Training

I realized that there are a couple of races in the not so distant future that are on my probably-going-to-do list and if I wanted to actually do these I may just need to do some ‘real’ training. Like now. I swam Monday morning, although I didn't quite make it to Masters, but still did a Marty workout that consisted of 8x200 with a moderate 50 within each one.  I did my short run in the evening, with drills even! (Logan tried some out, too).  I rode the trainer yesterday evening – in our bedroom which actually really sucks because we only have super basic cable up there, so my viewing options consisted of the local news, every terrible judge show, Maury Povich or BBC news. I settled on BBC, then finished with America’s Funniest Home Videos.  Yargh. And then. THEN! I made it to Master’s this mornings, like only 5 min late – but that was the 5min I always stand on the edge trying to get myself into the cold water. 

Part of my motivation problem is I’ve been doing this for so long.  I know some people who are fairly new to triathlon and they are really fired up. Waking early every day, getting in tons of bike miles – that is awesome. But I did my first triathlon at 8. And got back into the sport (post high school/college) at 21. I’m turning 35 (what what?! I am HOW OLD?!) so that is quite a long time in this sport, and I just can’t get up for everything all the time. There are so many other things to do and I just can’t keep myself focused to be hardcore this year.  And that’s ok. And it is sometimes comical to see the same thing over and over – a lot has actually not changed since I got into the sport. For example, I happened into the Slowtwitch forum (a place it’s really better to just stay out of) and went into a thread that totally devolved into people belittling each other – just like it was 14 years ago. Same topics, different assholes.

But where would I be without this sport? I love it, I really do – I have met so many awesome people throughout the years - some of whom are my very closest friends.  This is just not the year that I’m going to be singularly focused on some arbitrary goal.  Although sometimes I do think about really trying to run fast again.  That could be fun.

Weekend Bust

We were driving to dinner on Wednesday with a quick detour to Inside-Out Sports so I could verify I did in fact get the right size running shoes when Logan started saying “Boo-boo. Boo-boo.” I wasn’t sure what exactly he was saying at the time and asked him, “Logan, did you  poo-poo?” which he indignantly replied, “No poo-poo!”  Upon parking at the store he vomited all over himself and the car seat. We then determined that he may have been telling us his belly had a boo-boo. Marty took over the cleaning part while I ran in to try on some other shoes.  When I returned, Logan had been stripped down to his diaper and Marty was handling all the barf covered clothes with only a mild look of disdain.  Fast forward a bit: more vomit, diarrhea, and lots of movies later, Logan seemed to be back to normal pretty quickly when it was all said and done. Although he didn’t have much of an appetite for several days (the kid honestly doesn’t have the biggest appetite to begin with).

Marty and I thought we had dodged a bullet and congratulated ourselves with how we handled it all.  Pat on the back here, hose it all off there, never gonna get rid of the pukey stink in the car seat, though! Febreze for the rest of our life.

We even jokey-joked with a fellow parent at the park on Friday evening about the incident and how surely we would’ve gotten it by now if we were going to get it.  Right? Right? (oh you all know the answer to THAT question!)

Poor Marty was scheduled to run a marathon Saturday morning near Richmond, and unbeknownst to me was battling his own stomach demons before he left the house prior to 5am.  It was around this time I woke up and thought, “something ain’t right.” 

Several hours of hell ensued. You all can infer whatever you want here and it would probably be correct.

I sent out an all-points bulletin to friends and babysitters because I was not in a place to be taking care of a child at this point. Unfortunately, no help was available so Logan watched copious amounts of tv and was fed whatever was within reach.  I could barely get off the couch to make it to the bathroom.  Marty raced home after his DNF and seemed to have a lesser version of the sickness than I had (although when push comes to shove he may think that I just don’t deal with it as well – I call bs and he’d better watch his mouth next time! I am a delicate flower).  But thank goodness that his immune system is stronger or his stomach is like steel (this is my theory) because he was able to get Logan out of the house to burn some energy off while I continued to lay on the couch and not move.

