Getting Ready

It just seems to be getting harder and harder for me to actually sit down and write anymore. Can you get ADD as an adult? The older I get, the more impatient I am. I just don't seem to have the patience for anything that takes longer than 10 minutes. It always take me at least an hour to post something because I can't just sit still and write. I'm always getting up to do other things.

My Mother's Day was good. It was filled with Chocolate covered strawberries! On Saturday, Liv and a couple of her friends dipped 39 dozen strawberries for a fund raiser they did to earn money for young women's camp. That's a lot of strawberries!

This week I've been trying to get myself organized for my trip. G-man and I leave 6am Sat. morning. Although, I have to say that it's a lot easier preparing for a trip when both parents aren't going. But I'm still trying to put together dinner ideas and carpool for hubby to make things easier. I got my hair done this morning. I wanted to buy a new outfit but I'm not sure I'll get around to that. I will have a week before my reunion at home so I can look there. Hubby bought me a new camera to take on my trip. So hopefully I'll have some good pictures to post when I get back. We also had to buy a new hard drive for our computer. It seems to be working fine but I'm still sad about the probability of losing all my pictures from the last 4 years. But I have a friend's friend looking at it and I hope we can save them. Not much else going on other than the usual endless piles of laundry and the constant clean up of the house, but that's the life of a Mother.

A new phase in life I'm coming into lately. A good friend of mine just sent her oldest son off on his mission. Last week I received an email from an old roommate, her son just got his mission call also. We've also been receiving wedding and baby announcements recently. They used to be from my friends. These days they are from my friends, children! It sure does take on a whole new perspective and appreciation for life. Whether you're ready or not life passes by way to quickly. Embrace it.

Running is......

Unpredictable. It's Monday and I'm finally sitting down to write about my run. I wanted to do it sooner but my sister was here visiting and I wanted to wait until she left so now that she's gone, I'm writting. Hmmmmmm, where do I begin? and just so you know I'm not giving excuses, just looking for explanations. Let's see, Friday night I hosted a "carb load" dinner. I had 4 friends (including my sister) and their families come over to eat spaghetti. It was fun night and helped get us excited about the next day. On Saturday, I really debated about whether or not to eat because I can get cramps so easily, but with two hours before the race I thought I'd be fine, after all it was just a banana. It had rained the whole day before but at start time things had dried out, temporarily. About 2 miles in, the sprinkles started and stayed with us until the end. It was actually very nice and refreshing. Better than being too hot.

One thing I've found is it's very easy to start off too fast. Because your running along the river, the width of the road isn't very wide so you want to try to get ahead of the crowd to find you own space. I'm usually a stronger finisher than starter so I think I pushed a bit too hard in the beginning but thats ok, it was working until about mile 7, I needed some energy so I ate a GU (chocolate, of course!) Now I use these all the time when doing my long runs and have never had a problem but at about mile 9 I started getting a side stitch which quickly evolved into a full-blown crap, I mean cramp, (I felt like crap) I just could not run through it. I wanted to cry. So I had to stop to walk. For the next 2 miles I walked/ran until I finally felt it had subsided enough to speed up and finish. It's very depressing to see people run past you that you have already passed. The last half mile I see my sister, she came back to cheer me on. She gave me the encouragement I needed to make it up a slight hill and finish strong. I know that I should really be happy with my time, considering I did better than last year but because I didn't FEEL my best during the last part of the run, I'm just disappointed. Had I not stopped to walk I think I could have finished 4-5 minutes earlier. My chip time was 2:04:40. My Garmin time was 2:03:04. Here's something I learned from my sister. My Garmin also said I ran 13.16 miles (ooh and burned 1049 =) calories!) When I mentioned that she said that they have to measure the shortest distance on a course so if your running the outside you'll be running farther. Now I understood when I passed a volunteer saying "run a tight race" what he meant. Hug those curves. All in all, it was great day. That's the thing with running, you just never now how you'll do until you get out there and do it. By the way, I had the cramp all day and on Sunday I could still feel it. I'm wondering if I pulled a muscle.

I loved having my sister there, it was our first race we've done together. Of course, she did awesome 1:49:51. I think she'll make this an annual trip, she enjoyed the course so much.

A shout out to my SIL Kim who ran her own (and first) 1/2 marathon in Connecticut. She kicked butt with a time of 2:09 Fantastic!!


Question? Why is it that everything breaks down at the same time? It started with our vacuum then our cars needing maintenance, then a broken microwave, a camera and now when I went to use my computer ( I'm using my hubby's) I get a black screen saying disk error. I don't think that's a good sign. And No, of course, I didn't get around to backing up my pictures yet. I'm glad you can't hear me screaming.