Saturday: RUN!!!!

So this morning, I did oversleep, BUT I got to the park right on time, and I felt great.  The weather was cooler, I had on my favorite shorts, my iced green tea was in perfect form.  We ran the 11.2 at Percy Warner Park, and my run went really well.  I kept up with everyone and had all the time in the world to hang out at the park.  John Keller brought extra Gatorades and Allan brought homemade Lara Bars and Chris burned me a copy of Tom Petty's new CD.  It was a wealthy day at the park.

In one small misfortune, someone (who will remain unnamed) dislodged my Garmin from the charger and it ran out of juice at mile 5.  This was a great sadness, as a run without my Garmin is almost worthless to me.  It made today a purely social run, but that isn't all bad.

I feel like the weather made the day.  Weather that starts out in the seventies makes me feel human and like, in some alternate temperature zone, I might enjoy running again.  Running has felt like a chore for the past month, and today, I remembered what it was to enjoy it.  Thrilling.  There was much talking.  John Keller had wise words about potty training.  Chris and I commiserated about the stress of two year olds.  Betsy and I discussed jewelry.  Just lovely.  

At home, I really meant to go to the farmer's market to stalk out organic veggies and a farmer who would sell me chicken breasts and some ground turkey, BUT I sat on the couch all day drinking tea.  I feel like a giant teapot.

I did devote some time to personal vanity.  We had a great dinner with friends. Seriously, it was a shish kebob love affair.

Lake swim tomorrow!!!

Friday: Swim and Zoo

Pouring rain, when we woke up this morning.  Just Pouring. Ivan and I made breakfast and my husband helped up begin the packing process to get to swim.  Just so you know, getting to swim requires enough baggage to get me around the world.  It is just insane.  I have to bring a shower kit, a towel, a change of clothes, goggles and cap and suit. PLUS, all my swim toys (flippers, buoy, and paddles).  PLUS, Ivan's diaper bag. Plus something to drink.  Plus, I have to wrangle Ivan.  So, today, as we were loading into the car for swim with raincoats, my husband packed a golf umbrella.  He wanted me to make sure to use the umbrella so Ivan did not get wet going into the gym.  With what hand was I going to hold the umbrella?

Needless to say, Ivan and I both got wet going into the gym.

Swam 3200 meters, but forgot to photograph the workout.  

After swim, our Friday zoo trip was calling and seems to be becoming a tradition very quickly.  Ivan loves it, though it is a grimy sweatfest.  

Pic of Ivan and I on the carousel.  Getting to bed early for run tomorrow!!

Thursday: Was Supposed to Be My Day Off

So, I meant to take the day off today, BUT my friend Sara, whom I really only see when I run, asked me to  run this morning, and I just couldn't pass up the time to catch up. Plus, we got to run my favorite running route from Lipscomb University down to Belmont University.  It is rare that I have the opportunity to visit with Sara and run on my old stomping grounds.  For this reason, I sabotaged my day off, got up early, made oatmeal and tea and headed into town.  It was a great run, but it is so bloody hot.

I have lived in Tennessee for the vast majority of my life and the only time I lived elsewhere, I lived somewhere hotter.  You would think that I would be used to this.  Not So.  Every year, it is a shock to my system.  I forget how hot it was the summer before, and how impossible it was to do anything but sweat my way to hideousness and stench.  How do we survive?

Anyway, once at home, I hopped in the shower and got ready to hit Peek-A-Boo Playtown.  Peek-A-Boo playtown is a play place that has every sort of plaything that you can imagine for kids.  Cars, tubs of balls, train tables, dress up clothes, and every such thing.  Ivan was amazed and could barely focus his attention.  He would climb into a car only to be amazed by a train, so he would hop out, though only half-way into the car.  He would pick up a train, only to see another car and sprint away to get to the car.  IT WAS A FABULOUS PLACE, because I sat down on a couch with my friend Mary and just made sure that Ivan didn't leave the building.  I got to have great conversation, and Ivan was as happy as I have seen him since he learned to open the refrigerator door.  It was a blissful two hours.  In fact, I saw a few mothers with coffee and a magazine obliviously absorbed, and I could see that happening to me.  I could walk down that road.  That road looks nice.  I could re-commence reading my New Yorkers cover -to-cover.  Would that be terrible?  To pay $7 a week to sit on a couch and read my New Yorker cover-to-cover?  Is that the level of frivolity that could lead our country to financial ruin?

