Comments (38)

By kilax, February 29, 2016 6:03 am

Yay, Frosty Footrace 5K! My first race of the year, and my eighth consecutive year running this race!

I met my goal of a course personal record (PR)! I needed to beat 22:58 and I ran 21:45!

Which, surprisingly, ended up being a overall 5K PR by three seconds!

I wasn’t trying to sell myself short in only aiming for a course PR. This course is not easy – it has inclines in the first and last miles, and they really get you in the end. I was excited to attempt to beat my course PR from last year. I thought that would be a good challenge.

And yesterday? Not so frosty! A little warm – it was 59°F when the race ended! Oh, accompanied by 26 mph winds with 38 mph gusts, of course.

Sigh.

Effin’ wind.

When Rachel and I did our warm up mile (YAY! Rachel did the race! And came over and saw our new house, too!) we could really tell running in to the south and west winds was going to suuuuuuuck (the course is kind of a loop). And it did.

Fake smiles as we run in to the wind

But I didn’t adjust my race strategy too much. It stays the same for this race each year – go out like nuts in the first mile and push it up the inclines. Fly on the downhill in the neighborhood in the first mile. Hang on for the flat part by the lake in the second mile. Try not to lose it in the third mile. RUN TANGENTS. Ha.

It mostly worked.

I started near the front, since the race isn’t chip timed. I was surprised to keep Ricky, a really fast guy from Efit, in my sights! (Ha, I only could because he went out for birthday drinks the night before – not to mention a lot of cycling and burpees on Saturday and he cycled to the race!). I decided to try to “follow” him for as long as I could!

I did well on the hills in the first mile (yay, hill training!) despite the wind pushing me back, and picked up my pace on the downhill (first mile 6:32). I was next to another lady for quite a bit, then she took off ahead on the straightaway, which was straight in to the wind, yay! Ha ha.

I started feeling like death of course, but kept asking myself “how bad do you want it?!” (reading that book helped, ha!) and kept pushing. Second mile was 6:54. Slowing down! But I could still see Ricky!

I saw Steven right after mile 2, before we headed back uphill.

I actually passed that lady who I’d run with in the first mile, on the uphill (yay, uphill training!). I encouraged her to run with me – I knew she could keep pace with me, and it would keep me going!

And then in mile 3 I slowed way the hell down. 7:26!!! Ha! Everyone I talked to after the race said they slowed way down for the third mile. The first half of mile 3 was in to the wind, and everyone was struggling! I will NEVER run negative splits on this course. I just don’t have that control in me!

That lady passed me toward the end of the last mile and I thought “Good for her!” and “I hope she’s not in my age group!” Ha!

When I got near the finish I was surprised to see I could maybe get a 5K overall PR. So I gunned it! Last .14 (oops) 6:22 pace.

Schweet! 21:45 – a course PR and a new 5K PR! And good enough for first in my age group (I think I was fourth woman overall, and maybe twelfth overall?). The lady who I had run with a bit gave me a hug when I finished! I told her I needed her to run fast in front of me to give me someone to chase!

I was happy to see some friends from Efit came to cheer us on!

Efit peeps – spectators and runners!

I watched for Rachel to come in (the third mile got her too), then we went to run Anne in (who also thought the third mile sucked, ha!), who both did well!

Me, Anne and Rachel

It’s funny that during the race I was thinking how horrible 5Ks make me feel and that I am NEVER running one again. Then I finished with an overall PR and immediately thought, “Hmm, I could definitely run a faster 5K on a flat, not so windy course!” Oh, typical silly runner brain!

But seriously, I am anxious for this year’s Zee Bee Run Squad’s 5K series dates to be announced. My last two 5K PRs have been on their flat courses! And, now I live in the town they are held in (kinda)! (And lived in the town where the Frosty Footrace is held for nine years!)

We hung around for awards after the race. Rachel was third in our age group (woot woot!), and Ricky was first in his!!!

