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May 28, 2006

Big week and an oldy moldy race report

We had a big week this week: full time work for me and part-time day care for MG. Both were ok. I didn't manage to make it to work before 9:30 - it was hard to get everything organized and even harder to say goodbye to her once we got to daycare, even though I like her "teachers" so far and am comfortable leaving her in their hands.

On her first day there they sent me a video of her having a good time in a bouncy seat, checking out some dangling toys. It was a nice touch. On her second day they asked me if she had colic when I called to check in on her. She wasn't having a good day. So Andy went to pick her up. When he got there she was sitting in the same bouncy seat with a pouty lip and tears in her eyes. On Friday when we went to pick her up she was having a blast in that same bouncy seat, hanging out with her new boyfriend. They were both playing with the dangling toys on the bouncy seat and squealing at one another. It was a nice end to the week.

Not surprisingly, she seems to now have a permanently runny nose. And earlier in the week she had a little cough, too. She still has a little cough, but now she's faking it - there's no substance to it. She likes the way it sounds I think.

I'm very very glad to have a three-day weekend this week. We both need to recover!

And now ... the oldy moldy race report. Last weekend I ran the 10K version of "The Loop," a Rogue Trail Series race:

I spent my high school years in a town whose motto was that it was the "Gateway to Yosemite." The town was smallish and our mall sucked. My friends and I spent a lot of weekends in Yosemite and in the areas around the park. We hiked a lot. I wasn't a runner then but my strengths and limitations were the same - strength and endurance to spare on the way up, and then we'd get to the top of whatever trail we were climbing and have to turn around and my palms would get all sweaty. First of my friends up, last of them down. Scooting on my butt while the other girls leapt from rock to rock like little mountain goats (I'm sure they'd love that analogy.)

I had two reasons to be anxious about The Loop on Sunday. First, I'd had a few mishaps at the Maze, the first race in the series. I'd made a bold (?) move to pass several women I'd been running with to go with another woman, and ended up twisting my ankle and standing around watching them all pass me back. *Smite* I had also later run off course and ended up standing on a fire road with my hands on my hips looking side to side waiting for somebody to come by. I didn't want that to happen again. Second, Steve kept announcing that the course was "difficult" and I didn't know what that meant.

So I started off running easy and talking incessantly out of nervousness. After the initial crowd thinned out I ended up running with another woman behind me who had to listen to my nonstop chatter. When we got to the aid station she went ahead, and I wanted to stay with her. Which meant I had to stop talking. I ran hard and I loved it. I was frustrated, though, to watch her slowly slip away from me as she scooted over rocks and I thumped and skidded and spazzed. And then we got to that last steep decline and I just didn't have it in me to charge down. I put my hand down but did NOT scoot on my butt.

I was amazed at how wobbly my legs were near the end. And how sore my ankles were all week.

I'm definitely a better road runner than trail runner, but I think trail running is more fun, with one very big exception: passing. I find that totally stressful. I always find passing people awkward, even on the roads, and on the trail, not only do you have to announce your intention, if you don't time it right you may not be able to completely pull off the pass and then you feel like an ass (like if you start to pass and then come up on a technical stretch where the other person is better than you are.) I also feel bad announcing my intention to pass on a trail like The Loop where there's not enough room for both of you so *somebody's* going to have to run in the rocks. And if they don't move over quite enough you end up trying to pass while you're running on rocks and they're running on trails. Yuck.

The last race in the series has no 10K event. Only 30K. I ain't ready for that yet.

Posted by jenandmats at 8:57 PM | Comments (3)

May 17, 2006

I was flexible!

I'm so proud of myself.

My mom is watching MG during the day while I work part time. When I got to her house this afternoon, MG was tired and wasn't hungry so we put her down for a nap. I needed to get out for a run, but I wanted to make sure that if MG woke up I'd be there to feed her, since we'd had a bit of a struggle this morning. I took my phone and my mom promised to call if she woke up hungry and I'd turn around and come back.

Well I only made it a mile out before she called. But I had a good run until then. I'd run into our friend Bob, too, so I got to socialize, even if it was only for a mile back to where I'd started.

The meal was short enough that when we were finished I was still pretty loose, so I headed back out in my parents' neighborhood. I only ran for 20 minutes or so, but I got in a decent workout, actually. I ran part of a workout we ran back before my bomb of a marathon when I was running with Ruth and Steve's group. The workout zigzags through my parents' neighborhood, and for the workout you run the east-west streets hard and the north-south streets easy. It's hilly in all directions, and I was brilliant enough to run it so that my rests were in a general uphill direction. I was certainly tuckered out at the end.

So purely by accident/circumstance I added in one of the elements I'm planning to add to my weekly routine: hills. I couldn't have planned it better. I think hills and strength are good to add before track work, and I kept it short and sweet, so hopefully I didn't wipe myself out for the rest of the week!

