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December 28, 2005

Year in Review

I was inspired by Audrey's post to recap my year. But first, a little kinda funny story that I'm sure many runners can relate to:

Andy and I don't usually run around our neighborhood. Town Lake is way funner than running around here and has water stops. But today, for some reason, Andy decided to just run around the neighborhood. Before he headed out, he was standing in the foyer in just his shorts and shoes and socks, with his MP3 player in his ears, chatting away at me. I was trying to work; I was only half listening to him. All of a sudden it occurred to me that he hadn't really said anything worthwhile in several minutes and it must have been obvious to him that I was only half listening. I can't even remember what he was talking about. Cutting him off mid-sentence I said, "You're procrastinating! Just GO!" He knew I'd called him on it and left shortly after. I had to laugh, though; it was something I'd done so many times before ...

As for my running year:
12/30/04 - best workout I'd had in years. 5x1000 with a fun group with my fastest timed 1K ever (3:39.)
1/2/05 - strong, hilly 24-miler
1/4/05 - another good workout - 2Ks - but I knew as I was doing it that I probably was not being very smart. Man, my right shin hurt after that workout.
***END OF RUNNING YEAR***

As for the rest of my year:
January - two crappy half marathons and man, work (which had been sucky since about November) got even suckier. Swimming as cross-training turned out to be not as bad as I'd anticipated, but I didn't love it.
February - I worked - and stressed - the Saturday before the marathon I'd trained my ass off for for nearly ten months and only left because I was afraid I'd miss packet pickup. The next day I DNFed the marathon and then went to work. Suckfest.
March - Hey! Work got suckier! But I was able to start running again pain-free.
April - small hiatus in the suckiness of work. I'm running when I can.
May - Most amazing week in the middle of the month when I realize my and Andy's lives are going to change forever. Work is pretty crazy, though, which makes it hard to comprehend what we've gotten ourselves into. Suckiest week ever at the end of the month. Worst week of my relatively happy life. Makes me question everything. My head is spinning.
June - work suckiness is supposed to have ended but it doesn't. Governor calls special session. Most of this month is hazy. I'm still trying to recover from the regular session.
July - another special session just adds insult to injury. But a trip to Yellowstone and Montana helps the recuperation process. We tell our parents our big news and my parents decide to move here to help out. Swweeet.
August - running got slower, especially in the heat, but finishing up runs at Barton Springs and cooling off made it much easier to bear.
September - ACL-fest and Cancun. But still running consistently.
October - At the end of the month it *finally* cools off and I'm looking forward to running in some gorgeous weather until my body tells me it's not smart to run anymore.
November - mid-month I think I'm going to have to stop running because my ab muscles hurt, but by the end of the month I've figured out that I just need a little more support and running still feels great!
December - still walk-running my way around Town Lake four days a week. I get some nasty stitches that I have to work out and some weird stares, but I'm so happy to be out there. This morning I started carrying a cell phone "just in case."

2006 is going to be BIG! I hope we're ready for it!!

Posted by jenandmats at 7:16 PM | Comments (4)

December 24, 2005

Merry Christmas!

and happy other holidays, too!

It feels a little weird, but we're actually finished with our family celebrations. My dad's work schedule (be sure to heartily thank your flight crews this holiday season!) and Andy's sister's in-laws celebration schedule necessitated an early celebration on our part. We've already cleaned up all the boxes and tissue paper in the living room. *sigh* It was a good one.

I was inspired to blog this evening because of Calvin and Hobbes. Did anyone else get this for Christmas? I've already read the introduction and re-read the first few months' worth of strips. Reading it just puts me in a good mood, and makes me laugh out loud every now and then. In the intro there's a picture of the cat that served as an inspiration for Hobbes's personality and moves. It reminded me of Alison's pictures of Izzy and also reminded me that I hadn't checked in here for a while.

For Christmas I also got my father-in-law's guitar, a Yoga for Athletes DVD, and an herb garden starter kit. I've been pretty consistent cooking twice a week (like it ok) and with yoga twice a week (really like it) and have put some "teach yourself to play guitar" DVDs in our Netflix cue. I worry I won't have time to do any of this stuff (and do all the running and blogging I'd like to do in a few months), but I'm willing to try. Hopefully some of this stuff will stick.

Running's still good. SlowslowSLOW but good. And the weather has been so good. Cold in the morning and gorgeous in the afternoons. I'm amazed at how good running feels still. The one thing that keeps it from being perfect is that I get stitches (y'know, like the kind you got when you very first started running?) pretty regularly that I have to walk out.

At a White Elephant party last weekend I talked with a woman who was a former 2:44 marathoner who said she had some great workouts that brought about big breakthroughs for her back in the day. She described how bad she felt during those workouts and I was *jealous*! You know you have a sickness when you *miss* running so hard you wonder if you're going to vomit. I reminisced to her about running track in summers past and not being able to hear afterward because my ears had popped. Good times. Good times.

Maybe I'll think labor is fun, too?

