Comments (18)

By kilax, March 30, 2014 5:05 pm

Highlight of the Week: Riding my bike outside!!!!!!!!!!!! WOO HOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Monday | March 24, 2014: 9.15 m run (w/Kelly & Adam) + teaching strength class
Loc: Grayslake, Temp: 19°/21°, Time: 1:28:56, Pace: 9:43 avg, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: decent
Strength: one dumbbell and resistance bands, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: hyper! 
Tuesday | March 25, 2014: 3.2 m run (w/Kelly, Adam & Yvonne)
Loc: Grayslake, Temp: 25°/25°, Time: 31:55, Pace: 10:00 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: tired/sore calves
Wednesday | March 26, 2014: teaching strength class
Strength: plyo box, kettlebells & boxing, Difficulty: medium, Felt: okay
Thursday | March 27, 2014: rest
Friday | March 28, 2014: teaching strength class + 3.75 m run (w/Kelly & Dawn, incl. 4×800) + yoga class 
Strength: one dumbbell and resistance bands, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Loc: LSC, Time: 36:41, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: okay
Saturday | March 29, 2014: 21.2 m ride (w/Efit)
Loc: Grayslake to Libertyville and back, Temp: 31°/35°, Time: 1:53:12, Pace: 11.2 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good!
Sunday | March 30, 2014: 10.1 m run (w/Valerie)
Loc: Rollins Savanna, Temp: 26°/36°, Time: 1:41:43, Pace: 10:04 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great! (after that bathroom stop, ha!)

Notes:

• I’ve noticed a pattern in my weekly workouts – I’m usually physically tired and sometimes achy for my Tuesday morning shakeout run. It makes sense. I take my rest day on Wednesday (so I haven’t rested in awhile), and I teach class Monday night (so  I’m sometimes sore from that). I was excited for my Wednesday rest day this week…  then I remembered I was teaching class that night! Ha ha, oops! But it was so fun to be back at the Wednesday night class. I took that class almost every week for about two years! We had a fun crew! Do you take your rest day on the same day each week?
• Some firsts this week – first yoga class at the studio (another instructor did a practice class on us), first outdoor ride of the year and first “trail” run of the year! It was in the 30s and kind of windy for the ride, but I was so happy to be out on my bike! I just got it tuned up and it road so smoothly! And it was fantastic to be on the crushed limestone trail on Sunday – I prefer that surface over paved and miss it when it’s covered in snow and ice!
• One more first! Data’s first walk of the year!

Link to Training Week 231

Comments (37)

By kilax, March 27, 2014 6:14 am

• Bummer – Gina didn’t get selected in the lottery for the New York City Marathon. I read that 134,000 people entered the lottery. Whoa. I wonder what the odds were, of getting in, then, since at least 50,000+ people run the race, and they have spots for qualifiers, charity runners, and runners in the NYRR 9+1 program. I also wonder what they do with the $11 entry fee to enter the lottery. That’s $1,474,000! It’s too bad the lottery is so hard to win – it’s such a fantastic race! I hope Gina tries again next year.
• Lately, I keep thinking how grateful I am for flexible start and end time at work. As long as we get our 9.5 hour days in, and work the core hours of the day, we have flexibility of when we start and stop work. I try to work 6:30-4:00 so I have more free time in the evening, but there have been a few times lately when I have started work as late as 8:00. However, I think doing this is kind of biting me in the butt. I feel so tired lately (poor sleep for the past few months) and getting up at different times every morning probably doesn’t help. A set schedule would probably be better. And not waking up a few times each night and having crazy nightmares (and crazy anxiety dreams). 
• Good news! My car is paid off! Crazy to think I’ve had it for five years! Aww, here she is when we picked her out:

• Late last winter and spring, I wasn’t training for a marathon, but I often ran people’s marathon training long runs with them. I miss that. Just doing the long distance mileage and feeling great running it. I ran people’s long runs (marathon and half distance) with them this last Saturday, Sunday and Monday and really enjoyed it. Maybe I’ll get back to it this spring/early summer!
• Oh! Because while I am not signed up for a marathon, I do want to run as many miles as I can on June 21st when I participate in The Longest Day with Rachel and her team, to raise awareness for Alzheimer’s and dementia research and support. I’ve donated to Rachel’s team the last two years, and I am excited this is the first time I can participate! The cause is close to my heart – my paternal grandfather had a form of dementia, and I really believe that there is more to be discovered about it, to help the people who have it, and to help the people supporting them. Here is my donation page if you would like to make a contribution! Rachel will be doing a big raffle like last year, so expect to see links to that, in the future!

