Eugene

I have been really proud of myself lately for developing a love for going to the gym. It's amazing. Susan and I look back at the times when she used to ask me if I wanted to go with her in the mornings. My reply was always "No thanks, I like being fat today." and we are both really laugh at that. Now that I have time off, I find myself looking forward to going to the gym and spending time there actually taking care of myself. I do want to improve my race times, but at the same time, I want to make myself stronger. 

This morning after a bike, short run and a little bit of weights I turned to leave and found myself talking to a man in the hallway at SSC. He was a great bit older then I am, actually, maybe even older than my parents, but in a short amount of time we realized we had quite a bit in common. He never told me his age, but he did share he had been married for 47 years. His oldest son is 47 and his youngest is 37. He was one of 8 children and was a teacher and a principal before retiring. He worked for 37 years and 11 days and at his retirement party, a student he used to work with showed up.  This student had gone from being trouble and forced to attend 2pm-7pm school every day of the week - to a Psychiatrist. He had actually made something of himself due to the influence of Eugene. 

Eugene mentioned his parents were married for 75 years, his mother was 93 when she died and his father was a day shy of turning 101 when he passed away.  Eugene shared with me what he felt made his marriage work. He said "I look at it this way, if you make it to 47 years - you've done a pretty good job." I would assume so, Eugene. After all - who would stick around for that long if they felt otherwise? 

Who knows if I will ever "bump" into Eugene again. He did begin our conversation asking me if I was a soccer player. When I replied "no" and asked why, he told me I looked like one. I guess I really am starting to play the role.  

Farm Life

  

                          

Scott and I took a ride out to Larriland Farm today.  Of course, we picked up some fruit and pumpkin butter - but I also took some photos.  I'm trying to learn my Canon EOS 1-D a little more so I can achieve richer colors. I really enjoy different types of color film and the richness they can provide as well as great clarity, so digital is an adjustment for me. Here are a few shots from the trip. 

                                          

                                                     

                                           

                                                     Peach Tree

                                    

                                                                    

             

            This is my personal favorite. The focus is up close, on the leaves of the cherry tree. 

21,544 Points

I have decided to start counting points again. WeightWatcher points that is. Currently, I am able to eat 20 points a day, and have been able to for quite some time now. However, after Alaska, I decided it would best to just eat whatever I wanted. After all - I'm finding the reason "I just ran 26 miles" to be good enough to give into anything. 

Well, three weeks have gone by and although I didn't gain 8,000 pounds, I did gain 5 and even though I was FAR under my goal weight anyways, I still didn't feel "myself". I've made the calculations and have come to realize that I have eaten a grand total of 21,544 points (and actually more, because these are the calculations that would mean I ate only my assigned number all the time...) Regardless - that's a ton of points. 

Counting points works for me and from time to time I think I need to do it just to remain on track. I love feeling the way I do now and wouldn't want to go back to the old person. I've started to develop a love for the gym and actually getting sweaty. Training for Alaska allowed me to get past my materialistic issues and do what makes me feel great. Hooray! 

My latest revelation

For those that know, my weekend wasn't the usual. It was actually, somewhat strange - but I guess all things happen for a reason, right? I took a good portion of it to just think and sort things out. I usually carry the appearance that says I have my shit together. Usually. While I'm sure I was able to present that way this weekend, in reality, I was having a personal crisis. For some reason, I felt like I had a lot of things to work out - mentally and emotionally. 

One of the best perks to being a teacher is having summers off. This is the second summer I have been able to take off. Last summer was amazing, last summer ended with thoughts of  "wow, if I can ever do this again... it will be great". This summer has been a little more trying.  This summer, I have zero responsibility, other then taking 9 credits of graduate work (come on May, 2009!). While this has given me something to do, the rest of my day is composed of down time. Downtime for someone like me, who spent the whole year massively busy, is turning out to be a very bad thing. 

Let me refresh you on my life last year: first year teacher, one massively hard Legal grad class in the Fall, two grad classes in the spring - one hard, one easy, first year teaching, training for the marathon, babysitting, working at the ice rink, first year teaching, having some sort of social life, making new friends (running group), fundraising, huge projects with the kids at school - oh, and did I mention first year teacher? I sat back today and wondered - how in the hell did I do it all? Three days a week, I would get in training runs. During the winter, I would be at the gym at 9pm at night, after class. Then, when spring came around, I woke up at 4:30am to train before work.  I raised over $5,000 without having to have a fundraiser at a restaurant. I passed my grad classes with A's and one A-. (Which I must add, I have yet to get anything lower then an A- and I only have two of those!) I was featured in St. Elizabeth Schools newsletter 4 times for achievements as a teacher, and even written about in larger organization newsletters. I have had a lot of good come from working so hard. 

So, I went from all of that to - having to be at class 2 days a week. That's it. 

The downtime was great, until I started getting into trouble. More mental trouble then anything. When I have too much downtime, I get on everyone's nerves, everyone gets on my nerves, hell - I get on my own nerves, I'm in everyone's business and they are in mine, I have too much time to think and ponder on all of my choices thus far in life and to be honest, it is causing problems. It's making me look too deep into things and wonder far too many questions. I'm tired of wondering. I want my busy lifestyle back where I have no additional time to think about other things. I also want all of my relationships to go back to the way they were - where everyday was happy and everything was great.

