Connecting the dots

I have been realizing the past few days that I don't necessarily connect the dots from fitness-weight-exercise(and the fun of it) to health. I guess I know in my head that they are vitally connected but my choices about eating and moving basically give overall health no regard.

My mom is having some surgery in a few hours, and probably more to come, and I am sad and semi-annoyed that she never gave her health much notice. But I guess I am not a great example of taking my own health deliberately seriously. I just lucked out to find activity that I love and some amount of balance in my food choices (although I have been stress eating pretzel M&M like nobodies business this week!) but I have only a vague notion of how that is affecting my health and longevity.

It is 1:30am and I'm tired but I can't decide whether not making the direct association is a good or bad thing?
I know that taking care of future-Amber is my job and there are people in this world who expect me to do a good job because they love present-Amber and want to get to know future-Amber. So I think I should take it seriously for them.
On the other hand, I like the idea that if I just live as present-Amber trying to stay sane and balanced and trying new physical activities and remembering how much I love the adventures that running/triathlon have given me, I will be doing enough to protect future-Amber. This route allows me to stay sane and happy but may lead to poor choices for lack of perspective.

Hmm, I'll have to think about that one. One thing I know for sure is that neither present nor future me likes referring to myself in the 3rd person; so that'll have to stop.

Ladder, climb, ladder, climb, brick

I had a most excellent training week this week thanks in part to my sweetie and the Luna Chix

Monday: I did swim workout #9 from my team in training OYO swim workout lists. This one was a long ladder, recovery, short ladder as the main set. Long ladder was 50's up to 250 and down with a :20 rest between rungs, for a total of 1250. Then 200yd recovery followed by a shorter ladder with :10 rests, 25's up to 100 and down (for a total of 400). With the warm up and cool down this was the most yardage I've swum in quite a while. I was beat but I do love ladders; they allow me to focus on one small task at a time while sneaking in a focused workout.

Tuesday: I went for a ride with the Luna Chix who are seriously awesome. We did a few miles down the trail then went off trail to do a loop of Hollywood Hill. This hill is pretty sucky because it is a) kind of long, b) pretty steep then sort of steep, c) has a bad shoulder at the beginning (the road shapes up a bit later). But the ladies riding and the Chix were motivating and with a bit of huffing and puffing I made it up. At the top we gathered the group (LUNA has a no-drop rule) and a woman and I talked Garmin. She has the 310X and LOVES it and I was telling her how I saw some bloggers putting it in their caps to get OWS distances.

Wednesday: I was oddly sick to my stomach so I basically lay motionless so as not to disturb the party that was going on in my gut.

Thursday: My sweetie convinced me (and joined me!) to go to the gym and get in a good run workout. For some reason at this particular gym on one particular machine (which is SUPER ghetto) I seem to always get in a nice, solid, well planned out workout. On this day I did a mile warm-up and then a stepwise increase in speed and incline. I started at 6mph with no incline then added 0.5%incline and ran 0.25mi then upped the speed to 6.1 and ran 0.25mi. I repeated this up to 6.3 and 2% then cooled off. I got in a total of 4.5 miles! Felt good and luckily I was wearing my brand new bondi band cause I was sweatin! I'm not sure how I'm liking the Bondi-band overall, because it slips WAY too much but as a sweat sponge it is A+.

Friday: the Captain and I celebrated out 1.25 anniversary and the Seattle weather celebrated with us and gave us a most gorgeous day. We went for a great ride after work; we rode down from our place which is on a hill similar to the one Heidi lived on with her grandpa, proving again to myself I am slower only downhill on my bike. I also rode up this hill with quite a bit of standing and puffing! Felt like quite a feat. We then hit up The Rock for some late night happy hour wood-fired pizza. He is an awesome riding buddy and a fun pizza buddy too. I can't believe it has been 16 months.

Saturday: Spring cleaning, blech. I did decide I want a treadmill at home and am now on the lookout for sturdy dreadmills that have a small-ish footprint.