The next morning I felt better. I was able to eat a tiny bit of oatmeal without any adverse side effects and was ready to get out of the house so we all went to cheer on the runners at the Tobacco Road full and half marathons, where I joked that we were only able to cheer for half of the participants since the other half were all wearing headphones.  Remember when these used to be banned in races?

I was still feeling pretty weak throughout the day and my appetite was mostly non-existent. We visited our local brewery and after 2 sips of beer and a few nachos I realized I had made a mistake. Nothing entered my stomach after that.  Nothing left my stomach immediately either, so at least there was that.

Kids stomach bugs – the gift that keeps on giving.

Florida Camp

I took one for the team last week (Team Gaal, that is).  For the past 9 (?) years we have run a training camp in Florida in late Feb/early Mar. Initially they were held in Clermont, before we moved them to the west coast of Florida.  I had attended all but the one right after Logan was born, until this year.  I didn’t miss ALL of it, just most of it. With the new job and being in finance, it is very difficult to miss the first week of the month since it’s month-end close (and I haven’t accrued enough vacation). Here was my schedule:

Friday Feb-28: work from home in the morning, drive down to Jacksonville with Marty and Logan.  This ~7hr drive turned into a 9hr nightmare because of a gigantic backup just before the Florida state line. And we were so close to my sisters. That was painful.

Saturday Mar-1: Drive from Jacksonville to Orlando with Marty and Logan. Drop Logan off at Marty’s sister’s house so he can spend the week with his cousins, Aunt/Uncle and grandma. Continue driving (with a brief awesome lunch with dear friends in downtown). I-4 is a bigger mess than I remember.  And does Tampa ever NOT have a traffic jam. Sheesh.  Made it to Treasure Island around 5:30pm

Sunday Mar-2: This was an awesome day. 70 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. We rode in the morning, did a short transition run after, and then swam in the ocean in the afternoon. We ate a delicious dinner and then played games.  I wish every day could be like this :)

Monday Mar-3: early morning flight back to Raleigh. I came home to ice and sleet. Yay.

Tuesday Mar-4 through Friday Mar-7: work, work, work

Friday Mar-7: flew back down, I did have to continue working when I got there, but at least the latter half of the day was in a beach house looking at the Gulf of Mexico

Saturday Mar-8: Armadillo Run 5K.  I managed to win this despite not being in very good run shape. It helps that the course was pancake flat. Drive to Orlando, pick up Junior Awesome, drive to Jacksonville.

Sunday Mar-9: drive with Marty and Logan back to NC

As one can deduce, I was there for the long drives to help Marty with a 2 year old, with a little bit of training sprinkled in. It wasn’t all bad – I got to see my sister and her extremely cute baby, sister-in-law and nieces (and Logan had a great time with them all week), and got to enjoy some sun and beach.  Up here during the week was not terrible (although the weather left a little to be desired). It really flew by and I completely forgot what it was like to have absolutely no ‘other’ obligations.  Even our dog was away having fun with the Honnold’s. Work was busy so the days went by quickly, and I managed to go out with my girlfriends twice during the week.

I am feeling slightly more motivated, however, this is probably in direct correlation to the fact that my wetsuit felt more snug than it should’ve when I put it on.

Logan seemed to do great at his cousin’s house and loved trying to do everything they did.  When we went to pick him up he was napping so we waited until he woke up. He did a complete double-take when he realized it was us and wouldn’t stop hugging Marty and me.  Then he was extremely clingy the rest of the day (and the next day). It broke my heart a little.  I hope in his little mind he wasn’t thinking we had abandoned him. 

Logan's first lollipop. It ended a major meltdown.

Marty multitasking at camp

Jelly smile with family

"Cheese!" with a mouth full of pb&j

Nailed It!

Myrtle Beach Half Marathon Report

I can’t call this a race report, because we didn’t race it. We ran it – much like a long run with maybe just a little bit more oomph than we would typically have in a long run. In the end, it was perfect pacing. We felt strong, and had fun, and we weren’t tired/sore afterwards.  Mission totally accomplished.

