New Shoes and Girls on the Run

And here you thought I was almost back to posting on a semi-regular basis!

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time stuck on my couch the last few weeks. First it was the high fever for days, and after finally getting back to my training plan and feeling normal for a few days, I was back on the couch. This second illness was shorter lived and less intense (thank goodness).

In non-sick news, I have two pairs of new running shoes. Why two? Because after I got the first new pair, I realized just how broken down pretty much all of my other shoes are.

I track mileage on my shoes, but most of my miles are on the road and I think they break down much sooner than the expected 300-500 miles that shoe companies claim they should last for.

I had a 20% off coupon from the running store that is closest to me (still a 45 minute drive), so I picked up a pair of the new Saucony Freedom ISO. They're spendy, like ridiculously so, but holy cow they are SO comfortable.

Seriously, if Saucony generally works for you, you need to check these out. Go somewhere and try them on though, the sizing is a bit off. I had to go up a half size.

I have really been liking Saucony (my marathon shoes the last 2 years have been the Saucony Zealot), so I snagged a pair of Triumph ISO from a discount site. I have only gotten one run in them so far with all my couch time, but I like them so far.

Last weekend I spent most of my Saturday driving to and from a Girls on the Run coach training. I'm really excited to be helping coach a team of 3rd and 4th graders this year.

It is such an amazing program, and I can't wait for our season to start later this month. The trick is going to be time management when I start marathon training later this spring. I may have to *gasp* wake up early to get some of my workouts in during the week. 

We'll see how that goes. 

Running Things

I was trying to get this posted sometime last week, but was swiftly taken out by a fever last Thursday. After spending the entire weekend on the couch, the fever is finally gone and I almost feel human again. It's still going to be a couple of days before I even think about trying to run, but at least I can leave the couch for more than a few minutes at a time now.

***

I don't really have many fun "seen on my run" type pictures from recent runs, partially because I've been busy running instead of stopping to take pictures, and partially because a lot of those miles have been on the treadmill.

I did manage to pause long enough to take these last week.

I'm in the middle of training for the Sleepy Hollow Half Marathon at the end of March. This will be my third time running this race, and it is my current half PR. After the disappointment of last year's marathon finish, I'm just hoping to enjoy the race and finish strong.

I am not going to be doing a ton of racing this year. My focus is on building strength (injury prevention) and running a successful marathon in the fall.

This year I will be mixing things up and running a new (to me) marathon - The Newport Marathon in Rhode Island. I have never been to Rhode Island, but the course sounds beautiful and it's not a bad drive from our house.

I'm also going to be following a new training plan this year. Previously I have used Hal Higdon plans, and while they worked just fine, I'm interested to see how this new training works for me. I will be following Coach Jay Johnson's Simple Marathon Training. It's a 20 week plan that includes strength and mobility (SAM) exercises and a weekly brisk walk, along with the usual things you expect to find in a marathon training plan (running and cross training).

For now though, I just need to finish recovering from this bug so I can get back to normal life again.

Zero Week

I always have the best intentions when it comes to posting, but things have really gotten away from me lately.

I did spend the last two days on the couch with a sore throat and fever, but otherwise I don't have any good excuses.

Tom and I ran a trail race last weekend with a bunch of my Rivertown buddies. The Leatherman's Loop is a 10k (it's actually a little longer, but they say it's a 10k) that runs through wooded trails, mud flats, water crossings and sand hills. It is a lot of jumping over tree roots and making sure you don't trip on rocks.

Tom was a little undertrained, and I was still recovering from the Hook Half the weekend before, so we ran together. We did not have an amazing finish time, but it was a lot of fun! It would be nice to run when my legs are a little more well-rested.

The muddy shoe aftermath:

Photo Credit: Sue Chiarulli

In house news: I've been working away at the painting that needs to get done in the upstairs. I feel like it's taking me forever, but that's because when we painted the primer there were three of us working. 

This is the hall bathroom. There's going to be wainscoting on the bottom part of the wall and a shower enclosure around the tub, I'm not just incredibly lazy in my painting. 

I had plans to get the master bathroom painted this week too, but my body had other plans.

Buddy loves it when I'm sick. He gets extra couch time, even if he takes up half the couch.

I was feeling better this morning so we went for a (very) short walk. Buddy collapsed like we'd been running for miles when we got home. He's so dramatic.

My unplanned couch time led to an unplanned zero week when it comes to running. I haven't run a single mile since last weekend. I'm hoping to get some easy miles in this weekend, but we'll see how quickly my energy comes back to me. I don't have any races until June, so I'm not too worried about the lost mileage.

Under the Weather

We're kind of under the weather over here today. All those kids we work with are little germ factories, so it's kind of a wonder we're not sick all the time.

Mostly I just have a cold and no energy, it's really nothing major - but it's still no fun.

In more exciting news: Tom made an awesome dinner the other night. Ribs, mac and cheese (from scratch) and kale. I almost ate myself to a Thanksgiving level of fullness. My picture ended up really dark, but you get the idea. 

I thought the clouds looked cool when I woke up the other day.

The insulation was delivered on Tuesday. Tom gave them a little tractor assistance so they didn't have to move it all by hand.

The whole process is pretty cool, and extremely messy. They put mesh up on the walls and then blow in the cellulose insulation. There's more to it than that, but that's the general idea.

The drywall is supposed to get delivered tomorrow so they will start installing that in the next few days. Pretty soon it will look more like a a finished house and less like a construction zone!

For dinner tonight we made a previous Blue Apron recipe again. Chicken and Udon Noodle Soup. It's delicious, and super easy. The recipe calls for a dried lime and chicken demi-glace, but we just used lime zest/juice and chicken stock and it still turned out amazing.

Nuun has officially released its new and improved formula and the new Mango Orange Nuun Energy flavor!

I have to go through all our kitchen boxes to find all the Nuun tubes I have lying around so I can decide if I actually need to re-stock or if I just need to reorganize ;)

Never-ending Colds

I've been laying low the last couple of days. I keep joking that there's just a line of different colds waiting in my body, and each time I start to get better from one, the next steps up to take its turn. The current variation is in my sinuses and chest. It's really fun.

Yesterday afternoon I had some speed work on the agenda, but instead I spent the afternoon on the couch with this guy:

 He loves when people don't feel well, that means he gets to cuddle on the couch.

This afternoon, I made my way to the basement to try to get a run in. I realized pretty quickly that speed work was still not an option, but I managed 4 miles without dissolving into an endless coughing fit, so I'm counting it as a win.

The weather has been much nicer lately, so Buddy and I have been spending some quality time hanging out on the back deck.

Tom and I started watching The Blacklist a few weeks ago. Have you seen it? We flew through the first season and are almost caught up to the newest episodes.

What are you watching lately?

Getting the Bad Run Out of the Way

I actually ran outside today!

It didn't go super well. It was muddy (which is sometimes fun, but wasn't today), Buddy came with me and was driving me completely insane, and either the weather (humidity?) or my cold made it so I felt like I couldn't get a deep breath.

We took a ridiculous number of walking breaks, but ran 3.55 miles at a 9:46 pace. Including the walking parts we probably covered close to 5 miles.

Buddy was so tired he didn't stand up at all during the drive home (he usually paces the back seat, especially when we stop at lights). And then he put himself to bed upstairs when we got home.

I decided this run means I got my bad run for the week out of the way before the race on Sunday. Hopefully.

On the bright side, my new trail shoes look more like trail shoes now.

I bought this crazy airborne today to see if it will help kick my cold down a notch. I'm not asking to be 100% on race day, but I'd like to not feel like I'm breathing with a pillow smashed into my face. That seems reasonable, right?

We tried a new recipe for dinner tonight. It was super easy and really delicious. Baked Sriracha Honey Chicken. How can you go wrong with that combination? Unless you're not a spicy food person, which is something I don't understand at all. Not liking spicy food is like not liking chocolate as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, and Buddy got a new collar the other day. He's very fancy.

Pictures of Buddy Sleeping

It was a pretty low-key weekend around here. A sore throat snuck up on me on Friday, so I didn't end up meeting up with the group to run on Saturday morning. I hated to miss the run, but with the West Point Half coming up in a few weeks, I would rather miss out now rather than later.

I still wasn't 100% on Sunday, so I decided to take a pass on my long run for the week. I ran 3.1 miles instead - better than nothing. I ran 13 last week, so I'm not worried about being under trained. Worst-case scenario I will be slower than I want to be come race day, and that's ok.

We finally watched Mockingjay: Part 1 - it was pretty good, though I really don't think they needed to split the last book into two movies. Parts of it really felt unnecessarily stretched out, but money's gotta be made I suppose.

Since I don't have anything else terribly exciting to talk about, please enjoy some pictures of Buddy sleeping.

Getting Better and New Music

It's crazy how much being sick takes out of you.

My fever finally went away this morning, but my appetite isn't back full force yet, and my energy levels are laughable. Everything I did today took forever. Tom reminded me that I spent pretty much the entire day yesterday on the couch, so I shouldn't expect to be in top form just yet.

Patience is not my strong suit.

I did manage to accomplish a few things today, they just took longer than they should have. I did the dishes (in 15 minute increments because I kept getting tired), two loads of laundry (I even folded it and put it all away!), and walked the pooch (what? that's an accomplishment, I didn't go outside yesterday).