Sunday: THE BRICK! The cap and I hit the road for a 12mi ride. Just over halfway into it the Seattle weather turned on us and it started pouring. The Cap is such a good cyclist…he even paused when we passed a group that looked in distress to ask if they needed help :). The rain let up at the end of our ride and I left my bike with my sweet and headed out for a run. At first I didn't believe my Garmin. It said my pace for the 1^st half mile was 8:55!

What is crazier is that I basically kept that up for 3miles!

Mile 0.5-1.5=9:18

1.5-2.5=9:17

2.5-3=9:18

Total run time was 27:40!

 

I was shocked. I think the tired feeling in my legs reminds me to keep them moving.

 

Tonight I am taking a rest night. Overall it was a pretty good training week.

Critique: Swim more

Compliment: Feels like my training fit in with life pretty well this week which is truly my overall goal.

 

 

 

Breaking the rules

And maybe it helped!

 

I ran another race before doing a race report for the donut dash.

 

It is a janky little run that I've done for the past 3 years (WOW!). NARAL's Run For Your Rights. It is a totally low key 5k run around Greenlake. No timing chips, lots of dogs and strollers. Usually really hilarious protesters.

 

It is timed by a stopwatch but according to my Garmin (and the stop watch yielder) it was a PR at 27:52.

 

Maybe I'll do a race report before Issaquah…but maybe not!

I'd nearly forgotten!

I was pretty deep into 1/2M training when I started not feeling well! I just read some old posts and realized I'd gotten up to 10miles in November. How sad, that I never got to do anything with those.

I have been relatively hard core in preparation for Issaquah. Getting in a good mix of swim/bike/run and combo workouts.

This weekend was no exception. In fact it was an AMAZING example of how good it feels to fit it all in.

friday: Spent the night with the nephews. They're nuts!
saturday: Checked in with my Mom then met up in Fremont for the Hopscotch Festival and Serious Pie afterwards.
sunday: Top Pot Doughnut Dash, nap, bike ride, laundry and yardwork.


Great weekend, no? I feel like I got to do it all.


The race was good. I need to do a race report on that but it is bedtime.


I need a late summer/early fall 1/2M. Ideas? Speedy thought we should all do the Disney half, which would be SO AWESOME. Not sure I can swing it though.

Hmmm, probably time to make decisions.

You know what he is?

The best!

Just had to post an official my-boyfriend-is-the-smartest- coolest-sweetest-most-awesome report.

My iPhone went kaput last night. Totally dead with hardly a whisper of life. If you know my attachment to my phone or own an iPhone yourself then you understand what a tragedy this is. I was a trooper and made it until lunch today before taking it in to an Apple Genius who was able to restore factory settings. I was thrilled! Just needed to come home and use my last backup to get my settings back and I was in business.

NOT SO FAST

It tried not to restore. So my smart-cool-sweet-most-awesome sweetie got to work. He had to do some serious computer stuff and HOURS later I am syncing my phone again!!!

I am very relieved. I have had to entertain myself for the last 24 hours!

It influenced my workout plan today. I chose to swim rather than run in this gorgeous weather we're having. The swim was so very very hard. I am trying to do the 17 swim workouts that Team In Training gave us to prep for Issaquah. I'm on #4. It is very very hard and I'm slow. I'm not sure but I think swim fitness seems to fall off of a steep and painful cliff, more so than other disciplines.

Swim set was:

300 easy free warm up

4X100 hard, :20 rest between (this sucked and my final 100 was 1:55…BOO!)

4x200 with focus on lengthening my stroke

3X100 mixed cool down (I did breast, back and free)

It was so much harder than it should be.

Man, I'm glad it's Friday!

Run as One race report (running in NYC…and NOT from a mugger)

I almost* completely succeeded in NYC!

 

As reported last, I drove, I parked, I saw Broadway show, I found and registered for a race AND I ran a fun race in NYC's Central Park!