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 58

Comments (23)

By kilax, March 26, 2014 3:56 pm

Wow. I was reminiscing about the day I got in to the New York City Marathon lottery in 2011. Tangent – in 2011, the lottery drawing was in April. This year, it’s in March. It’s today! I am anxiously awaiting to see if my bestie got in. 

Anyway, the “wow” is because I was reading the comments on that post, and geesh, I think I am not in touch with at least half of those people anymore! I don’t read their blogs, or their blog doesn’t exist or whatever the case is. Some of them I barely remember, and some I remember very well. 

Do you ever look back at old blog post comments and take note of who you are still in touch with, now?

Hee hee. I was reading the names and thinking, man, if only it was that easy, in real life, for relationships to come and go. You know? It’s natural, for you to read blogs and make connections when they work for both parties at that time in their lives. Sometimes it’s a connection for life, sometimes it’s not. Both are okay. You know, the whole “people come and go like seasons” saying. Or whatever the saying is.

But there’s just something about feeling that way, about someone in real life, that feels icky. Probably because it’s so much easier in social media land – just step back with your interaction and fade out.  It feels like real life deserves more than that. But how often does it get more than that? Hmm. Such “deep” thoughts over nothing. Ha ha. 

Comments (34)

By kilax, March 25, 2014 6:23 am

When you are reading and run across a “big” (or hey! a “small”) word that you don’t know the meaning of, do you make an effort to look it up and add it to your vocabulary? Or do you skim over it and just try to figure it out from the context around it?

I was reading this article “Big Words Are Fading, But Many People Still Love Them” (pdf here), and it made me think about how when I see a word I don’t know, it’s about a 50/50 chance whether I will look it up or not. I try to figure out things via context, but sometimes, it’s not possible, so I look it up. My eyes tend to skip over words I don’t know – I have a really hard time with pronunciation, and the easy route for my brain is to not figure out how to pronounce things. Brain! You so lazy!

Funny, that I bought this book (below) years ago and was so pumped about the exercises I wrote about them here, and would even do them long-distance with Steven (when I was traveling for work). Hmm, maybe I will pick it up, again? Riiiiiiiiiiight.

That article is actually really interesting. It mentions that technology is encouraging us to shorten our words – for time and space’s sake. Even the SATs are being modified to “drop obscure vocabulary words.”

And of course, it was fun to read people’s reactions to others using “big words” on them. As I started reading the article, people came to mind who I perceive as using “big words” to sound smart and confuse others, and sure enough, this point was made in the article:

If you are using $50 words to show off, and you know people will not understand them, then that is unkind and annoying, and they have a reason to react negatively.

Hee hee. 

It also gave tips for big word lovers, on how to read people and know when to use them. You know, writing that almost makes me think we are getting closer and closer to Idiocracy, but nah, if something can be explained with one simpler word, or a few simpler ones… that isn’t really a bad thing. I would rather focus on my communication skills (which need some work) than big words. 

For S&G, here is a list of words used in that article that I would have to look up to know the meaning (especially since many were used as examples and not in context). How many of these do you know, off hand? Yeah, I should know quite a few of these! And I think it’s funny that spellcheck thinks a lot of these aren’t words. Ha!

• ebullient
• innocuous
• malodorous
• prevaricator
• sagacious
• ignominious
• empirical
• otorhinolaryngology
• fastidious 
• esoteric
• penultimate
• non sequitur
• didactic 
• circumlocute
• obfuscate
• perfidiousness
• excogitate
• perspicacious
• remunerative
• vicissitudes

Comments (22)

By kilax, March 24, 2014 6:13 am

Do you ever feel like it’s taking much longer for you to “get” things than it should? That it’s taking too long for things to “click”?

Ha. I am not talking about learning something new, or figuring out new work procedures/policies/whatever. That stuff understandably takes awhile. No, I am just talking about day to day conversation, when what someone is talking about is not “clicking,” even though it should. 

Poor Gina. She seems to get the worst of it from me, probably because we chat so much via text, and even with handy dandy emoji, it’s hard to fully explain yourself in the written word (like with this blog! or email!). 