Posted by jenandmats at 7:06 PM

December 11, 2005

Insufferable

If Andy can think of a way to turn his 1st place age group award from his race this weekend into a Christmas tree topper I think he just might do that. But, he says, it's WAY too big and heavy for that kind of thing.

Neither of us is into false humility. At the same time, neither of us has any delusions that we're Olympic material. We both started pretty much solidly in the middle of the pack. In the past few years age group awards became more common for me, but they're almost never a guarantee even now, even at really small races. Age group awards for Andy are even harder to come by. What I'm trying to say is ... as cool as it isn't ... we like 'em. We appreciate them.

We're not entirely sure what to do with them, though. Since we moved into this house I've had my own office with a bookshelf that collected these awards and all of my finishers medals and the like. Now that office will become a nursery, and something must be done with all that stuff. I don't think I want to throw it away. Slowly but surely I've been moving it into Andy's office, discreetly shoving aside Aggie paraphernalia and random shot glasses to make room for the little (and not-so-little) glass, plastic, and limestone reminders of some of the little triumphs I've had over the years. He's been accommodating, although there have been a few grumbles. It's moderately (?) tacky, I'm aware (but c'mon ... not as bad as the shot glasses!), but it's hard to let go.

Yesterday Andy picked up another piece of hardware at his first 50K race; a trail race in the San Jacinto National Forest north of Houston. We have heard great things about the race for years and have had it on our "to do" list of races, but marathon goal races have gotten in the way each year. In fact, this year he had intended to race Dallas this weekend until he realized a few weekends ago he wasn't interested in racing a marathon on his own in a city where he has no real ties. Now we realize what a smart choice that was. He was still worried about running with no company at this race, but the whole atmosphere of the race was so much more relaxed and supportive and beautiful than an urban marathon would be.

The course is broken down into three segments - a 6-mile out-and-back followed by two 12.5-mile loops. So Matty and I got to see him on three separate occasions, making spectating very easy and interesting. He seemed to be running well each time, although he said in the past 3-4 miles he was experiencing all of the ups and downs of a regular marathon (despite the beauty of the course he was *definitely* ready to have it over with by then.) He also developed some serious soreness in his quads.

The most remarkable part of this race is the food. Full cowboy breakfast for everyone (spectators are not harassed) and then full cowboy dinner afterward. We missed out on breakfast - biscuits, gravy, pancakes and more - but did take full advantage of dinner afterward: sausage, chicken fried steak with gravy, mac-n-cheese, hamburgers, fried pickles, jalapenos and cheese ... and more.

After dinner we wandered over to check out the results; Andy really only had an outside hope of getting an age-group award, so winning his age group was a really nice surprise. To say the least. The award is a hand-crafted bronze horse statue on a marble base - it's a great-looking award. And he knows it. He's taken every possible opportunity to work "his horse" into our conversations over the past 24 hours or so (as in, when he woke up this morning he looked at it on the desk near the bed and said "oh it wasn't a dream. I really did win that horse.") No amount of eye-rolling can convince him he's totally obnoxious.

I want one.

Posted by jenandmats at 5:54 PM | Comments (3)

December 5, 2005

Guess who's excited to turn ten?!

Oh I hope this works. I've never tried to post a picture before but this one is so cute. We celebrated her birthday in the park on Saturday with her friends and Andy baked the tennis ball-themed cake. She sure doesn't act like a 10 year-old dog!

Posted by jenandmats at 8:33 PM | Comments (5)

December 4, 2005

What has running done for me?

If I had a picture of the whole room last night at our shower it would be worth a thousand words in answering that question. I never had the experience of running on a cross-country team (and I certainly never felt a part of the teams I participated on in high school - those experiences were probably the exact opposite of what a team is like ideally) but somehow I've been so incredibly lucky to stumble upon my own version of that kind of camaraderie later in life. There are varying degrees of seriousness about running among the group - some don't even run anymore - but that's the tie that binds this group together. It's a group that has become more of our "life" team than a running one, but we can pretty much talk "shop" with any of them and they can hang.

And OF COURSE we got a jogger last night! We still don't have a only-thing-required-by-law car seat, but we have something even more important. The hostesses of the shower last night pitched in to get us one. The shower itself was a "display shower," which I'd never heard of before, but is pretty common at large showers, I think, where a gift-opening ceremony would take forever and bore people to tears. They had reserved a room at one of Austin's larger and better-known Mexican restaurants, and it was more like one enormous happy hour than a traditional baby shower. It really was perfect.

It's scary to have the shower over with, though. Now we just have to do the actual deed. Eek.

And yes the belly belt worked! I'm back out there. I've been starting a little later than the regular workday girls start and run-walking in the opposite direction until I come across them and then we can finish up together. Yesterday I did a "long run" of about 5 miles with my dad. We stopped for water, a few walk breaks and a potty break, and I felt great. It's so nice to be so low-key; when I see old friends on the trail I actually stop and chat rather than just high-five as we pass.

Yay belly belt!

Posted by jenandmats at 2:52 PM