I picked Kari up in the afternoon and we drove the ~3hrs to Myrtle Beach. We had pizza and a giant chocolate chip cookie for dinner and then went to our hotel. Even though it’s a fairly big event with 10,000 total runners, finding cheap but nice accommodations and non-crowded restaurants was very easy. We stayed right on the beach and had a shuttle to the race start. This is what happens in the off-season of a very popular summer beach town.

This is what we woke up to:

It pretty much poured rain up until the start. Kari and I huddled with many others at the outer edge of a tent to try and stay warm and dry. Neither of us had any rain gear so our outerwear was pretty much soaked by the time we took it to the bag drop at 6:15am. We then jogged around a parking lot trying to stay warm. We made it to the starting corral and seeded ourselves back aways and pretty much all of the sudden the horn blew and we were off.

We had talked about not wanting our first mile to be faster than 8:00 and how that should feel like we’re walking. We hit the first mile at 8:09 and my first thought was, “Uh-oh. That didn’t feel as easy as I was hoping.” But we dropped it to 7:40 the next mile and it was fine – from mile 2 until the end we bounced between 7:30 – 7:43 miles. It was a headwind going out and we tried to draft as much as we could (which wasn’t a whole lot) and then had a nice tailwind on the way back in. The last mile was one final turn to the finish and we were running back into the headwind which had picked up significantly – 30mph gusts, which we powered our way through. This flat section felt like we were running directly uphill – but we felt fine since we hadn’t run any miles that were very taxing overall.  We passed people the entire race and the miles clicked off very fast.  We ended up running just a few seconds over 1:41 and although this is way off my pr, it went by the fastest of any half marathon I’ve ever done.  It’s definitely more fun to run with someone the whole way.

We got massages right after and then went to find our bags from earlier. We were both freezing by this point and our pre-race clothes were soaked so this was not awesome. It was windy and cold and we just wanted to get back to our warm hotel room, which was 1.5 miles away. We knew we weren’t going to be able to make it there on foot as popsicles so we found our shuttle and sat in it for 40 or so minutes before it finally left to take us back. 

We cleaned up and hit one of the 50 pancake houses on Myrtle Beach before heading to the outlet mall where we found some great deals – before both complaining that our feet hurt and heading back (with just one ice cream stop along the way). Endurance shoppers we are not.

Marty had a busy weekend while I was away, being #1 dad and hosting a swim clinic on Saturday morning. He met some friends on Saturday night with Logan in tow and they had a fun guy’s night. He sent me this picture from a new brewery that just opened right near our house.

I asked if Logan was the only baby in the bar?

Nope.

Phew. It seems like we’re still doing all right with this parenting thing.

Snow Snow Snow

This storm was predicted, so I'm not totally sure why there were so many people stuck on the roads yesterday. If you watch any of the news you'll have heard of the gridlock we had in Raleigh/Durham in the afternoon. I think that even though we all heard about the disaster in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago, most just don't take these forecasts serious.  This is our 7th year here in NC and most times these storms never pan out the way they say they could. It's always, we dodged a bullet, or it could've been a lot worse.  I wasn't too worried about it until I watched the weather forecast Wednesday morning and the meteorologist totally freaked me out. I immediately sent a text to Marty: if you were to buy wood, do you think you could start a fire?

We have never used our fireplace. We are Floridiots.

I needed to go to work Wednesday morning because I had deadlines that required the help of my coworkers. Thank my lucky stars that one coworker came in who could help me.  I still wasn't all that concerned about traffic because kids were off of school and I assumed there were a lot of people who didn't come into work at all. I left the office at 11:30 and made my way to Logan's daycare. I stayed there for a bit as they had just served lunch.  Not that he ate any of it. Can we say picky-eater. Sheesh.