5 things

5 things found in your gym bag:

1) swim suit

2) PowerGels

3) iPod Nano

4) heart rate moniter

5) socks

5 favorite things in your bedroom

1) Snuggles

2) MICA diploma

3) my Marathon medal resting on my marathon shoes 

4) my photographs

5) my flip flops

5 things I have always wanted to do

1) live in Puerto Rico

2) own every Apple product ever made

3) win the lottery, wait, make that MegaMillions

4) Be a mailman

5) play the violin

5 things I am currently into

1) running

2) going to the gym

3) setting PR's 

4) blogging

5) maintaining my successful attempt at being a nonsmoker. 

Back up and.... running....

Yesterday I was going to take a cycling class at the Columbia Gym around 9:45. I have taken it before and really enjoyed it. CA now has the online registration system which I like, because I can sign up for something the night before from home - at any time. Well, I woke up later then expected and didn't have enough time to make it to the class on time, so I thought I would try an easy run. I know what you're thinking, but however, for once, I'm being smart this time. So, I lace up, head out into the neighborhood and had a much better time then I thought I would! 

I actually felt stronger, which was amazing to me. Even after taking so much time off - it was like my body still kept getting stronger while repairing and recovering. I only did an easy 2.3 and wanted to keep going. I knew to take it easy though and just build up at a slower rate. I also hope to get my shin back in place so I don't have to bear the white sleeve anymore, but heck - if that's all I need with no knee problems or anything else then I'll wear it. 

This morning I woke up a lot later then expected and the temperature had gotten high really fast! It was 84 degrees around 10:15 when I was going to head out again. I decided to go to the gym instead and run on the treadmill.  I had a personal TV and watched "From G's to Gents" on MTV which was followed by Parental Control (where parents tried to find their gay son a new boyfriend). Both shows made me laugh out loud several times - but certainly made my time on the treadmill fly by. I went a little faster this time and just as far as yesterday and felt even better.

So, it is decided that I will be a TNT mentor for the Winter Season! I am already registered for Disney in January, so this is the race I'll help out with. I'm not going to fundraise for this one because I am planning to do either the Century ride or the Columbia Tri next year through TNT. I could even do both events if I went for the Tri first since it's in May, but know - I do plan on fundraising for TNT though at least once a year!

Artwork in the river

On Frederick Road as you go under the railroad tracks at the bottom of Main Street,  you cross over the river as you head into Baltimore County.  An "artist" not sure who, has taken rocks from the river and created a masterpiece. From the street, all you can see are rock strategically piled as you drive by, however, if you get out of the car - you will come upon this:

                                 

                       

Pretty neat, huh?

The burn out

The week after the marathon, I felt great. However, I still stayed off my "running feet" for the entire week just to give myself some time to rebound. Saturday came around and I went out with the team and managed to run 5 miles. When I caught up to Andy (he went to Alaska with us) he was complaining about how difficult it was to run, when he didn't think he'd have a problem. I, on the other hand, felt great - and since I no longer needed to complete my internship, it now looked like I had a whole summer to focus on grad classes and improving my running.

The week before the 4th of July, I decided to hit the streets every day. Of course I  kept it simple and stayed low in mileage, but by Wednesday I thought I'd push myself.  I woke up and ran an easy 6 miles. It was good to get out and go further - plus, I think I wanted to eat a big dinner that night! = ) The next day, Tracey called and wanted to know if I wanted to run her "hilly" route through Columbia. Why not - I had run an easy 6 the day before, so let's hit some hills. That went really well too. Friday, we left for Deep Creek for 4th of July weekend. I was excited to be able to run through Sky Valley - after all, 7 miles of our marathon run was on trail exactly like that. So, I woke up, got dressed and plotted my route. I noticed during this run, it was fairly hard. My first thought was - I don't really run on roads like this at home, maybe that is the problem. My second thought happened to be - I might also be in for new shoes... I wonder if these guys are "dead" yet. I carried on, even though the run seemed to be the hardest since I started training in February. 

Sunday, I thought I would go for another run - this time I couldn't even run 2 miles! What in the world... I was doomed. I began to get down and realized that, although I haven't had many bad runs, when I do - I really get depressed. It's easy to sit there and think "I just ran 26 miles the other day... why on earth are 3 so damn hard..." I decided, much thanks to lots of leg pain, it had to be the shoes. So, on Monday I went out to Fleet Feet and purchased a brand new pair of shoes, and let me tell you, I was super excited to use them. Pretty much all I had figured this far  was right - my shoes were totally dead. 

That night, I laced up my new shoes and hit the neighborhood. Half a mile later - I was dying. I could hardly move my legs. My feet felt like they had cinder blocks attached to them and my legs just ached. This wasn't fair - what in the world was going on?I decided to ask Jonathan for some advice - I had pretty  much come to the conclusion that my legs were signing out for quite some time. This was their way of telling me recovery was needed and I had to stop. The same day, as irony would have it, my new book on Women's Running by Jeff and Barb Galloway showed up. This book was full of great suggestions. I finished the week with some cycling classes and felt a lot better.  Yesterday I thought I'd give a small 4 mile run a try with the team and - it worked! I was able to make it and felt as though I was working my way back up.