Then we went to El Famous, because NOMMMMMM.

What a fun morning! It was great to see friends running fast and kicking arse, and to cheer them on! And so nice to have my favorite photographer there!

For the past few years instead of a shirt they’ve given participants a hat at this race. This year, we got a buff. Schweet! I like! Wonder what we’ll get next year – I will definitely be there!

And… Frosty is the only race I was signed up for this year! Time to half marathon (window) shop! And recover – my legs are feeling it!

Comments (6)

By kilax, February 28, 2016 7:56 pm

Highlight of the Week: Seeing friends at the race at the end of the week!

Monday | February 22, 2016: 8 m run + teaching strength class
Loc: to VP Woods and back, Temp: 35°/35°, Time: 1:09:03, Pace: 8:38 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Strength: body bars and ankle bands mixed mode, Difficulty: medium, Felt: decent
Tuesday | February 23, 2016: rest
Wednesday | February 24, 2016: 6 m run + 4 m run
Loc: town, Temp: 35°/35°, Time: 49:46, Pace: 8:18 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: good, REALLY pushed around by the wind
Loc: downtown Zion, Temp: 34°/34°, Time: 35:56, Pace: 8:58 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: tired
Thursday | February 25, 2016: 9 m run
Loc: in to WI loop, Temp: 32°/33°, Time: 1:21:56, Pace: 9:06 avg, Difficulty: hard, Felt: tired, done running in to the wind
Friday | February 26, 2016: teaching strength class + 10 m ride
Strength: body bars and ankle bands mixed mode, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Indoor Bike Time: 38:00, Pace: 15.8 mph, Difficulty: easy, Felt: rushed
Saturday | February 27, 2016: teaching fitness boxing
Strength: boxing and light free weights, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good, despite starting class with a headache!
Sunday | February 28, 2016: Frosty Footrace 5K (+WU w/Rachel & CD with Anne+Rachel)
Loc: Round Lake, Temp: 56°/59°, Time: 21:45, Pace: 6:56 avg, Difficulty: hard, Felt: ok!

Notes:

• We did so much arm and shoulder work in the Monday night class that my triceps were visibly shaking! Woo hoo!
• I did my first double (run) of the year on a very windy day! Yeah, I was feeling it for that second run, yuck! Yuck yuck yuck. Wind made me cut that run short, and my run the following day.
• Then… I had a very windy 5K on Sunday. 21 mph winds with 40 mph gusts. But I made my goal! More about that in my race recap!
• This week didn’t go as planned, due to house stuff commitments, then taking a running rest day before my race. I hope things even out soon… ha, if not, I will just have to adjust to less volume. CRY!

Link to Training Week 331

Comments (8)

By kilax, February 27, 2016 7:09 pm

The 5K is the only distance I take a running rest day before if I am racing it for time. Every other distance (and 5Ks not for time), I do a shake out run the day before. But I’ve found with the 5K (and speedwork) I have more pep in my step if I take the day before off running.

So of course, on my purposefully chosen running rest day, we had a beautiful, sunny day with highs in the 50s. Unusual for February! Might have been nice to run in – minus the sun, which is my Kryptonite when running.

On my running rest day, I worked my arms. I taught fitness boxing, spent four hours scrubbing a floor, walls and ceiling with Steven, and moved all of our exercise equipment (including our weight set) around. Yeah… I am going to be feeling that at the 5K tomorrow. Eek!

But, I am going for a course PR, not a 5K PR, and I am feeling confident! My course PR is 22:58, and if the wind doesn’t slay me tomorrow, I think I got it.

Speedwork training went really well. I only cut one session short, due to safety on the indoor track, and skipped my fartleks this week. And I did lots of hill work. But! Did I lose weight like I wanted to, and mentioned in this post?

I did! I lost several pounds in January!

And gained them all back during the move. Ha!

So I’m at the same weight I was when I wrote that. Actually, a few pounds heavier!

And I’m totally okay with it. A move is not the right time for me to focus on losing weight. Too many other things going on.