And all within ~23hrs!

 

THE RACE

I had successfully navigated the subway 2X already but decided that for race morning I'd grab a cab and get there stress free. I was really glad to have registered ahead of time since this allowed me to just stuff some cash and an ID and my hotel room key in my bra and head out unfettered (also why I chose a cab since I figured I'd be cold that early in the morning). I hailed a cab and was delivered promptly to the Mother Goose statue at the park. I was nearly an hour early and completely blind to what size race it would be but the line of porta-potties as long as WA-520 helped me guess that it was going to be substantial. The park is big enough to accommodate though and there was lots of room to wander and meet some NYC runners. I happened to sit down next to an adorably nutty speedy woman who was as friendly as she was fast. She told me about the RRNY races and what a good club they were. She places in the top of her AG and is training for her first full.

Soon enough it was time to line up. A note of how speedy people were: The pace waves were by number with the competitive folks being 1-1000…I was number 11011 .

 

When we FINALLY crossed the start line I was ready to run. It was such a beautiful day, and it had been SO long since I'd run one, and I was in Central Park. Pretty cool. I really wanted to try to hit a 10'/mi pace to gauge where I was. I set a virtual partner race for a 40'/ 4mi course. The first mile had a pretty substantial hill but I stayed on pace fine. Mile 2 I got to pull ahead of the virtual partner by a decent margin. Mile 3, SUCKED! It had a hill and I was tired. The race was so well organized and there was a marker and water at each mile. In the first 2 miles I saw a castle, a pyramid, multiple famous people (well, historical ones and in statue form).

The last mile I was tired but so excited to be finishing up my first race in forever. I was still ahead of my virtual partner by a little bit and I really wanted to finish in under 40, as you can see below I failed by a touch. Oh well, It was a great morning.

 

Their post race was equally well organized. I wondered how they would be able to keep from serving bagels and apples to everyone in Central Park; well, they tunneled runners into a closed off field. There were carnival games for kids and lung cancer awareness and a stage and such. But I was hungry and in New York City so I didn't want a race bagel so I headed back to the hotel.

 

*I managed to get a parking ticket in Hell's kitchen when I stopped for lunch, sad

    Indicates especially new yorky things

 

 

Run As One 4M List by Runner Number: 11011 Distance:  4.0 Miles, 6.4 Kilometers Date/Time:  April 11, 2010, 9:00 am Location:  Central Park, NYC Weather:  52 Deg. 47% Hum. Wind 7MPH, Sunny

 

First Name

Sex/ Age

Bib

Team

State

Overall Place

Gender Place

Age Place

Finish Time

Pace/ Mile

AG Time

AG Gender Place

AG %

AMBER

F28

11011

WA

4970

2148

659

40:18

10:04

40:18

2373

47.7 %

 

Amber Takes Manhattan

Reporting from NYC



I have had a very full and exciting day in NY today. Was in my meeting until 1pm and then headed straight to the city. I was pretty much TERRIFIED to drive in the city but decided to just be zen and pay attention and not stress, and it was all good! Got the car parked and out of my hair, checked into my super mod Best Western and went directly to the TKTS booth. I am staying right in the Theater District and my options were endless and all within ~2 blocks. I have always wanted to use TKTS cause you read about it in all the guide books. I couldn't decide between Mamma Mia! and Hair but the ticket guy made the decision for me because the Hair seats were way better and I have never seen it before.

THEN I successfully navigated the subway to go REGISTER FOR A RACE!

I saw a Competitor magazine and by chance there is one tomorrow! It is a 4-mile race at Central Park.

So I'll be running tomorrow. Hopefully I won't die doing 4 miles after so long. But I am here and it seemed a good chance to do one of (last year's) resolutions of racing in another state.

So I'm all set to go tomorrow.

George and John are watching my stuff for me.

My Pre-race dinner may have been a poor choice but was tasty

Eighth Annual Run As One Presented by JPMorgan Chase (4M)

The race shirt: