Run Around Revisited

A year ago, I ran my first ever 5k on July 4th. At that point, I'd only ever run for time, not distance. Three miles was a new length for me, so my only goal was to finish without walking.

I remember that I ran in a Champion tank, my old Asics and a pair of cotton capris. I know. The horror. Cotton! What was going to wick away my sweat?! I remember looking around at the runners and realizing that people didn't wear cotton and feeling slightly embarrassed and thinking that I needed to go shopping after the 5k. I was so unsure about whether I'd stick with this running thing that I wanted to actually run a 5k before I put money into it. I met my goal and finished in 31:33 without walking a single step. With it being my first race, I remember being surprised at the kick I was able to give when the finish line was in sight. I thought I had nothing left, yet I was able to dig in and sprint across the finish line. It was the first of many times I'd feel that and I loved it.

Yesterday, I ran the same course. What a difference a year makes. I wore an Adidas tank, lululemon shorts (which are amazing and worth every penny), Brooks and my Garmin watch (which decided to lose the satellite halfway through). I was ready. I trained for this. Not the type of training that just gets you across the finish line, but the type of training that gets you across the finish line harder, faster. For the last ten weeks, I've been following the own it training plan in the Train Like a Mother book. I've been doing speed work and tempo runs and all manner of things that make me feel like I'm dying, but they actually work. I've felt my legs get speedier and my lungs push through the burn. And then. The weather. Of course, the one element you can't control. I remember last year's 5k. It was sunny, but it was in the 70s with a breeze. It was perfect. Of course, I got hot while I was running, but it wasn't unbearable. Yesterday, however, was unbearable. Yesterday was the kind of race where they warn you about the heat at the start. By 8AM, it was mid-80s with 85% humidity. As Sarah put it, it was a lovely day for running through a swamp. I knew I wouldn't be able to push like I wanted and I knew I might very well see my official PR go out the window, so I faced that if it happened, I would find a cool weather 5k and push hard then. Still, I was disappointed.

The race started and I was sweating standing still. I went out pretty hard in the first mile and did that in 8:59. I felt hot but strong. I don't normally do water stops in 5ks, but I felt like I needed it. Not to drink, but to dump on my head. Unfortunately, the kids manning the water stop were not too swift, so I had to stop and wait. The guy with them was yelling at them to get with it and get back out there, so I wasn't grumpy about it, but in a 5k, even a few seconds can count. Still, I was happy to have the cup of water that ended up on my head. With the water stop and a hill at the halfway point, mile 2 took me about 9:30. My Garmin decided to quit, but there was a guy at the mile 2 split yelling out times and I hit mile two at 18:56. I was feeling hot and heavy but still pretty good at this point, to be honest. And then mile 2.5 came and I was DONE. They don't close down the streets for the 5k, but they do stop traffic for the runners. Traffic was stopped for about a half mile stretch and the heat and exhaust from the idling cars created a really bad situation. It was like hitting a wall. I wasn't the only runner struggling. Just about every runner around me stopped at this point and started doing intervals. Between the smell of the fumes and the intense heat, it was brutal. Then I noticed that I had goosebumps on my arms and my forehead was no longer sweating, which is never a good sign so I reeled myself way in. I still ran bits and pieces of the last half mile, but I'll be honest in that I'm certain I walked more than I ran. I just couldn't do it. I kept thinking, I'm a half-marathoner. How am I not finishing this strong? The simple answer is: I couldn't. The heat created by the cars with the heat already in the atmosphere got scary. My body was sending out some scary signals and I was terrified of what would happen if I pushed it. And I simply couldn't push it. I started running when I knew the finish line was around the corner. As the finish line was in sight, I saw that the clock said 29:30 and I knew that I would finish with a sub-30 result, but just barely... and for the first time in my running career, I could not find that final push. I tried, believe me, but my body coasted across as the clock said 29:45. The final sprint is my favorite part. Even in the half marathon, I pushed myself across the finish line at a 7:30 pace--after 13 miles, but I couldn't do it after running 3 miles yesterday.

Still, I achieved my goal, in horrible conditions. I shaved almost two minutes off of last year's time! I know that a sub-30 is attainable and I know that in better conditions, I can probably get an even better PR. All in all, I'm happy with it.
Even better, Luke ran in the kids' race afterward yesterday. He had a blast! He ran with a smile on his face the entire time (something I am sure I did not do). They split the kids so that he was with 5 and up, meaning he was in the younger group. He ended up being on of the littlest in his racing group, but he still beat five kids. Watching him run and love it was way more fun than my PR!

Golden Brown

I've lived in this house for seven years. We have a field behind us, which is kind of a blessing for this girl who grew up in the country and really, really doesn't belong in suburbia (really is an understatement--just ask my neighbors).

For the first time since I've lived here, the farmer planted winter wheat. It's been wonderful. It was green in the winter when everything was brown and as everything turned green in the spring, it turned a beautiful shade of gold. When the wind would blow, it would wave and honestly, I would be so happy if he planted only winter wheat for the rest of forever. I much prefer this to corn because when there's corn, I spend every night thinking, "OH GOD WHAT IF THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE CORN FIELD WHEN I GO OUTSIDE IN THE DARK AND IT COMES RUNNING OUT AND EATS ME?!?!" I am not exaggerating.

Anyway, my own issues aside, I knew that the wheat would be gone soon because such is the life of winter wheat. I wanted to get a nice photo of the boys before it was harvested, so I took them outside at golden hour and spent about another hour trying to get a shot where both kids were smiling and looking at the camera. Poor Luke, my good picture taker, lost his smile near the end after smiling brilliantly only to hear that Tommy was, of course, not looking at the camera or was glaring at the camera. Oh, Tommy.

I finally got it, though. And just a few days later, the wheat was harvested and now we have an empty field (which is still much preferable to corn because, again, I know nothing lurks within the dark).



Happy 4th of July from Snoopy and our boys!

Two Wheels

Luke learned to ride his bike with no training wheels. It happened suddenly, as these things do. One day he asked to take his training wheels off. We told him he could try, figuring we'd put them back on at the end of the night. He took off shakily across the grass. To our surprise and joy, he balanced for about five feet before he fell. He got back on again and again, going further each time before we let him try the sidewalk.

It wasn't the TV bike riding moment I'd always envisioned, where I would hold on to the back of the bike, then let go before he knew it and watch him ride away without him realizing he was doing it all on his own.

Instead, he yelled at me to let go of his bike because he was ready to go without me. Only, I wasn't ready to let go.


Now he rides like he never even had training wheels. He took one really bad spill where there's a patch of gravel. He had gravel in his arms, legs, even his mouth. I walked him crying into the house, washed out his cuts and scrapes with hydrogen peroxide, picked out the gravel, bandaged him up and as soon as I was finished, he sniffed away the tears and said, "Can I get back on my bike?"

There's a lot of lessons to learn in two little wheels.

Summer Update

I'm a really bad blogger. I was going to share more beach photos, but I realized I did that last time I blogged. Not that it matters because it's not like I have a wide audience of people that I need to keep entertained with my twice a month blog posts. Still, we have done other things than go to the beach.

I've sat at the optometrist office again.

That was fun. Diagnosis: my corneas are still jerks. I have at least four more weeks left in glasses and no eye makeup. While I know there are plenty of people who wear glasses all the time, I am not one of those people. Glasses are not what I am used to, thus this has been hard for me--especially in the summer. I'm ready to have my contacts back and hopefully when I see the doctor in four weeks, I'll get the all clear.

Tommy discovered that he loves salt and vinegar chips. Thanks to my migraine meds altering my taste buds, I've made this discovery as well. Salt and vinegar for all!


We all discovered that the grocery store has a tractor, which is confusing and entertaining.


We had a picnic lunch to celebrate my mom's birthday and Tommy put a flower in her hair.



And, of course, there's the beach, where we secretly wish we could live and dance in the waves

and fly kites



Not pictured: Luke learned to ride his bike without training wheels and I learned to maintain a sub-10 minute mile for five straight miles. Now if only Tommy would learn to SLEEP, we'd all be set. Oh, and our local Dairy Queen now serves Orange Julius. Huzzah! How has your summer been?

Beach Boys

We kind of love the beach. I love looking back through my blog at beach posts of days of yore. Like our first beach trip last summer (I'm happy we made it much sooner this year!). Though not our beach, two summers ago, we spent some time in the salty waters of the ocean in Salem, MA. Pregnant at the beach with Tommy. Or Luke at the beach when he was only 18 months old (picture me clutching my chest).