Posted by jenandmats at 8:48 PM | Comments (2)

May 14, 2006

A Daisy of a Day

Happy Mother's Day to me! Oh and everyone else, too. We have had a fabulous weekend so far, celebrating with both sets of grandparents yesterday, and so far just having a nice mellow day at home today. MG, Matty, and Andy gave me a car charger for my birthday iPod and an iTunes gift certificate. So thoughtful. These spring months have become a real gold mine for me, with my birthday in April, Mother's Day in May, and our anniversary in June. I'm going to own ALL of iTunes in a few years!

My father-in-law picked out some very small silver daisy earrings for me for Mother's Day. They're so me. I love them. I wore them to the Daisy 5K this morning and they brought me good luck - I finished with a 21:10, and a 6:47 overall pace on a typically muggy Austin May day. It's about as good as I could hope for, I think. Better, actually. My 5K p.r. is only 73 seconds faster, run on a flat and fast course on a cool, dry day.

I have been back running for ten weeks and haven't done anything but miles and strides. Well, when I say "miles" I don't mean "mileage"; I've worked up to 20 miles a week for the past few weeks. So there's a benchmark for ya. I'm happily surprised with it. We'll see where we go from here. So many other elements to add: hills, trackwork, tempo, and more miles. I don't even know if I'll have time for it all or company for any of the new elements. Mine and Andy's work schedules combined with MG's (theoretically) early bedtime make fitting in runs challenging. They make having a set running schedule impossible. I'm having to learn to be flexible. I've never been really good at "flexible."

Each woman finisher at the race received a daisy, and mine's here in front of me with the tulips my cousin Patrick sent me for Mother's Day. It's a pretty orange-ish pink color (Crayola might call it "salmon" or something) and looks so pretty with the tulips! It really has been a nice weekend. Too bad I have to go into work this afternoon. I can't wait until this special session is o-v-e-r.

MG update: girl still has not rolled over for her daddy. He's suspicious that we're making it up. She *has* taken to singing very pretty little songs. I sing to her a lot, and every now and then she'll sing along with me. Her tongue comes way out as she makes the prettiest soft little noises. It's completely different from her "talking," which is much more emphatic.

I met a woman at the race today who has four kids and was running with one of them - a five month-old - in the jogger. She didn't finish too far behind me. It was inspiring. I imagined that MG wouldn't look too much different than the five month-old did. She's small but sturdy, which is lucky for her since I'm not the world's most natural mother, particularly when it comes to holding her and moving her around. I can be a little un-smooth sometimes. The baby jogger may be in our near future!

Posted by jenandmats at 1:59 PM | Comments (5)

May 11, 2006

Smackdown

I certainly appreciate the comments about getting a three month-old to sleep. Our girl has actually been pretty good to us these past few months, but she's been sleeping swaddled up in a bouncy seat next to our bed and we think it's time she learn to sleep unswaddled and in her crib. We started putting her down for naps unswaddled in the crib, and now we're trying it at night, too. Some nights are so so easy and you feel like you've got it all down, and others - tonight for example - serve as reminders that you'd better not be so smug.

Hmmmmm. Where have I heard that before? Oh yes. A few days ago from my friend Kami:

The underlying message is that no matter how many marathons one has run (this was my 41st), it bites you if you don’t respect it.

On another note ... I have picked up a nasty yoga/pilates habit. I'm a DVD junkie, and my mom gave me a four-class pass to a yoga studio here in town. I've been twice and I must say ... it's a good thing I have plenty of self-confidence. I had been practicing my sun salutations almost every day and was familiar with most of the practice before I even went to my first class. But when the class started with the whole class chanting a minute-long memorized Hindu chant, I knew I was in trouble. I love it, though. I know I'll never be as bendy as most of those people, but, as with running, it's so great to see progress with consistent practice.

Posted by jenandmats at 7:43 PM | Comments (3)

May 8, 2006

Twofer

So weekend running last week didn't go according to plan. Thursday night brought the first of a series of springtime storms, and we've gotten one each night since then. We were out at Shady Grove listening to James McMurtry when the first rolled in, and our first thought was "Oh great. This will clear out the crowd." And it did. So we got much better seats for the last 30 minutes or so, and the ambience was enhanced by that weird pre-springtime storm glow. And then things got serious. People lost power; people lost trees. It was still storming Friday morning when I should have been getting up to run. I didn't run. I didn't make it up later. I don't have to. I'm not training for anything.

We'd planned to head to San Antonio for a 10-mile trail run on Saturday morning, but severe weather made driving down there unappealing. I didn't run. I did make that one up on Sunday, though, because by Saturday night I was getting that "if I don't run I may pull all my hair out" feeling. It was a big run for me. Since MG was born I'd only done about eight miles for a long run - all of it flat. Yesterday I did four easy on the trail and then headed out into the hilly neighborhood. The plan when we headed out was to do a five-mile version for a total of nine, but when we started the loop I'd asked our friend Fred to "give me [his] schpiel on religion" and by the time we reached the cutoff we were so thoroughly engrossed in our discussion (which eventually touched on religion, history, taxes, racism, political corruption, and various forms of intelligence, among other things) that we missed the turn and ended up doing the full seven-mile loop instead, for an 11-mile total. We even picked it up at the end, which wasn't hard since we'd gotten to the racism portion of our discussion and I was fired up. I was sore last night, though. I guess that's what happens when your long run is more than 50% of your weekly total!