After I drug Ivan kicking and screaming home, I put him down for a nap and got on the phone with Garmin in an effort to fix my heart rate monitor issue.  I must say that after spending 25 minutes on hold, I was a bit frustrated to find that the best advice the tech had to give was to find a friend that had a Garmin and see if my heart rate monitor would sync with their device.  How would that help me??  Anyway, after much elementary advice, I decided to take the battery out again and reseat it and it suddenly worked.  THRILLING.  It was clearly just a battery contact issue.

Swim tomorrow!!!!

Wednesday: Swim, Bike and Pure Barre

So this morning, I was up at a reasonable time and got to swim punctually, but had some trouble with Ivan in the nursery, where he screamed a piercing and painful screech as soon as I set him down.  My strategy for this scream situation needs to be altered in some way as it has made me thrice late to swim when I actually got to the pool on time.

When I finally did get in the pool, I had missed the warm-up which cuts down on possible mileage, so I was bummed.  Also, Nick (my swim nemesis, yet the nicest person in the world) seemed to be swimming faster than I was, which I could not help but see as a comment on my current level of fitness.  Workout as follows:

• 100 swim
• 8 x 50 kick
• 8 x 100 swim @ 1:50 (we swam them at 1:30 and rested for 20 seconds)
• 4 x 200 pull
• 8 x 50 kick
• 400 warm down
• extra 200 kick warm down because Jamie and I were having a really great conversation

This was 2700 meters for me, but everyone else got in more like 4000 meters.  I have a 5k swim in about 6 weeks, so I need to up the ante to 4000 meter swims regularly.  I hope that just typing the former sentence has struck enough fear in my heart that I will actually get to swim on time and practice for my event.  I hope it will help me to understand that I have to let Ivan's screaming go and just hightail it out of the nursery.

On the way home, we made an epic trip to Cosco where I bought the supplies to make many many homemade Lara Bars, and much soy milk and yogurt and diapers and footie suits and I almost got into baby blue jeans, but I stopped myself.  

I got in a Pure Barre workout at home and then hopped on the trainer for a quick ride, but I am having some Garmin 310xt drama.  It won't pick up my heart rate monitor since I reset it last month and I can barely do a trainer ride without my heart rate monitor.  My cadence sensor is also off the bike, so who knows what I actually did on the trainer.  I am calling Garmin tomorrow to slog it out with the technicians.  Bleh

Tuesday: Wise Words from Mark Miller at Track Workout, Gilad and Yoga

Ivan in My Bike Glasses

I felt most unenthusiastic when my alarm went off at 5:15 this morning and I hit snooze twice and still made it to the track on time with my oatmeal and a homemade Lara Bar.  (The way it is going for me, by the way, I am slightly afeared that I will turn into a Lara Bar. I have already broken my mini-cuisinart from overuse in making homemade Lara bars, and it is all getting out of hand.)  Anyway, track workout as follows:

• 5 lap warm-up
• 800 striders (200 fast/ slow/ 200 fast/ 200 slow)
• 8 x 400 at 1:32
• mile cool down

This was 5 and a half miles, and I am kind of having a thing with track practice in that my pink eye saga (which I am trying to quit talking about and ruminating on as if I had been a prisoner of war or a hostage) kept me from participating in the second track time trial.  Since I did not do the time trial, I do not really have the right times that I should be running and I am still using times from the first time trial.  Also, because I was not at the time trial, I did not get a piece of paper with all my workouts and times for the second half of the track workouts, so I never really know what we are doing until the night before when the email comes out on Monday.  It all just makes me feel a little off kilter.  

 I feel like I am just showing up and hoping that Tracy is there so that I can attach myself to her like a carbuncle.  She keeps the pace on her watch, and I keep the overall mileage on mine.  Honestly, when I got there today, I didn't see Tracy at first, and I contemplated slinking back to my car and driving away.  

The workout was not that bad, but I was quite pleased to be finished.  Also, I had a great talk with Mark Miller, who is full of knowledge about his craft.  My question this morning was about how to approach my track workouts if I am also biking and swimming regularly.  Mark always gives us two options for every workout.  For instance, today it was 8 x 400 or 10 x 400.  Mark said that in light of my swim schedule, I should always do the lower intensity workout so as not to approach the overtraining line, which would be devastating to all my disciplines.  This was great news, and I was thrilled to head home.

