Thursday: A Lot More Of a Thursday Than I Am Used To

So this morning my hives were largely gone, and my skin seems well on its way to getting back to normal. The pool is closed tomorrow, however, so I had to reorganize my usual schedule and get in my swim today.  I also ran a myriad of errands and ended up running with Ivan in the jog stroller after I picked him up from preschool.  Now that we have a portable DVD player, it is much easier to get Ivan to ride in the stroller.  My run was fine, though ultimately my runs are not going as well as I would like.  

Ultimately, to prepare for the marathon that I am 95% sure I am going to run on December 11th, I have only complete a couple of long runs, the longest of which was 16 miles.  I had a setback and then have not really done any speed work.  It all does not bode well for my performance on the day of.  Regardless of all these forbodings, I am sort of excited about it.  It is like the old days of my ill-preparedness.

My swim was pretty basic and dull.  There were just two of us, and we made up our own workout.  We swam 1000, kicked about 1000, pulled 500, kicked 1000 and pulled 500.

Now, my weekend is shaping up to be rather exciting, as I am participating in the Red and Green swim meet on Saturday morning.  Now, I do not really have all the facts about the meet or completely understand what it is.  It seems to be a relay and maybe a fundraiser.  

Wednesday: Hives

It is the worst when I put on an outfit, a cabled turtleneck and boots and skirt only to break out in HIVES.  I was at work literally clawing at my wool ensconced neck like I was a dog with a hotspot.  Apparently sometime since last turtleneck season, I, Betsy Sloan, have become grievously allergic to wool on my neck and chest.  It is very irritating in both senses of the word, to be stranded at work without a change of clothes and worsening hives.  Since my workplace is not one wherein you can operate topless and really no workplace is one where you can operate topless with hives, I was in a most unfortunate position.

Once I arrived home, I was able to change and now three hours and MUCH hydrocortisone cream later, my hives are lessened, and I am left to deeply lament my turtleneck situation.  How much do I love a turtleneck in winter?  I love it a lot, and this turtleneck situation is MOST unfortunate.  

Anyway, this morning I went to swim and got in a great workout, which I did not photograph so it I can't quite remember what I did at this point.  We swam about 3000 meters, and I remember lots of IMing and a good bit of kicking.  At home, I got in a Gilad workout and some paperwork. 

Tuesday: It Is Hard To Train In The Rain

It rained all day today, and the temperature dropped throughout the day as well.  I did not find a space to run until about 45 minutes before heading out to pick up Ivan at nursery school.  All day, it felt as if I was hovering about the windows looking for a space of rainlessness to hop outside and get my run in.  I don't always mind running in the rain, but the torrential downpour of today combined with the increasing cold was hard.

My run was reasonable, but only 3.5 miles as I had to get back home to pick up Ivan.  I got in a Gilad workout in the afternoon.  My eating habits were under control, and I only had one errant slice of tart.  This was such a vast improvement over my past few days that I can hardly complain.  For dinner I made and exceptionally healthy soup, that tasted much like Bread and Company's fabulous Creamy Turkey Sage soup.  I have a feeling that Bread and Company uses heavy cream in their soup, and I used Greek yogurt for which I would like a pat on the back.  Recipe as follows:

Cream of Turkey & Wild Rice Soup

This is a healthier twist on a classic creamy turkey and wild rice soup that hails from Minnesota. Serve with a crisp romaine salad and whole-grain bread.

Active time: 35 minutes | Total: 35 minutes

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups sliced mushrooms (about 4 ounces)
2 cups chopped baby spinach
3/4 cup chopped carrots
1/4 cup chopped shallots
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 cup or more cooked brown rice
3 cups shredded cooked turkey or chicken
1/2 cup Greek Yogurt
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add mushrooms, carrots and shallots and cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add flour, salt and pepper and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes more.
2. Add broth and bring to a boil, scraping up any browned bits. Add rice and reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook until the rice is tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in turkey (or chicken), Greek yogurt , spinach and parsley and cook until heated through, about 2 minutes more.

Makes 4 servings, about 1 3/4 cups each.
Per serving: 354 calories; 9 g fat (3 g sat, 4 g mono); 87 mg cholesterol; 27 g carbohydrate; 36 g protein; 3 g fiber; 378 mg sodium; 577 mg potassium.
Nutrition bonus: Vitamin A (90% daily value), Zinc (20% dv), Iron (15% dv).

Monday: Swim and Let's Just Talk About Holiday Eating, Because I Am Not Off To A Good Start

This morning, Ivan and I were off to swim, and I was in the pool in a timely fashion.  The water was quite cold today, and in the middle of practice the powers that be of the Williamson County Parks and Recreation department turned on the hot water to bring up the pool temperature.  There are no words to describe the great warmth and sense of hopefulness about life in general that I get when I finish a swim interval and get to hug a jet of toasty water while waiting for the next interval to start.  I would say that it is the same satisfaction I get from turning my electric blanket when it is cold outside or putting on my Uggs in the morning.  It is just a general feeling of well-being, and it makes me really proud for the caveman who discovered fire.  Workout as follows:

• 6 x 50 1:00
• 6 x 25 drill :30
• 4 x 50 drill
• 1 x 200 fast
• 4 x 50 drill
• 2 x 100 fast
• 2 x 50 distance per stroke
• 4 x 50 fast
• 400 kick
• 300 pull
• 200 pull
• 100 pull
• 8 x 25 IM

Anyway, swim is about all that happened today, as I was zapped of energy and I am pretty sure I know why: HOLIDAY EATING HAS BEGUN.