But… after this 5K tomorrow, I do want to shift focus toward the half marathon distance, and I probably won’t go for a PR unless I slim down a bit. So we’ll see if it happens. Or if I am just a broken record <— very, very likely, hee hee.

Comments (8)

By kilax, February 27, 2016 7:08 am

Since we plan on living in Zion for a very, very long time, I’m interested in learning the town’s history! So I picked up* the Zion Images of America book (there’s over 7,000 Images of America books – maybe they have one for your town?!).

The Zion Historical Society contributed a lot of the photos and information for the book, and it mentioned they have even more at their building – the Shiloh House – where founder Dr. John Alexander Dowie lived. I’m excited to visit the Shiloh House at some point with Steven. The photos and town history will be interesting, but the house looks really neat, too!

I’ve only read a few pages of the book so far, but it mentioned that Dowie completely planned out the town layout before “the first spade broke ground” in the early 1900s. The town streets are on a easy to follow cardinal grid. I’d been wondering about the street names, and read on the Zion Historical Society page that the east to west streets are named in alphabetical order after places and people from the bible (the north to south streets are numerical). Avenues and boulevards also have biblical names, except two that are named for Scotland – Dowie’s birthplace.

It’s fascinating that the town was completely planned out from the get go – it shows Dowie really had grand intentions to build his religious utopia (according to Wikipidea, Zion is named for Mount Zion, in Israel). But was he successful…?  The town was founded in 1901 and bankrupt several years later! And it sounds like it had a lot of political turmoil (what town doesn’t?!). Time to read more!

*Oops, since this is a blog, I have to tell you this means I bought this with my own money off of Amazon.

Based on the articles showing up in my Feedly, the Oscars must be this weekend! We had a fun Oscars party two years ago, missed them last year to watch Downton Abbey, and this year… we don’t even have an antenna to watch them! Ha! We’ve been without cable/antenna since we moved on December 5th to the rental! I’ll have to watch clips of the highlights, later.

We did see two of the films nominated for Best Picture – Mad Max: Fury Road, and The Martian. Honestly… Mad Max was my favorite film of the year. Until I saw Star Wars, of course. It was so unique and engaging. And thoroughly entertaining. I’d love to see it win! No idea where it stands compared to the others, though. I’d like to see the rest of the nominees at some point. We’ll have to rent them on Redbox! We suspended our Netflix disk subscription (still use streaming) shortly after the December move because we didn’t take the time to sit down and watch our disks like we used to.

Comments (14)

By kilax, February 26, 2016 11:14 am

The move doubled my commute time to the studio where I teach strength classes. What was a ten to fifteen minute drive before is now a twenty-two (new record time this morning!!!) to thirty minute drive. Which I am okay with! I just plan accordingly.

Except when I can’t.

Ha.

I didn’t think about the trains.

There are freight/commuter train tracks just east of the studio that have made MANY students late to class. And now me! I lived on the west side before and never had to deal with them. Oh man. Since the move I have been stopped by a train there quite a few times – and not by the fast moving commuter trains. Oh, no. These are the slow freight trains… the ones where you wonder if they’re even moving. Ha! I’ve text my boss a few times “I am stuck by a train! Can you start setting up x equipment for class?” (Luckily he can!) The bad thing is, the only underpass is several miles up the road and would add way too much time on the trip to drive to and use!

We also live between train tracks – a set less than half a mile to our west, and a set just over a mile to our east. I haven’t gotten stuck by those yet on the way to or from class, but I have when I’ve been trying to get home or get somewhere, during other times – in my car and while on the run! Last week, I was running during lunch break and had to make it back home for work and got stuck by a train. Oops! And there are no underpasses for these either. So, you wait!

And plan to leave places just a bit earlier… or have a back up plan!

We do hear the train a lot at our house, but it doesn’t bug us. An expected and consistent noise like that is not what bothers me (noise-wise!*).