Then I decided to stop at the super market because Tassie was almost out of food. And maybe I wanted cake.  Logan didn't want to sit in the cart, so it was slow going with him ambling next to me while I got some groceries.  When we walked outside it had started snowing - hard. By the time I got home, 5min later, our driveway was covered and there was no way I was getting up it (it's very steep).  But we were home safe and sound.  My helpful coworker didn't leave until 12:30 and it took her 2.5hrs to get home.  And this picture was not even photo shopped.  This is in front of the Angus Barn if any of you are familiar with Glenwood Ave.

 

This morning I decided to go ahead and get my run in. I put on my trusty Yaktrax but this time around wasn't as good as last time.  The snow was deep and slushy - very, very hard to run through.

This was our backyard this morning:

But we haven't lost power so everything is good. I can work from home and have the Olympics on in the background. It definitely puts a damper on the training, but let's be real here, I'm not exactly very disciplined right now.

Also, my sister had her baby this past Sunday. Say hello to Beckett Morgan Lowery! I can't wait to see him in a couple of weeks.

And here is Logan's latest thing: fake falling and saying, 'ow ow ow'

Oh Hiiiiiii

Hello world. It’s been awhile.

What has been going on? What has not been going on? Here in ‘freaking cold isn’t this still considered the south North Carolina’ we are plugging away. I am doing a half marathon next weekend with one of my dearest friends where we are in it to finish. Yup, my goal is to finish. Last weekend I pulled off my longest run in prep for this – 11.7 miles. It was hilly and I negative split it so I figure I can fake 13.1 miles on a flat course with a good friend.  I am severely under trained – not my fault. Actually, it is (it always is right? Whether we want to believe it or not).  Last week I only managed 2 runs the entire time! It snowed, and as you all have heard by now when it snows in the South everyone becomes blathering idiots and the entire metropolitan area shuts down.  Luckily, Marty and I own a pair of Yaktrax so we did each get out for a run on the snow day (yes, I said day). But the next day was so icy and a very freezing 7 degrees, so no go on driving into Umstead at 6am for our normal group run.  Saturday we went to Richmond, VA for a triathlon symposium (which lasted all day).

The Symposium was really great. They had interesting speakers from athletes to doctors to coaches. I was worried initially that this was going to be a long day in a boring room but it wasn’t.  It WAS an early wakeup call, 4:30am so we could get to Richmond, which is 3hrs away, in time. Our babysitter made a small fortune that day. Anyways, Michellie Jones was the first to speak and she had some good stories. She is right up my alley, minus of course me not being an Olympic silver medalist or Hawaiian Ironman winner, but she said she hates IM and loves going short and fast and being done quick. Me too, which is why I’ll be doing sprints this year (that and also the full time job/coach/mom thing).  I also loved that she said she never used a heart rate monitor or power meter. When she was supposed to go hard she went hard and when she was supposed to go easy (or gasp, rest) she did.  OF COURSE they are great tools that provide solid feedback and I don’t want to debate that, but I’ve been an athlete for a long time and I love going by feel.  Chris Carmichael also spoke – Lance Armstrong’s former coach although you’d be hard pressed to find that info in his bio. He spoke about the time crunched athlete (which most of us are) but he also sprinkled in interesting stories about his time riding for the 7-11 team back in the mid-80s.  Frankie Andreau was the last speaker, and we actually had to cut out of his a bit early so we could get back before Logan’s bedtime.  He also didn’t say a peep about that other cyclist, despite being his teammate and his wife having a huge fight with him. I wanted some dirt! Alas, they were all professional and crap.

And where to begin with Logan. He is growing so fast and saying so many words. English and Spanish – it’s really amazing.  He loves Go Diego Go (which he calls ‘Agua’) and playing with Matchbox cars which are literally covering our entire living and dining room. He is sleeping in much better, too, which is great for us. He had been waking up very early 5:30am (or even earlier) but we bought him a clock that changes color when he’s allowed to call for us. We have this set for 6:30 and when he does wake up before this we just simply tell him it’s not time yet and he lays back down. We were shocked when we realized it was that easy to get him to go back to sleep!  He is still in a crib – he has never once tried to climb out so we’re going to keep him in it for as long as possible. 