Since I'm not interesting at all today, I thought I would share a couple new (to my playlist) songs.

One Republic - I Lived

Mark Ronson + Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk

And this is just a really cute video - Andy Grammer - Honey I'm Good

Hope you're having a good week!

Snowpocalypse 2015?

Oh hey, sorry for the silence the last couple days! I woke up Monday morning feeling a bit "off" and things went downhill from there. I had a fever all day and zero energy. I basically did nothing other than walk the dog in every coat I own (chills!) and pick up Tom at the train station. Everything pretty much shut down yesterday afternoon/evening because of the snowpocalypse we were supposed to be getting (the forecast at one point called for 20 inches!), so he came home early.

Before I was out of commission, I hit the grocery store for dinner things while everyone else in town was buying everything in the store in case the snow storm turned into a zombie movie. I have never seen the parking lot so full!

The funny thing is that we ended up getting about 4 inches of snow, if that.

I'm still pretty much couch-bound, the fever is lower but definitely sticking around.

Fun fact of the day: Buddy loves cuties, but knows he shouldn't beg. So when I'm eating cuties, he sits a respectful distance away and stares at me until I call him over.

It's a compromise.

Stupid Sunday

Today was dumb.

I woke up feeling not quite right and it went downhill from there. 

Everything hurt my stomach, including water. But since water is kind of necessary, I sipped on some when I could. I also have a fever.

I really need to work on my lesson plans, they're due Friday, but it definitely isn't happening today. Neither is my long run. 

As my mom said when I texted her, "fever is the only thing that keeps us down." We're both very stubborn about acting sick when we are.

Buddy didn't mind keeping me company.

Hopefully I'm back to normal in the morning, or it's going to be a long day.

My weekend on the couch.

My run yesterday was the highlight of my weekend. I had plans to catch up on dishes and get my lesson plans done this weekend, but the world had other plans.

Not long after I got home from my run, I started to feel off. Then I had the chills, no appetite, and a fever. Awesome.

So my productive weekend was hijacked, and I spent most of it on the couch. My lesson plans are still not done. I did manage to remember to do my laundry this afternoon so I will have something to wear to work tomorrow.

Buddy is very confused by my lack of activity, though he does like napping on the couch.

I'm feeling a lot better this evening, though I'm definitely not better. Here's hoping that I'm functional tomorrow.

The good, the bad, and the squishy

One of the worst things about my job is the constant colds/sickness. When you're getting sneezed/coughed/spit on all day long it is difficult to avoid. And of course there's holding sick kiddos when they're waiting to get picked up. It is just constant exposure to little kid germs. No amount of handwashing and hand sanitizer can fully protect you.

That's a long winded way of saying that I'm sick again. Right now it's just a bit of a sore throat, but it woke me up at 6 this morning, which is not cool. Hopefully the weekend is enough of a break from singing songs, reading books and constantly talking to give my throat a chance to recover.

One of the best things about my job is that I get to play with fun things like this:

 
They don't seem to be easily squishable, which is good - two year olds are experts at destroying things. The bag says there are different sizes/shapes in there so it should be fun to see what they end up looking like. There are also somewhere around 4,000 of them in the bag - that might be too many.

I also put another bead in to show the size difference when it is fully formed. Not just because I think they're fun and want to watch another one grow.

I think when I take these to class I may put some in a water bottle or other closeable container so the kids can hold it and look at them while they grow. Then we can transfer them to the sensory bin once they're done.

What's your favorite part of your job? Least favorite?

How early were you up this morning? (I'm hoping someone got to sleep in!)

Don't tell

We survived Thursday with only a few meltdowns and one temper tantrum. One of the girls was mad at me for telling her to line up after music (I'm very mean like that) so she was stomping around the room with her jacket on, yelling that she was going home. Luckily the door weighs more than she does, so I didn't really have much to worry about.

She later yelled at the "buttermilk people" to get off her nap mat, and yesterday when she was mad at me, (a daily occurrence) she told me she was going to turn me into ice cream. Toddlers are crazy.

I remembered to take a picture of our sun catchers today:

We managed to get everyone to sleep today. Not all at the same time, but I'm not picky at this point. Once the last munchkin fell asleep, my not grumpy anymore kiddo woke up, so we got to have some one on one time until everyone else woke up. It's nice to get those moments with them from time to time since we're always running around crazy with 9 or 10 other kids to worry about.

Don't tell my training plan, but I'm not running today. I'm supposed to, but I'm super tired and half my class is sick. I don't want to push too hard when I'm exhausted and end up getting sick - again.

Buddy loves his rope:

Oh and I was reminded of the other pronunciation of my name today: Gecky!

Would you like it if you were required to nap/rest every day? 

I wouldn't, but I just don't like being told what to do. Plus I can't nap.