Now, I consider myself a healthy eater.  I take copious amounts of vitamins and drink loads of water, green tea and every once in while I get on a liquid chlorophyll kick, because it detoxes free radicals from our body and helps replenish our red blood cells.  Do I know what free radicals are??  Maybe not, maybe I can't remember for sure except that I think they cause wrinkles, and I am against that.

On Thanksgiving, however, things started to slide.  My mother made a cheese ball that involved bacon, and I, in a stupor of hunger one night, ordered two huge tarts packed in dry ice that we thawed out and plowed through on Thanksgiving.  Then my mother whipped heavy cream with sugar to put on the pumpkin pie, and suddenly I was stirring that delicious concoction into my coffee.

Then in a flash it was morning, and I was sitting down to more coffee with heavy whipping cream, a smoked salmon and goat cheese sandwich with a huge slab of pear tart with burgandy glaze for breakfast.

AND THEN, my mother packed up the pear tarts for me to take home, and I ate what I remember to be two slices of tart (though it could have been more, as I pretty much just unhinged my jaw and shoveled in huge amounts of tart) for lunch on the day after Thanksgiving.  I had a healthy dinner of broccoli and turkey, but is that really commendable after ingesting a month's worth of calories in one day in the form of tarts?

On Saturday, I was pretty sure I was back on target with an oatmeal breakfast and some turkey with roasted sweet potatoes for lunch, but after lunch the tarts were waiting on me.  So I made a deal with myself that I would get back on track on Monday, and it would be a new dawn and I would detox and have glowing skin.  I actually ate Yogurt World for dinner on Sunday night, and then planned that today would be my day of health, but no friends; that is not the way it works.

This morning I had sugar craving so intense, that I was forced to eat three of Ivan's gummy vitamins just to stave it off, and what kind of mother am I (I ask) if I cannot stop eating my child's gummy vitamins over a sugar craving.  Where does it end?  Do I drink his candy flavored tylenol in a shot glass or snort his strawberry kids shampoo.  It seems like a long circle around the drain of refined sugar.

Anyway, once home from swim I plowed through the queso that my husband bought for himself, and then it was onward and upward to a hidden bag of chocolate covered cranberries that I found in the kitchen.  I am staring Christmas in the face, and I am acting like a junkie. I have to get a hold on myself before I assault someone over a bag of m&m's.  This isn't pretty.

And then there is the ticking time bomb of cookie dough in my freezer that I bought from some cookie pushing child.  So, I have planned my eating for tomorrow.  I am pulling it together, and I am counting down to Christmas and I AM NOT TOUCHING THAT COOKIE DOUGH.

Sunday: Crafting and Swim and My Yogurt World Confidence is Restored

So last night I did not mention that we went to see Ben Folds.  I am a long time fan of Ben Folds as he is such an amazing pianist and writes such clever lyrics.  Now, last night, I was pretty excited because he was playing songs that he had written in collaboration with Nick Hornby who is my favorite contemporary British author.  Now, the songs that Ben Folds wrote in collaboration with Nick Hornby were rather dark and so so.  Everything else was GREAT, and it was such a nice night.

The concert was a fundraiser for our symphony which was flooded out of their symphony hall.  Ben Folds was affected by the flooding and actually photographed several flood sights that were published on National Geographic's website.  He apparently lost two pianos and some songs he wrote when he was ten.

Anyway, we were out quite late, and it took a bit of scrounging around for personal alertness and punctuality to get to church on time.  Now, from here on out, I will always be at church in a timely fashion on the Sunday after Thanksgiving as it is the first Sunday of Advent, and we all use the Sunday school hour to make wreathes.  It is a fundraiser as you donate ten dollars per wreath.  I made two wreathes, and they are just lovely.  I plan to devote myself to this wreath making each year.

In other news, I worked diligently like a sweat shop employee in making a floor-to-ceiling shower curtain.  Sewing a huge piece of fabric on a sewing machine is a copious amount of concentrated effort as you have to constantly maneuver the unwieldy piece on the machine and around the machine so as not to create ripples and tucks where they are not needed.  It all went quite well, and if I can get the hem right tomorrow I will have successfully dignified another corner of our abode.  THRILLING!!

In the afternoon it was off to swim where we are spending time working on technique.  We practiced our:

•  butterfly strokes
• quite a bit of kicking
• distance per stroke work (where we try to drop our stroke count per lap)
• flip turn practice 
• 8 x 100 swim @ 1:50

Our yardage was only at about 2500, but that is sort of the way of winter swim as we spend more time on technique than distance.

