My return...

Last report left you hanging with word of an injury. It was pretty bad, in my eyes. I couldn't really walk without limping. Off and on throughout the day I would have this throbbing ache punctuated by a sharp shooting pain through the outer edge of my foot. Seriously inconvenient, I'm tellin ya. I was worried. Just in the nick of time, I was struck down by what I'm certain was food poisoning. I think it was the nutrition gods smiting me, or whatever it is they say. While taking my son back-to-school shopping we wound up at the mall. Terrible place, really. Here nor there, I wound up in the food court at lunch time with two very hungry children and we ate Panda Express. I felt fine until I started cooking dinner. Long story short, overnight was a disaster of my two-year-old puking (and my dog beating me to her bedroom and eating it! gross!!) and me being up all night with her. The following day I could barely move, I felt so terrible. So being the awful mommy that I am sometimes, I laid on the couch all day with the kids watching Alf and VeggieTales on hulu.com. Finally at around 9 pm I felt good enough to swap a load of laundry out and that's when I realized that my foot didn't hurt any more!! Apparently all I needed was something to force my a$$ to stay still and stop walking around!

It had been almost two weeks since I last ran, but we had already paid the registration for Kaleo's 5k which was yesterday. I was a little nervous since it had been so long. My nervousness increased when Jacob looked at me before the race and asked if I had already used my inhaler. D'oh! I leave it in my purse, but that morning I grabbed my wallet and threw it in the bag with the kids' extra clothes. Rookie move.

Isaiah ran his first race, too! He has been begging for us to register him for the kids' run at the next race we did. So true to our word, we registered him for the 1/2 mile run for kids 6-11. We pumped him up for it, and prepared him that there would be kids bigger than him and he might not be the fastest one out there but as long as he finished and did the best he could, we would be proud of him. He's kind of a sore loser, and being that he is at the bottom of his age group, I didn't want him giving up because he was being beat. He came in FOURTH. I was so stinkin proud of him, I had to hold back tears as I watched him line up at the start and then pumping past me and the tears were flowing watching him cross the finish line. Sappy mommy, I know. But it was amazing.

My mom came along with us to hang onto the kids while we did the 5k, and I am so thankful to her for that. It was really nice having them waving at us excitedly as we ran past at the start. It was pretty warm, but we trucked along. He told me that he didn't want me to hold back for him, "I won't let you leave me," he said. So on I went. Supposedly this course was flat and fast, but I have run three 5ks so far and this had the most inclines out of any yet! They were small, but I could definitely feel the difference! My goal was to break 35 minutes. Being that I hadn't run in two weeks, wasn't sure how my ankle/foot was going to hold up, and didn't have my inhaler, I thought that an almost three minute improvement was reasonable. He huffed to me as we passed the three mile marker, "give it all you've got, finish strong!" We crossed the finish line side by side at 34:33.3. This breaks down to 11:09 miles, which is over a full minute per mile improvement from my last 5k. I'm really excited about that! I can't wait until our times drop into the single digits but in the meantime I'm just happy with progress in the right direction!

Falling off the wagon, and back on with a vengeance

Last week was awful. Since my last post, we did not run until two nights ago. We ate out at least once on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Friday was not too awful bad, we shared two rolls at sushi. On Saturday we went out to California Pizza Kitchen with some of our best friends (hi guys, we LOVE hanging out with you and I have to admit that this was the most fun eating excessive calories!!). On Sunday somehow we wound up at McDonalds for lunch and then at pizza for dinner for our family August birthday celebration. Yikes, no wonder we felt like crap!!

On Monday we were bound and determined to get out there and run. So run we did. We decided on the same route to complete the 5 mile loop. I went out and bought a snazzy Nathan LED light a few days ago and it made it's debut. As we are scooting along Jacob puffs behind me, 'hey you, you think just because you have a fancy armband that you're fast or something?' He also had a new watch which does splits and stuff which we have never had on a run before so he was prepared to holler at me our time along the way. We finished our first two miles feeling great and averaging 12:15 miles. Quick enough for us. Sometime around the midway mark I started having some discomfort in my knees. Not unexpected, but then something new popped up- a pain in my inner left leg, just above my ankle. We slowed it down drastically for miles three and four but picked up as best we could for the last mile. It took us one hour and four minutes. (Did I tell you that the last run we did my map was wrong? It was only 4.8 and not 5.) So it only took us two more minutes to cover almost a quarter mile longer. I was very happy with our time. A little sad that it felt so rough, but happy that we were able to maintain a little quicker pace even with a short stretch of walking in the middle. One of the coolest things about the run was that we saw another solo runner heading toward us as we were coming into our four mile marker. At that time of night and in that part of town I was pleasantly surprised and he seemed happy to see us too. =o)

Unfortunately the pain in my leg seems to have translated to a bigger issue. The outer edge of my left foot has sharp pain off and on throughout the day even though we took yesterday off. Jacob wants to go out for another five miler tonight but I just don't think I can do it....I hate to let him down but I'd also hate to really hurt myself and put me out of comission to a point where I can't train at all. =/ I will keep you posted!

High FIVE for us!!!

On our plates last night, a five miler. At this point in the game, every long run mileage increase is scary because each one can be classified as a PR in distance. Three miles, then four, and now five. Five for some reason, seemed so much more daunting. So after letting our tummies settle from dinner, and putting the babies to bed, off we went. (Don't worry we don't just leave them home sleeping alone. My youngest sister lives with us and she was in her room, probably talking on her cell phone and texting the whole time.)