So a few weeks ago she texts me and says something like, “The baton [for the Rock ‘n’ Roll relay] is a drumstick!”

My response? “Eww.”

Hers? “???”

Ha ha. Um, I was not picturing this type of drumstick (which is what it was, duh): 

I was picturing the type of drumstick you pick up to eat, at a Medieval fair. Which makes NO sense. Whatsoever. At all.

Gina laughed at it, and then it was joke for a few weeks, but I just keep thinking, “What the hell is my problem? Meat drumstick? Really?! For a Rock ‘n’ Roll race?! Why didn’t I ‘get’ that?! Can we say derrrrrrrrrrrrrrp?!”

There’s just been more and more incidences like that where I am paying attention to what the person is saying, but for some reason, it’s not connecting in my brain, and then it happens – I respond way too soon. I don’t take time to think it out. So the person is just like, “huh?” Gah. I am lucky my friends put up with me. 

So, conclusion: I need to slow down, and think things through before I respond. I like to be a quick responder, but sometimes that is not the best! Ha! Especially when it comes to needing to let your emotions cool down before you respond to something, but that is a completely different topic…

Comments (12)

By kilax, March 23, 2014 12:50 pm

Highlight of the Week: Checking out a new-to-me trail with Rachel on Saturday in Janesville for my long run! And it was so awesome to have all that time to chat! Email just isn’t the same as being in person!

Monday | March 17, 2014: bike/run brick (11 m ride/2 m run) + teaching strength class
Loc: house, Time: 39:50, Pace: 16.6 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great! until I got off the trainer and tweaked my back!
Loc: hood, Temp: 35°/35°, Time: 19:24, Pace: 9:42 avg, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: better at the beginning than the end
Strength: medicine balls & boxing, Difficulty: took it easy since my back hurt, Felt: lame-o
Tuesday | March 18, 2014: 3.2 m run (w/Kelly)
Loc: Grayslake, Temp: 24°/24°, Time: 32:31, Pace: 10:10 avg, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: sleepy, slow, a bit stiff
Wednesday | March 19, 2014: rest
Thursday | March 20, 2014: 5.25 m run (w/Kelly & Dawn, incl. 1 lap/2 laps/3 laps/4 laps ladder)
Loc: Libertyville Sports Complex (inside), Time: 49:41, Difficulty: medium, Felt: good despite a weird stomach
Friday | March 21, 2014: teaching strength class + 4.2 m run (w/Bobbi)
Strength: one dumbbell and resistance bands, Difficulty: easy, Felt: like maybe class wasn’t hard enough
Loc: Millennium Trail, Temp: 44°/43°, Time: 48:03, Pace: 11:26, Difficulty: easy (snow & ice to slow us down), Felt: good
Saturday | March 22, 2014: 13 m run (w/Rachel)
Loc: Janesville, WI, Temp: 38°/35°, Time: 2:12:56, Pace: 10:13 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: better after the first GU!
Sunday | March 23, 2014: 12.4 m run (parts with Bobbi, Dawn, Dave, Pablo, Stephanie & Perry)
Loc: hood, Temp: 19°/27°, Time: 2:14:49, Pace: 10:53 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good, warm from the sun (in a good way)

Notes:

• On Monday I couldn’t decide if I wanted to ride my bike or run after work. So… why not do both? Ha ha. I did a brick workout and really enjoyed the cycling then… completely tweaked my back getting off the trainer. Because I’m so graceful. Teaching class that night was interesting. I just had the class do lots of partner work. Hee hee! I was happy it was better Tuesday afternoon. I am not used to having back pain and I felt really uncomfortable.
• The last two Saturdays, I’ve started out a longer run low on energy, and surprise, surprise, the first few miles felt really tough. Then I felt much better after eating something (especially with caffeine, it seems). Not sure why I did that two weeks in a row… but I am definitely one of those people who needs to eat closer to when they run. It’s funny, I attended a nutrition for athletes seminar last year and the lady was saying to get up two hours before you work out to eat and let your body digest your food, but that just doesn’t work for me. I do better if I eat something then go work out immediately. How soon before you do an endurance workout do you need to eat?
  