*Ha! I do have a post drafted, also about my main job’s work commute that talks a lot about noise and a huge reason why we moved!

Comments (16)

By kilax, February 25, 2016 6:25 am

• Relationship dynamics are extremely interesting to me, and something I read on quite a bit. Especially the maintenance of relationships, and knowing when to let one go. Anyway! I love when gems like this – “Disposable Friendships in a Mobile World” (pdf here) – show up in my Feedly. Basically, it’s about a study that was done to see if people who move more often also dispose of relationships more often (since they are more likely to dispose of physical items, too). Conclusion: it’s not so much that moving causes you to abandon relationships, but that it pushes you to evaluate them (like many things in life do!). I strongly believe people should constantly be analyzing if they are getting what they need out of their relationships. This, but all the time – “moving also requires making choices about which relationships are ‘worth’ maintaining and which are not, which ties could be replaced and which ties should be maintained.”
• That silly bruise took a week to heal! And didn’t feel too great. Eek! I haven’t had any accidents since then but I do feel like my hands aren’t functioning well – I’ve been having a hard time getting things to open this week (jars, bags, etc). Weird. Work with me, body, not against me!

• My mom’s mom is more on trend than me. When I talked to her last, she told me her girlfriend got her in to doing one of those adult coloring books. Say what? My snister sent me one in the fall, but I haven’t taken time to color much of it. I should do that instead of play with my phone when we watch (parts of) movies (then get up and do house stuff). I should get back to knitting, too! I know where all my knitting stuff is!

• When we got to our house on close day we found out the driveway and yard were a sheet of ice. Eek! We’ve had an odd winter of sporadic warm temps and freeze/thaw cycles. Pair that with all the shade in our yard and you get LOTS of ice! Steven and my dad got an ice scraper on move-in weekend and it’s been SOOOOO useful for getting ice off our driveway, sidewalk and off our patio (and then there was that time we tried to use it during mailbox install but that’s a story for another day…). What a useful and fun tool! I spent a lot of last Friday getting the last chunks of ice off our patio and my deltoids were feeling it!

Putting Dad to work!

This picture doesn’t do it justice – the patio was covered in a snow/ice mix!

This is what I got it down to after a bit of work. Then I broke this in to big chunks and picked up some to toss…

… and did a little curling with the others. Ha!

All clear!

• One more article to end the post! “Why You Keep Signing Your Future Self Up for Stuff You Don’t Actually Want to Do” (pdf here) explains how you think of your future self separate from your present self – which is why you might think you’ll have more time to do things, or an interest in something you don’t now. Interesting stuff. Their advice? If you wouldn’t want to do it now, don’t say you’ll do it in the (near) future.

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 87

Comments (34)

By kilax, February 24, 2016 6:23 am

When we moved from the townhome to the rental house, I packed up the majority of my clothes. I left out the essentials, a few shirts to wear to work, all my blazers, a few dresses, my favorite casual shirts, and options for working out. The rental house didn’t have much for closet space, so what would be the point of putting everything out and packing it all up in two months, anyway?

Work shirt options – I go in to the office once a week (and went in up to three days in a row during this time frame) so it’s okay if I wear the same thing each week, ha!

When we moved in to our house, I only unpacked the clothes I had out at the rental. The closet situation is similar at the house – not as much storage as the townhome (which may change in the future, but not the close future).

So I have quite a few boxes of clothes, sitting in the basement. And save for getting out more dresses, and “special occasion” clothes, I don’t really see myself wanting to unpack and use much of it.

I discovered, at the rental house, that I like having less options. I must have filled my closet at the townhome to the brim, because I could. But I just don’t need all those options! I’m not in to fashion AT ALL! I just need a few decent things.

I keep seeing all those articles about how highly successful people wear a “uniform” – something very similar each day, so they don’t waste brain power deciding what to wear. Ha! I do tend to have my standard ware for work and home – so I may do that a bit. But mostly, I like not wasting too much time thinking about clothes, since I don’t care all that much. Until I get so sick of wearing the same things, that I do care, of course!

