Comments (9)

By kilax, August 22, 2016 6:57 am

Us too, Data. Us, too.

Comments (10)

By kilax, August 21, 2016 11:39 pm

Highlight of the Week: Getting to do a “long” run!

Monday | August 15, 2016: 6 m run + teaching strength class
Loc: hood, Temp: 77°/78, Time: 57:51, Pace: 9:38 avg, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: good! grateful it was overcast
Strength: plates and cards, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Tuesday | August 16, 2016: 5 m run + attic work
Loc: hood, Temp: 78°/80°, Time: 49:32, Pace: 9:54 avg, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: tired, tender knees, hot
Wednesday | August 17, 2016: 4 m run + attic work
Loc: Chicago Lakefront Trail, Temp: 80°/85°, Time: 39:16, Pace: 9:49 avg, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: okay, hot
Thursday | August 18, 2016: 6 m run (incl. 1,2,3,4,5 ladder) + attic work
Loc: hood, Temp: 79°/83°, Time: 58:49, Pace: 9:48 avg, Difficulty: hard, Felt: good then completely spent
Friday | August 19, 2016: teaching strength class + 850 m swim (breaststroke) + attic work
Strength: step, 1 DB and boxing, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great
Loc: Grayslake Pool, Temp (air): 70°, Time: 22:57, Pace: 2:42 min/100m Difficulty: easy, Felt: good, energetic!
Saturday | August 20, 2016: 7 m ride + attic work
Indoor Ride Time: 28;19, Pace: 14.8 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Sunday | August 21, 2016: 10 m run + attic work
Loc: DPRT to Kilbourne loop, Temp: 58°/63°, Time: 1:41:17, Pace: 10:07 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good

Notes:

• Someone new tried my Monday night class. Awesome! I later saw she posted the class picture on Facebook and someone commented about her trying “CrossFit.” Ha. Ha ha. My class is not CrossFit, but I can see how people think CrossFit and Bootcamp, etc., are synonymous for what we do!
• Another instructor attended my class Friday morning, which was awesome, because it gave me some energy I didn’t know I had!
• I felt really good at my swim this week, and didn’t need any breaks! That is probably because I didn’t go right after class (I had a meeting then went) and because I didn’t box in class, ha.
• Yay, I did a “long” run this week! And the weather was decent – a glimpse of fall with temps in the low 60s!  I can’t wait to get back to running more. I feel so off and blah and generally miserable.
• The new shorts worked well for the long run. They seem thicker than my old shorts though, and feel a bit hotter.

Link to Training Week 356

Comments (6)

By kilax, August 20, 2016 6:28 am

For my birthday, Gina gave me a copy* of Run the World, the recently published memoir documenting elite athlete Becky Wade’s one-year post-college grant-funded journey across the world she took in 2012/2013 to study different running cultures.

How’s that for a mouthful? Ha.

After graduating from Rice University in 2012, and wanting adventure before pursuing a professional running career, Becky Wade traveled to different countries to experience their running culture. Her travels were funded by the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which is awarded each year to forty graduating college seniors to travel the world to do research in their field of interest.

Wade’s travels included:

• England (during the 2012 Summer Olympics)
• Ireland
• Switzerland
• Ethiopia
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Japan
• Sweden
• Finland
• and more!

In each location, she housed with locals (some being local expats), sometimes staying for a long weekend, and sometimes staying for weeks. Overall, she stayed in seventy-two different beds! And, ran over 3,500 miles during her year of travels!

Her goal during the trip was to study the nuances of the training styles of the area she was in, and overall, to compare them all to one another (and ultimately, it seems, see what works best for her). For example, she learned that the Ethiopians (and some Kenyans she ran with in England) tend to do a very long warmup before their workout, rarely wear a watch, run on technical trails as much as possible, and have no idea how many miles they’ve run. The Japanese, in contrast, are very focused on running high mileage all of the time (and tracking it), but also take their recovery and relaxation process very seriously (with public baths and acupuncture).

Wade also focuses on food and shares a local recipe at the end of each chapter. She is surprised to learn that Ethiopians fare so well on a very high carb diet, when Americans are still in a “carbs are bad!!!” phase. One of her great pleasures during her travels is trying all of the local foods, which was interesting to read about.

Those are just small examples (that you were probably already aware of, ha), but the book really does give insight to the state of running where she is traveling, which I enjoyed. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to run in these places, so it was fun to imagine what it was like, as I was reading (and to look up the places she was talking about on google maps, and later, look at photos on her blog).

I did find some of the writing hard to focus on – her writing style didn’t always click for me, and I felt a bit distracted while reading this – but it got better as I got further in to it.

And man, she mentions the 2016 Summer Olympics a TON, which was awkward, knowing that she didn’t get to participate in them! But the book ends on a uplifting note – her marathon debut, and win, at the 2013 California International Marathon.