• A few of my running buds met at my house Sunday and I planned out routes for them! It was fun to introduce people to the “hills” in my neighborhood. Ha ha. When we finished the run, I was so close to 40 miles for the week, I just had to finish it out. I don’t even have to check – I know that is my highest mileage week this year. And it got me to 100 miles for the month, too! I love to track this stuff, but I have to be careful not to compare it to the past when I was doing so much more. Every year (month, week, day) won’t be the same.
• I might get out for my first outdoor ride of the year next week if the weather cooperates. Woo hoo! I hope it happens!

Link to Training Week 230

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By kilax, March 21, 2014 6:56 am

Do you remember what your first social media posting (or status update) was on Facebook or Twitter – without looking it up? What was it?

Don’t worry – you can go ahead and look it up if you need to! I read this article (pdf here) about how Twitter added a function to search for your first tweet, in celebration of today being the eighth anniversary of the first tweet, and thought it would be fun to ask!

Aww, I was actually on Twitter for a short while in 2010. I tried it for a month or so, then deactivated my account, so I have no idea what my tweets were. Whoops! I don’t think we are missing out. Ha ha. 

But! Oh, do I ever remember my first Facebook “status update,” in 2010. 

I was a very passive Facebook user when I started using it. I initially made an account to keep tabs on my snister, when she was in college. Ha ha! Anyway, I wasn’t really in to it, and didn’t see why people wanted to share so many mundane things* in their status updates. My, how things have changed. 

Well, I went on a run with Erin in the summer of 2010 and felt like I finally had some material worth sharing on Facebook:

Yes. Seeing someone run in the nude made a huge impression on me. I still think about that day, a lot. And wonder… did he lose a bet? Was he too hot? Did he soil his clothes? I will never know. It’ll be one of life’s great mysteries. 

And now, of course, I post very silly stuff on Facebook**, like this:

That makes me laugh way more than it should.

Dangit. This was supposed to be a short post! But I have to share one more thing – one of my favorite things about Facebook is the “Pages” feed – where you see all the stuff that, well, the pages you follow, post. It seems these things never show up in my regular feed, and since I follow a lot of running and animal pages, it ends up being pretty funny, and regularly updated with “new” material since I “like” so many pages!

*I used it to contact people, and I think share photos, but I did not post “status updates” until April 14, 2010.
**But a little bit less now that I took the app off my phone. 

Comments (29)

By kilax, March 20, 2014 6:27 am

• Some of the photos Steven took at the Frosty Footrace are featured in the April issue of Chicago Athlete! The editor reached out to me because of my blog, and Steven and I went through the photos and sent some in. It was really exciting to see which were picked (and that the Essential Fitness logo is so prominent!), and for Steven’s name to be credited in the publication! A few years ago Runner’s World  asked me for my photos of the Corn Maze 5K, and I uploaded them to their server… and eagerly awaited the magazine to hit the newsstand… and the photos weren’t used. I was a bit bummed. So, yay, redemption! And I must say, it really makes me happy that Steven loves taking photos and gets in to taking them at races. (click image below to see larger)

• Ooo, speaking of redemption! This weekend is Gina‘s husband’s (Steve) redemption half marathon (Dallas RnR), after the short course at the Texas Half in February! Gina kicked butt at her redemption race, and I know Steve will as well! I can’t wait to hear all about it. I love hearing about their runs, and races, and visits to the running store, and Luca cheering on the runners, TELL ME EVERYTHING… hee hee. 
• Speaking of Texas… I am planning to go there next month. And trying another half, with Gina, the day after her birthday! I wonder if that will be my next race. I don’t have anything planned for this month, and the few things I was looking at in April are really tentative. Eh. This might be a year of “less” races. Ha. That doesn’t mean less races = higher quality though! Ha ha ha. 
• I really need to get better at sorting laundry when mine is mixed with other people’s. I am sure you remember the pink sock incident (not to be confused with this one), where my sock accidentally found itself in Andrew’s care and he held it ransom?!?! Sigh. I still have nightmares about that. That poor sock. Anyway. Gina told me awhile ago that she somehow ended up with a bra of mine, from when she was here in December. We both wear black Champion bras (just different sizes… but very close), so it makes sense. I am not sure why it did not occur to me to see if I had her bra, but sure enough, I do, and have been wearing it. Here is the thing – if I wear your clothes, to work out in… um. You don’t want them back. Sorry, Gina! I owe you a bra!
• People have been getting Christina’s party invites and RSVPing! EXCITING! It greatly amused me to make this adjustment to the back of my maternal grandma’s invite. Kohl!