This morning was supposed to be an easy five miles on the trail, but I ran with friends and the pace was just a hair past totally comfortable. The strides we did at the end were a welcome change of pace.

Can someone come help us get our three-month-old to bed? We don't know what we're doing. Seriously.

Posted by jenandmats at 7:56 PM | Comments (5)

May 3, 2006

iPod fartlek

I ran at 10am this morning. It's Austin. It's muggy.

I just ran around the neighborhood, down to the new shopping center to see if the new grocery store is open (it's not) and then back on my regular loop. I ran with the iPod I got for my birthday from Andy. I don't generally run with music, and thought that I'd really only run with the iPod on the treadmill. But because I have a new baby I haven't been able to tune out the world as much as I normally would. So I took the opportunity to be in my own little world for a while. Besides, I don't really like running in my 'hood all that much.

I had it set to shuffle the 500 songs, but it seemed to be set on playing mostly mellow music. There was one stretch, though, where I was about to head up a hill and U2's Mofo came on. I couldn't help but run faster. What a great song to run to! After that came the Black Eyed Peas, and I was able to keep up the pace, but then some bluesy Bonnie Raitt came on and I just wanted to kick back with a beer. So I guess I did about a one-mile "tempo." Ha ha. I finished up with some strides, which I've been doing pretty consistently since I've been back. Me gusta strides. You get the heart rate up without the knotted stomach that precedes tempo or track.

MG had a big, big day today. She rolled over from her front to her back. Three times. No fluke. She hates "tummy time" so much she's figured a way out of it! Last night was her first night in her crib on her own and she did ok. She let out a few whimpers and I couldn't just let her cry, so I was up several times last night. At 3:30am she started her Academy Award acceptance speech. Or something. It lasted about 15 minutes before I went in and put her back to sleep by giving her her pacifer! It all sounded so very, very sweet, but we both needed to sleep. Tonight she's back in her bouncy seat next to the bed all swaddled up. I just couldn't get her to sleep in her crib tonight. Three rolls (sideways) forward and one bouncy seat back, I guess.

Posted by jenandmats at 8:54 PM | Comments (3)

May 1, 2006

So much to say ...

Little feet little hands ... little feet little feet little baby.

I'm dipping my toes back in the blogging waters. There really isn't much time to devote to it these days, and I find that when I do find myself with a little time on my hands, if I try to undertake an activity that requires any amount of time or concentration, little MG will inevitably wake up or otherwise decide she's unhappy with her current situation, and my attempts at the activity are foiled. And then I'm disappointed. And then I feel terrible feeling disappointed when my baby needs me.

Running has been rolling along well. I've been able to be pretty consistent with it since MG was six weeks old. I got the go-ahead for running only five weeks after the C-section, but I ended up waiting until six weeks since I'd done something funny to my back the week I got the go-ahead. So I've been running for seven weeks or so, and would guess that I've been doing about 20 miles per week for the past four or five weeks.

I was able to do a "long run" of seven miles about three weeks after starting back, but then stalled. Since then I've been doing races instead of long runs! I ran the Captiol 10,000 dressed as a Shriner, complete with a cardboard mini-car, then ran Kristin Armstrong's 5K the following week (Lance ran somewhere in the 18s, solidly kicking my 24-minute butt. I totally lollygagged the first mile, though. If I hadn't I'm sure I would have had him.) Last weekend I ran a trail 10K, coming in under an hour, despite rolling my ankle and going off course for a while. Sadly, these events occured right after I'd decided I was going to actually start running hard and had passed several women. You could say I was smited. It's been fun to race with no pressure. This weekend I gave a long run another shot, finishing about eight miles. I need to add in some hills sometime soon - before I start getting soft on them!

Life with MG has been pretty amazing. She is so smoochable. She seems to be more expressive than other babies we know who are her age, which is a blessing and a curse. Her babbling when she's happy is terminally cute; her crying when she's upset can be stressful. Our biggest struggle lately is figuring out her sleep cycle. Luckily, I haven't been too stressed by her night schedule, except that the book my friends recommended recommends putting babies to bed at 6:30pm. I don't have much of a problem with that, but Andy does. It really puts a crimp in his (our) style socially. He thinks we can condition her to sleeping on-the-go so that we can take her out places, but I'm not so sure. It hasn't worked well yet. I haven't yet insisted on the 6:30 bedtime - I don't love the idea, either, even though it's worked for our friends and actually has seemed to work with MG when we've tried it - so we're stuck in this inconsistent middle ground, where we put her to bed at 6:30 unless there's something we want to do in the evening.

And now it's way past my bedtime. So much for just dipping my toes in; I managed four full paragraphs!

Posted by jenandmats at 9:24 PM | Comments (5)