Right now I have the urge to get rid of everything* (clothing-wise) I haven’t unpacked. But I am going to wait a bit, and see if my urge to purge goes away. And if I start to crave some variety in what I am wearing. This urge to get rid of everything could stem from the fact that a lot of my clothes are old and too big, and make me feel frumpy, so I am only wearing the pieces that somewhat fit, anyway!

*And it’s not like I didn’t go through everything before the first move – I got rid of a ton of stuff! BLAH! How do I have so much stuff?

Comments (32)

By kilax, February 23, 2016 6:07 am

In a rare moment of openness, Data has asked me to share the blemish I’ve been using Photoship to hide on him for the past year. So. brave.

Are you ready for it?

Here we go…

Here’s the edited photo of Data modeling the beginning of the fail hat:

Looks, normal, right?

But here’s the original unedited photo:

Gasp! See that weird spot where there’s a whisker missing?

Poor guy. I have no idea what happened there. We noticed it last year, and unfortunately, it’s a spot where the fur doesn’t grow back. So Data looks ridiculous, and he’s embarrassed.

Another photo I edited it off of.

But he wanted to come clean about it. He felt bad about lying. Even though I do it all the time:

I made sure to edit that zit off my face (on the left) before texting* that photo to my mom and snister, ha. And if I have a zit, I always edit it off my face before posting it here. I’m not worried about those dark under eye circles and smeared make-up. Nope, just blemishes.

Don’t feel bad, Data. We all do it!

*I was so happy when xaarlin shared an app with me that allows you to cover zits – I always had to use my computer before. Now I can do it on the fly. Ha! I’m not a fan of overly edited photos that don’t even look real anymore, though. I cover zits, hide things in the background, change lighting and vibrancy… and that’s about it. 

Comments (26)

By kilax, February 22, 2016 6:23 am

There’s about fourteen houses* on our street, and we decided to try to meet the people at the four houses closest to us this weekend (you gotta start somewhere, right?!).

How we gave the muffins – yeah, I am not that crafty! We tried, ha!

Saturday was almost a bust – we walked to everyone’s home and no one was there! They were probably out enjoying the strangely spring-like weather.

On our walk back to our house though, we saw our neighbors to the east pulling in to their driveway, and walked over.

What an interesting couple! They’re both originally from Zion, and born in the late 20s/early 30s (I am guessing, based on when he said he graduated from high school). The wife went to the same university as me and Steven!

They built their house in either ’59 or ’69 (he told us both dates, hee hee), and were there when our house was built in the 70s and remember the doctor who built it. They said “How do we put this politely? There were a lot of girls coming in and out of the house.” HA! So apparently, the house was a bachelor pad. I told them they shouldn’t see that anymore!!!

They recalled that two couples owned our house after the doctor, and that the last ones trashed it (probably because it was a foreclosure?) and that it was spruced up in the summer of 2014. And that it’s been sitting since. Yep, it sure has been.

They also talked to someone in fall 2015 who was really interested in buying our house. Eek! I am happy it was still on the market when we needed to find a house after selling ours.

The couple gave us a lot of Zion history (and their personal history too!) which we enjoyed and have been wanting to learn about. The guy who founded Zion had a lot of interesting ideas… he owned all the land and you leased it from him. The town was dry and no modern medicine was allowed to be practiced. Everyone had to pay in to the Zion bank. Sounds… cult-ish?! Interesting, nonetheless.

It’s really fun learning the history of the people on our street and especially, learning about our house! These families have been on our street for years! It turns out all the land around us used to be one big farm, until the farmer decided to sell it in five acre parcels. That family still owns the first house on the street, and the parcels are still all five acres.

On Sunday, we were able to meet our neighbor to the southwest who has a ton of hens, roosters, and rabbits outside. And we spent more time talking with our next door neighbors to the west – we really enjoy chatting with them (they’ve lived here since ’83) and I can see us spending more time with them!

