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!