Now, I am happy to report that on the way home I had a very pleasant trip to Yogurt World where all the yogurt was a perfect consistency and they had white chocolate mousse, peppermint and chocolate.  I really cannot tell you how exciting it is to me that the quality of Yogurt World appears to be intact. I can rest easy tonight!

Saturday: Thanksgiving

So Thursday was Thanksgiving and I pulled myself out of bed and headed off to run the Blvd. Bolt.  Now normally, I meet my family at the start, and I must admit that the whole process was a lot faster without them.  I showed up to park at 7:15 AM, parked about 3/4 of a mile away, ran to the start, ran a couple of miles from the start line, started the race and then ran back to the car. Now there were supposedly 8500 people running on Thursday, and I was completely prepared to throw up my hands in despair at the crowd and bale out of ever running the Blvd. Bolt again, BUT it really wasn't that big of a deal.  Parking was not a problem and I like getting in the extra-mileage before the race.  I ran 8 minute miles which is nothing to be really proud of, but under the circumstances, it was fine.

At home, I packed up and headed out for Thanksgiving dinner with my family, which was so much fun and I stayed up way too late locked in a death-match game of Scrabble with my parents and sister.

On Friday, I sat on the couch like a lump working on my needlepoint and later watching the Joaquin Phoenix documentary, I'm Not Here.  It was an abysmal piece of filmography, and while I do understand that a part of you is most likely very broken when you are the one who has to make the call, sobbing from the Viper Room to let paramedics know that you can't find your brother's pulse, you have to move on and be a human of some worth.

This morning, I ran with my running group for the first time in two or so weeks, and I am slow.  I am really dragging and I feel the way I did after I started running following the birth of my son.  It seems like I am running quite fast, but I was pulling out 9 minute miles today.  So, I am opening back up my marathon discussion.  I have moved from 90-95% chance of marathon to 50%

Maybe I should scrap the marathon, sign up for Winter Speed Sessions with Fleet Feet, work back up to my speed as my body allows and not worry about it.  Or, maybe I should just go down and push through the marathon which could be utterly demoralizing.  Bleh

Wednesday: Double Swim, Pure Barre, Marathon Quandary and Yogurt World Quandary

Today I was not only back in the saddle, I road the Pony Express.  I popped up relatively early and got Ivan dressed and by dressed, I mean that I changed his diaper and zipped him back into his footy pajamas and took him to swim nursery in his PJ's.  He was so thrilled to see Miss Cameron and be shed of me for brief hour.

I was excited to get back to swim and the workout was great and not so hard as I was expecting after being out for a week and a half:

• 6 x 75 K/D/S
• 8 x 25 half easy/ half fast
• 8 x 25 half fast/ half easy
• 8 x 25 fast
• 5 x 100 pull
• 6 x 50 fly kick
• 8 x 50 IM drill
• 2 x 100 IM
• 400 kick
• 200 warm down

This was a total of 3050 yards which was just outstanding for a first day back in the pool.  At home, I ate huge salad and generally wasted a huge amount of time as it is the holidays and that is what I do best this time of year.  

I did manage to get in a Pure Barre workout at home, before pulling myself together to go in for evening swim.  I have to say that evening swim was so very difficult that I almost wished that I had stayed home. We had a butterfly practice and we did butterfly drills, and then ended with a 200 butterfly with no fins.  It was hard, but I did finally master the thumb drag on the surface of the water part of the butterfly stroke.  

Now, on the way home from swim I hit Yogurt World and I had a chocolate peppermint swirl with sprinkles, but I have a complaint.  I visited Yogurt World last week, and both tonight and last week, the yogurt was pretty much liquid like a soup.  This is a great disappointment as I have become dependent on my frozen yogurt and the trek to Sweet Cece's is just not as convenient.  In my 9ish week absence from Yogurt World, it seems that their frozen yogurt quality has declined.  It is a bummer.

Finally, my marathon is weighing on me.  I am scheduled to run my marathon on December 11th in Huntsville, Alabama.   My training, however, has been non-existent due to recent events, and I think that  the marathon could possibly be a disaster.  On the other hand, I have really only ever prepared for one marathon out of the 5 I have run and that was Boston.  The other ones, I have basically just shown up at the start line and hoped for the best.  There was one disaster, but all the other marathons have really gone quite well under the circumstances.  I qualified for the Boston marathon three times and only had a really sad bad race one time.  

I only feel unprepared, because I was so very prepared for Boston.  Also in my favor, I have an extra five minutes because I am turning 35 this year.  This means I really only have to run a 3:45 marathon to qualify, and I did run a 3:26 marathon at Boston, so it stands to reason that I have enough of a base to run a 3:45 at the slowest.  

Hmmmm, I think that I have talked myself into it.  I will probably head of to Huntsville on the 10th and give it my best shot and let the chips fall.  

Blvd Bolt tomorrow!!!