Hopefully we’ll continue to meet more neighbors in the next few weeks. Steven’s talked to our neighbors to the south before – they own a local restaurant – cool! And the house to their east is actually being remodeled – eventually we’ll have to meet those people too! (We actually looked at that house as well, to buy, but there was no way we could afford the renovations it needed. The work they’re having done looks beautiful!)

*A few people have asked if we met Denali‘s owners – nope! Denali doesn’t live on our street! Denali lives in a house north of ours, on a different street.

Since I showed a bit of our counter in that photo above, let’s talk backsplash. It’s a lot harder to pick it for your forever home, than the house you are trying to sell! We think we’ll go with something simple, since the counters are so busy, and we like the way these two options look (and we’ve looked at QUITE a few options). Now, to pick one. Maybe.

We’d like to get the backsplash up so we can put the hood up, but we need to have a structural engineer look at the wall the backsplash would be going on, so it doesn’t make sense to rush in to it (especially if work needs to be done on that wall). Gives us more time to think, anyway!

Comments (3)

By kilax, February 21, 2016 12:15 pm

Highlight of the Week: Doing all of my runs outside!

Monday | February 15, 2016: 15 m ride + 13 m run + teaching strength class
Indoor Ride Time: 57:37, Pace: 15.6 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Loc: town loop, Temp: 26°/27°, Time: 1:58:46, Pace: 9:08 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great to run outside!
Strength: body bars and resistance bands mixed mode, Difficulty: easy, Felt:good, sleepy
Tuesday | February 16, 2016: 7 m run 
Loc: To Van Patten Woods and back, Temp: 29°/29°, Time: 1:01:27, Pace: 8:47 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great
Wednesday | February 17, 2016: rest
Thursday | February 18, 2016: 6 m run (incl. 9×400)
Loc: 9th Street, Temp: 26°/26°, Time: 51:31, Pace: 8:35 avg, Difficulty: medium/hard, Felt: decent
Friday | February 19, 2016: teaching strength class + 7 m run
Strength: body bars and resistance bands mixed mode, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Loc: To Van Patten Woods and back, Temp: 55°/55°, Time: 59:25, Pace: 8:29, Difficulty: medium, Felt: good
Saturday | February 20, 2016: 5 m run + teaching indoor cycling + teaching fitness boxing
Loc: around “town,” Temp: 39°/48°, Time: 42:44, Pace: 8:33 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great
Indoor Cycling Time: 54:31, Pace: 22.8 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Strength: boxing and light free weights, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good, but off/distracted
Sunday | February 21, 2016: 20 mins strength + 13 m run
Loc: to Lake Andrea and back, Temp: 36°, Time: 1:57:32, Pace: 9:02 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: really good

Notes:

• Well… we’ve reached the burnout phase of Frosty Footrace training – which happens every year. I’m happy the race is only a week away and I can quit with the focused 5K speedwork and do whatever (speedwork) I feel like!
• Holy cow my Friday run was WINDY. 33 mph winds with 43 mph gusts. I-N-T-E-N-S-E. There were times running in to the wind that I didn’t feel like I was moving. And times it pushed me sideways. And forwards (those times were okay, ha!). I wouldn’t have gone out in those high winds but it was in the 50s and I wanted to enjoy the weather – and I did!
• The nice weather continued through to Saturday am. It was still sunny and warm, and a bit less windy. And I was teaching two indoor classes and wishing a little bit that I was outside. HA! But I’m not quite ready for warm temps yet. I was happy when it went back to overcast and cooler on Sunday.
• I woke up Saturday with a bit of a cold and am taking Mucinex to cover it. I hope it doesn’t get worse. Blah!
• Sunday was the first time I ran from the new house to Wisconsin and back. The roads were mostly quiet and I felt safe (I checked out the road my neighbors gave me a tip on!). Yay for new running routes!!!

Link to Training Week 330