At home, I went to work before taking Ivan to swim, where in a delightful turn of events he vomited on me in front of everyone.  He wasn't sick, he just swallowed too much water.  Honestly, Ivan was talking to me about something, he projectile vomited all over me and then just kept talking to me like nothing had happened.  He never broke form or acted like he thought it was gross.  He really didn't even pause.  Of course, I was standing there with vomit all over my bathing suit, and I really didn't even care either.  I just let my mind drift to Sunday, when I can take a shower by myself at the public lake shower and make it all go away.  

Back at home, I did a Gilad workout and some yoga before settling in on the couch with a mountain of paperwork and the new season of Rachel Zoe.  It was bananas.  

Monday: Swim, Gilad and Yoga

Ahhhh, back on schedule.  Now, Ivan slept so so late, which made me late to swim, but I was able to get in about 2500 meters, and I am OK with it.  There is something to be said for easing back into the full on routine.

Swim was great.  Workout as follows:

• 100 warm-up
• 4 x 50 swim/kick
• 4 x 50 swim/drill
• 4 x 50 swim/IM
• 400 swim
• 4 x 50 swim/kick
• 400 pull
• 2 x 200 swim
• 2 x 100 descend
• 200 choice

I was glad to be hitting my schedule.  At home, I had a quick lunch, put Ivan down for a nap, ran some errands and did a Gilad workout and some desperately needed yoga.  

Track workout tomorrow.  Getting in bed early!!

Sunday: Lake Swim and I Was Kind of a Disaster and I Love Lake Shower

I have many interesting things to say about my day to day.  I am coming off a rather disheveled week this week, and I was working with the after effects of a minor sunburn on my back. Regardless, it was thrilling to kick off my week with lake swim.

I was up and at 'em by 5:20 AM, and I got right out to the lake.  I made a poor bathing suit choice, however and the top was too big and it was all gappy and I just felt like the whole thing was falling off.  It then happened that I made matters 1000 times worse by making the last minute decision to wear a rash guard shirt with 50 SPF to make CERTAIN that know UVA or UVB rays touched my back.

 This seemed like a good plan, until I was about half a mile into a two mile swim and the shirt starting chaffing.  It chaffed around the neck and by the time I got back to shore, my neck looked like I was a hangman's victim.  My bathing suit had been dragging the whole way as well and I just felt like a big waterlogged tank out in the water. My slowness was irritating, and I just looked like a great big dork in my long sleeve sunscreen shirt and my huge aquasphere mask and my draggy bathing suit.

It felt a bit like showing up dressed for a costume party, and being the only one in costume.  I wanted to pull off my rash guard shirt and let it sink to the bottom of the lake.

Anyway, this leads me to a sad and telling fact that I had to come to terms with today: I love to take a shower in the public shower at the lake after lake swim.  "Why is this?", you ask.  Are there towels, the guarantee of privacy, clean showering conditions, air conditioning, a nice fresh smell?  1000 times "NO" to all of these questions.

Here is what the lake shower does have:  a steady stream of hot water and one of those shower heads that you can hold in your hands.

Here is what the shower does not have: Ivan.

I can stay in the shower at the lake for as long as I want.  The water never gets cold and no one gets in the shower with me and demands to stand directly under the shower stream of water while splashing me and peeing on the shower floor and laughing hysterically.  I can do a thorough job of shaving both legs, and I can exfoliate.  Today, I even gave myself a deep condition.  Yes, I might catch both athlete's foot, the HIV and some crazy disease that has not even been discovered yet.  There is no way to lock the shower door, and I guess I could get murdered, BUT these seem like small sacrifices for a shower alone.

Are you crying for me right now?  Tears of shame and pity coursing down your cheeks as you think of me just dreaming of a public shower at the lake as if it were the spa at the Ritz Carlton.  This is my life, friends.

Anyway, at home I got ready for church after covering my neck chaffing with Neosporin, which somehow got in my hair, which is quite a bit darker now, and I felt like my hair looked all Brilliantined up like Clark Gable in Gone With The Wind.

In the afternoon, I went to see the second installment of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series, The Girl Who Played With Fire.  

Swim tomorrow!!!