I'm not gonna lie. I was scared. Would I make it? Did I hydrate enough during the day? Did we wait too long after eating? Did I use my inhaler at the appropriate time before leaving? My prior fail run left me with way too many worries, and I could tell Jacob was worried about me pooping out too. He won't leave me in the dark so if I don't make the run, he doesn't make the run. He has a lot more weight to lose so a little more is on the line for him than finishing the training run and getting to the point where he can run a half marathon. He is super hard on himself and if we run into any hiccups in our training plan I am worried that it could be a disaster. It has been in the past...I can only hope that since I am on board with him this time I can pull him through any rough patches that make him want to give up.

Mile one, he asks me our time. Thirteen minutes. Slow for the normal hard-core runner, but for us that was making good time. We still hadn't technically run a full four miles yet so we weren't sure how five miles would be. Since we have been averaging twelve minute miles, I wasn't going to complain at thirteen, considering we had to sustain it for over a mile longer than we are accustomed to. We continued on. I didn't remember where on the map the other mile markers were so we just started looking for our own milestones. First it was, I see Whitey's. Than it was I see Stone. Then I see Industrial....followed by Harbor. And finally we were in the home stretch. It took us 62 minutes, so somehow we picked it up at some point and wound up finishing with an average twelve minute mile, give or take a few seconds.

I felt amazing. Tired, but amazing. There was a little bit of shin and knee discomfort toward the end, but nothing that was anywhere near pain. Things I noticed on our run: 1)Jacob's head is pretty shiny and he has the sexiest calves I have ever seen. 2)My shadow is changing. In my midsection, in the area that used to be just a big blob of thickness. I am trimming down and the muffin top has more definition instead of just extending the entirety of my waist to underarms. (I'm not being negative here, that's actually really exciting because I can see that I am trimming down!!) 3)It truly is mind over matter. Your body really CAN go further than it alone will allow you to. You have to engage your body and your mind to push yourself past the limits.

As we started our cooldown, Jacob looked back and me and said very simply, "I'm proud of you. I couldn't have asked for you to do a better job tonight. Everything was perfect." I'm proud of you....at that particular moment, with sweat dripping down my face and my heart racing...I had never heard sweeter words coming from his mouth. Other than "I do" of course. =o)

Today-Random Rambling

I woke up this morning in a terrible mood. A don't-touch-me, don't-talk-to-me, best you don't even look at me kind of mood. Don't know what did it, don't know who, don't know why. My husband, ever the antagonist, pokes at me when I'm in moods like this. But this time, I'm not just barely in the mood where his poking actually makes me grin and get over it. I'm full blown pissed at the world. Which is rare for me, and why he really doesn't know how to handle himself when it happens. One of my other bloggy buddies Shutupandrun posted something yesterday about her mood and how it just creeps up and you have a meltdown where you're yelling at everyone and taking away privileges and crap like that. That's the kind of day I'm having.



At around noon, my husband I'm sure was thanking his lucky stars that he had to leave to run the Child ID booth in Dixon. So now I'm home alone with the kiddos, waiting not so patiently for them to both fall asleep. Luckily for me, we ran out of toilet paper and I had to get some other dinner items for our guests tonight (fun, I'm in such the mood for guests, bleh) so I had the distinct pleasure of carting both children to the grocery store by myself. They did pretty well, considering. I think Isaiah really tried hard, thank goodness for that. While we were there, I kept getting this nagging feeling that today means something- August 1st....what was it? OMG, I came to a halt in front of the meat department which the kids complained about because "it's toooooo coooooold". Today marks twelve years from the day my husband asked me to be his girlfriend and I actually said yes. See, he discourages the celebrating of any anniversaries other than the one that "counts"- our wedding anniversary. Otherwise, he gets too many dates confused. It's bad enough that he has to remember TWO kids birthdays now lol. Whatever. Anyway, so yeah....makes it even worse that I am in this terrible mood on this very auspicious day. I feel like a total ass. And that's all I have to say about that.



Yesterday we had an event in the morning to go to which I had no idea how long would take and then we had double booked ourselves so that we had a housewarming party to attend at five. We got out of the first thing super early and had over two hours before we had to be at the housewarming so Jacob got this great idea that we should go for our four mile run right then. It was freakin HOT. After the first mile and a half I felt like I had to puke. It was at that point I realized that in all the running around we did yesterday, I had only drank maaaybe 16 oz of water. No bueno. So we walked for a little while and picked it back up after stopping in at the police station to use the water fountain in the lobby. After running for about another mile and a half, my body felt like quitting. I was overheating bad and feeling so crappy. My legs didn't hurt, my lungs were working fine, but my body just wanted to melt into a puddle on the ground. Damn the city of West Sac for not having any trees!! There was barely any shade and we were running in temps a good 40 degrees hotter than we are accustomed to. All in all, it was a fail run. We didn't run nearly enough out of the whole 4.8 or so we traveled (including cool-down and warm-up) but I now understand the importance of fully hydrating allllll day long. Good grief. I guess all runners have their off days. Yesterday was definitely one of mine.

On a more positive note, I started reading ChiRunning yesterday which is a totally fantastic book. I'm not totally practicing all of the methods it talks about, but I have made conscious effort to alter and improve my running posture for better running efficiency. Even with the minor changes that I have made, the four miles that we ran a few days prior to the fail hot run were so much easier than any previous run. I felt good, and even after the four miles were over I kind of wanted to keep going! So, more to follow on that and how it works out for me. I have high hopes!

Oh yeah, please keep my iPod in your thoughts today....somehow (I'm sure one of the kids is the culprit) when I plugged it in today, I got an error message that it was corrupted and I am currently in the process of restoring it. Fingers crossed that it works! I don't know what I'm going to do if it goes out on me. =(