• This was my first time using Shutterfly for something like this (I have only used them to print photos before). I was really pleased with the product!

• This post is FULL of links. And if you are like me, you hover over a link before clicking on it, then look in the status bar (bottom left) of your browser to see what that link is. Well, guess what has NOT been working on Chrome for a long time? That link hover over thingy. Sigh. It’s making me nuts. I keep looking up how to fix it, and can’t figure it out (this isn’t working). Wah! Maybe I should uninstall and reinstall Chrome. It’s making me nuts. And I know this is completely boring, but I am sharing it in case someone else knows how to fix it. Ha!
• The other day I was venting to my mom about something that bugged me, and she gave me amazing advice that gave me the power to take control of the situation. I really needed that reality slap. Friends! Family! I have been a turd lately! Continue to give those to me (reality slaps, not turds)!

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 57

Comments (27)

By kilax, March 19, 2014 6:43 am

I am not sure when my membership in Club Dread was increased to platinum level. I thought when I wrote this post, I was clearly a bronze, maybe even a junior member! But considering doing anything other than this

gives me a feeling of dread, I suppose that platinum level is deserved. 

Sigh. My goal is to get back down to bronze, or even! Get my membership revoked!

Ha ha ha. What the heck am I talking about? Oh, you know, how leading up to most events, even ones I set up myself, I am often filled with dread.

This does stem from work, like in the previous post I wrote. There’s been a lot of uncertainty in my job. Not that I have a job, but how it’s defined. And I think I handle that really well, but on top of that, I have some difficult projects, accompanied by difficult meetings. I think things are progressing, I think people are on the same page, and… something happens to set everything back. I am not sure how to explain it (actually, I really shouldn’t). I guess for this post, the point is that it’s making me feel uncertain (read: pessimistic) about things, and WHOA is that ever translating in to my personal life. 

Like I said, things I set up for myself, I start to question/feel anxious about. Can I really run 3 miles? (!!!! wtf !!!!) Can I teach this class? (um, yes, duh) Can I hold a conversation with another person for an hour? (yes, I can just ask them questions about themself)

I am a confident person, and it’s made me really uneasy lately to be filled with all this dread, and well, anxiety! I hate that I just want to be snuggled up in a blanket most of the time, shutting the world out. That’s just… not me. I like a healthy balance of blanket time with people time (and sometimes blanket with people time!). 

I sometimes think about going back to therapy, but eh, I don’t have the time. My schedule’s too full of things I’m dreading*. Ha ha. 

What membership level do you hold in Club Dread?

*But I am NOT dreading everything. Yet! Ha ha. Just kidding. It won’t get there. I feel like I should make a list of things I am not dreading so you guys don’t think I am completely crappy. 

Comments (23)

By kilax, March 18, 2014 6:27 am

When you hear the word “creative,” what comes to mind?

I think back to college, and being in architecture school. And just feeling so uncreative all. the. time. Some of my classmates came up with wild ideas and “cool” designs and everything I did was so bland and pragmatic.* 

Well, technically, I was being “creative” if you go by the dictionary.com definition of creating something. Ha ha. 

But I have something more like definition #2 in mind when I think of creativity – “resulting from originality of thought, expression, etc.; imaginative.” Or maybe the wikipedia write-up is even better – “Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is created (such as an idea, a joke, an artistic or literary work, a painting or musical composition, a solution, an invention etc.).”

That’s just not me. I open up a blank canvas… and it stays a blank canvas. It’s frustrating to me, at times, that I have the skill set to use design programs (photoshop, etc.), but nothing organic to put in to them. Everything ends up so… bland. And pragmatic.

So! In my mind, creativity has always been about design. Being a good designer. But that’s just not me. And then I kind of had the light bulb moment yesterday when I was thinking about teaching class, and getting excited about creating a new class workout this week, when I thought, wait a minute! I am creative somewhere – in the workouts I teach! Um, granted, they are not new ideas. But, the sequence of them is! And I get to put my own little twist on things. 

And I never thought creativity was important to me, until I thought about how I get to be a bit creative in that sense, and how good it makes me feel. 

So, we must all be a little creative, in our own ways, after all. I am not sure why it took me this long to separate creativity from the design field. I mean, hello, you can be creative in the kitchen, with writing, your style, in bed (ha!), whatever. 

Where do you get to be creative?

*Which actually gave me lots of hints of what I should do after school, which is useful.