He is loving the pool now and often asks to go to the ‘seena’ (la piscina is pool in Spanish). He also enjoys running the circle in our house – typically its “Dada unner!” and they run while I stand and give them high fives every time they come by me. He’ll stop occasionally if Tassie gets in his way and says, “Miso, Tassie” which means excuse me in Spanish (con permiso, actually).  We take him on all of our long runs and instead of letting him sleep which then screws up his nap later on, we allow him to watch a movie on the Kindle which of course he loves. He either watches Cars or Toy Story. If I tell him “I love you” he responds, “Amor, Mommy.”  Cue melting of my heart.

Here is your random cute picture.

An Update

Things that have happened:

I got a new job. This has coincided with a decline in my training - some motivational issues and some busy-ness have collided to equal missed workouts. Mostly, I'm training so I can eat lots of desserts, which has always been my biggest underlying theme for many years.

Logan turned two.  This kid - so cute and so boy. My friend explained it best: they are totally bipolar. One minute he is happy and 2 seconds later he can be screaming 'NOOOOOO' and crying.

He has become a pro at opening gifts.

Flash of Tassie

He eats sandwiches like this - starts in the middle.

We decided to start a tradition since his birthday is December 12th, to not do anything Christmas until after his birthday. This way we can keep the two separate. On December 13th, we put up the Christmas tree. And for those of you astute readers, an explanation: it was tacky Christmas sweater day at work.

We did a 5K in Pittsboro earlier in December with a bunch of friends and then had breakfast at Peggy and Dave's house afterwards. Peggy makes incredible french toast, and I'm kind of a snobby connoisseur so I can confidently say this. This was the day that Logan was introduced to Cars (the movie) and obsessed is not a strong enough word for how he feels about it now. I would estimated he asks about 15 times a day if he can watch it.

I'd say a big turning point was when he told me, "No Elmo! Cars!!"

Logan's daycare put on a Christmas pageant. I think they were some sort of Shepard's but the whole thing was in Spanish so what do I know. This is backstage while he was getting ready with his teacher Miss Gloria.

Logan did good at the beginning, 'singing' and ringing his jingle bells, but then he saw Marty who was off to the side taking 110 pictures and he started running towards him. When the teachers tried to get him back he started crying and threw himself to the ground. Marty was able to help him get it together and back onstage.

Speaking of Spanish, Logan is saying a ton of words, although most not very correctly. Some of his favorites are: Adoo-yah (Ayudah - help), Bai-yo (Caballo - horse), Luna (luna - moon) and many, many more.

I also had to put him in timeout for the very first time because he had quite the tantrum when I told him, no, he couldn't watch Cars and THEN he threw a car at me.  Oh no he di'int. He was sooo stubborn and wouldn't say sorry so he sat there for a very long time. "They" say that a child should be in timeout for 1 year = 1 minute. So every 2 minutes I would ask:  Logan, are you sorry?  He would respond: NOOOOO!  Then he fell asleep. Well played, kid.

Sneaky Tassie again

The weekend before Christmas was unseasonably warm (70s!) and Marty let me get out with my girls for a nice bike ride while him and Logan visited a cool Raleigh park that has a train and a carousel. The ride was great and we kept it nice and slow. My elbows and wrists ached towards the end which is a sure sign of me being out of bike shape because I haven't been in that position putting pressure on those parts.  And my boys had fun, too.

We had a very low key Christmas with just us as all family was elsewhere.  Marty, unfortunately got sick and was down and out for a few days, but he's feeling much better now.  Some very nice friends of ours let us use their beach house in Ocean Isle Beach, NC for a few days so we could get away.

Lining up his cars into a big choo-choo

Wee bit chilly at the beach during Christmas

Now we're back home and I'm enjoying a few more days off before I head back to work on Thursday. We don't have any big NYE plans because we're lame and I like to go to bed early :)  But I am going to get my butt out the door and do a 5K which will at least guarantee me a good workout.

Here's to 2014!!