cute the two of them look pointing at me. Please excuse my impression of a starving child.

My besties. Swim relay teammate Alysia and super fast girl Kari.