Yesterday, we made our first beach trip of the season. It was much-awaited by two little boys, the bigger who could not believe that we had to wait until after Tommy's nap. Lucky for him, Tommy woke up stupid early as always and thus, went down for a nap early. First we went for barbecue, where Luke ate an adult-sized pulled pork sandwich. My kid, the carnivore. Not that a full stomach stopped him from climbing a sand dune seven times in a row!

Tommy grew more fearless between this summer and last. He was unafraid to dash into the water, which meant someone had to be on him at all times (this is kind of the norm for Tommy, anyway). He was undaunted, though. He would lose his balance, go under, come up spluttering and laughing, and go back for more.


And, of course, Grandma and Grandpa were more than willing to swing him around to his little heart's content.


Although the temperature passed the 90s, it was the picture perfect beach day. Blue skies, puffy white clouds. We couldn't ask for better beach weather.


We like to get to the beach in the afternoon and stay later. It starts to cool down. People start to clear out and leave for dinner. You get to watch the sun sink lower into the horizon. It makes for the perfect way to end a day.


And the best thing about the beach? The shortest person in this house is so tired that he's still sleeping. Shh....

{splash}

Since my rant about Summer 2012 being a jerk, it's gotten a little nicer. I am still shaking my fist at it a bit, especially when I have to wear my stupid glasses everywhere, but I'm dealing.

We've had some great moments. Today, we met friends at the splash pad. The boys ran, played, jumped and splashed for a few hours straight.



They had so much fun. I love these summer days now that we're slowly but surely settling into routines. Or into a lack of routine some days, but that's okay. Tomorrow morning, I'm meeting friends for a trail run, followed by pancakes for breakfast (it's obvious why we run). Tomorrow after Tommy's nap, we're going to get BBQ for dinner, then head to the beach.

Yeah, Summer 2012, you might just be okay after all... even if I do have to spend you in glasses.

Rocky Road

Summer 2012 has been a little bumpy. Last week was not the happy first week of summer I thought it'd be. Luke acted out a lot. Every day. I know a lot of it was transition. He missed preschool and his all of his friends at preschool. Shane wasn't on summer break yet. There are some other things going on that just made me stressed and sad, but I knew it would get better because hey, SUMMER.

And then out of nowhere, my car started making a funny noise. That funny noise led to my car needing new brakes. New brakes are expensive. The next day, I woke up with bright red eyes. I've been struggling with this off and on. It tends to happen to me seasonally. I have seasonal allergies and occasionally, seasonal allergies plus my contacts will become a bad combination. No big deal. However, after a great trail run with Barb (fortunately, summer 2012 hasn't been all bad), my eyes just kept getting redder, to the point where I knew I needed to see an opthamologist. Fortunately, they were able to get me in that afternoon. I wasn't concerned about pink eye. Although my eyes were pink, I've had pink eye enough times to know the symptoms and I had none of them. No itching or any of the other gross stuff associated with pink eye, which I will refrain from listing here. But as I soon found out, pink eye is a jerk and can actually spread to your cornea, in which case it will not present with the normal symptoms of pink eye. Since it didn't present with the normal symptoms, I was all, It'll clear up quickly, right? HAHA, no, because this is the summer of 2012. Recovery means 8 weeks of steroid eye drops and 8 weeks of no contacts and no eye makeup. This is super, because I have one pair of functional glasses that is about four years and four prescriptions ago, which meant that I needed to order new glasses, as well as prescription sunglasses because it is summer and I need to be able to SEE. I also need to be able to figure out how to run in my glasses, so that will be a barrel of laughs.

Anyway, because I am not made of money, the fraud department at Chase was actually concerned at all my expenditures this week and contacted me. No, sadly, all that money on brakes and glasses was me, but thanks for having my back, Chase. The end result of all of this is that in two days, I completely spent what we'd budgeted for our anniversary getaway next weekend. After a short cry, in which my eyes turned completely demon red again, I realized that it would not be happening. In the five and a half years that we've had kids, we've had exactly one overnight. Because that's been our choice as parents, I've been completely okay with that. However, I was really, really looking forward to next weekend. We'll make the best of it--we always do--but it's still been a little rough.

That said, it's summer. There's sunshine and no 8th graders. I can't complain about that. Yesterday, we took the boys mini golfing. It was so much fun.


Tommy actually used the club to hit the ball, although he eventually got tired of it and just started placing his ball in the hole.
He was also a huge fan of intentionally sending his ball into water traps.


And Luke got a hole in one!



So, the road has been a little rocky. That's okay, because it's summer and in the rocky road, there is bound to be marshmallows.