I love memoirs (because I am so nosy?) so I enjoyed reading this, and recommend it! Traveling the world for the year to explore running cultures sounds like a major treat, and reading about it was a treat, as well.

*This is my way of telling you that this is not a sponsored post

Comments (5)

By kilax, August 19, 2016 4:09 am

It’s our final work week before the drywall ceilings start to go up on Monday (August 22) and we still have quite the to do list:

List as of Monday, August 15 – it gets added on to each day (luckily, things are checked off, too!)

We started the week with new can light installation – we took the old ones down because they aren’t sealed or insulation contact rated. In some instances, we’re putting the can lights very close to where they were before. So you’d think I would have taken photos of that before demo. Nope. Oops. At least we can kind of tell by the conduit we left up, and by searching through some photos. (Ha, while proof-reading this, Steven told me he marked where everything was but then painted over it! Oops!)

In other instances, like our master bedroom, we’re not putting things exactly where they were before. It made me crazy how the ugly circular vents were randomly placed in the room, and didn’t align at all with the lights. So Steven fixed that, and has been discussing the placement of everything that will be visibly exposed in the ceiling with me.

We’ll have normal vents, now, yay!

When things align <3 <3 <3 (the vents and lights align, and the fan box is centered on them)

And of course, while Steven was installing lights, he found ANOTHER smelly spot to demolish (that we left for another day). Ha, at this point, I wonder if we should have just demolished all of the interior drywall?! Just kidding. Kind of.

On Tuesday, we put insulation around the ductwork, to make it a bit more efficient and help prevent condensation. We ordered big rolls of fiberglass insulation (which actually have a teeny R value, but it’s a vapor barrier),

Sadly, that is not a giant burrito

that had to be cut to size (and then trimmed, so we have a flap to fold over on itself) to fit around the ducts.

Where there was not a supply duct, or anything else in the way, wrapping the ductwork around, then screwing it in (AHHHHH, we’re putting holes in our brand new ducts) wasn’t too bad. It got tricky around the obstructions though.

SO SHINY

Insulated ductwork over guest bedroom

Insulated ductwork over master bedroom and bathroom

I think I will be itching for a few more days. Ugh. We didn’t finish the insulation on Tuesday, and took a break from it for a day.

On Wednesday Steven demolished the drywall (and put in a new support piece around the conduit) in the newest stinky spot so I could paint it. I painted it, as well as our linen closet (which we had painted part of on Saturday) because it had a funky wood smell (not to be confused with the funky animal smells which are the reason for this whole project).

I didn’t paint that one piece of wood because Steven had just put it in

Steven installed the hallway lights,

View looking north

View looking south

and had to get creative with the light that goes in our ALL tile shower. The six-inch diameter can wasn’t fitting (too big), so he got a five-inch diameter can… which was too small. So he did some handy work with the pliers for awhile until the six-inch one fit.

Steven is sitting in the attic above the shower, picking off pieces of tile with the pliers, to make the opening bigger. It’s a dark and confusing photo, but it was 9:30 pm, so it’s the best I could do!

On Thursday, we got back to work on the duct insulation. We were hoping to finish insulating the supply ducts, then begin taping… but that was a no go. Cutting all the special pieces for the supply ducts took too long.

And besides cutting them to special shapes, I also had to trim the insulation so the flaps overlap each other blah blah blah blah blah. Blah.

But now all the insulation is up and I can go to town taping it this weekend! CAN’T WAIT! This stuff is gonna be so awesome to tape!

Steven got a bit of electrical work done between putting the insulation up – he put conduit and wire to one can light in our bedroom and can now daisy-chain the other three to it. He also ran conduit from a new fan switch to our new fan box. Our master bedroom fan wiring previously wasn’t in conduit, and the wiring was all chewed up (and installed wrong, anyway) so it’s never worked since we moved in. Sorry, Data, it’s gonna work now.

So… yeah. Now it’s Friday and we have three days to get stuff done. I am not even going to scroll to the top of the post and see what we have left! The next post you see about all this should be me saying the space is ready for new ceilings!

Comments (16)

By kilax, August 18, 2016 6:27 am

• I hit a 700 day streak practicing Spanish on DuoLingo! I am practicing stuff I’ve already learned though, since I went through the entire Spanish course late 2014/early 2015. It would be awesome if they added more vocabulary and lessons. And if I practiced with a Spanish speaker!

• My running uniform might be changing! I needed to replace the Champion’s Women’s Absolute Bike Shorts that I use to run in, but couldn’t find my size, so I ordered the Champion Women’s Absolute Fusion Shorts with SmoothTec™ Waistband to try. They’re the same inseam length as the other pair (7 inches), but a little bit different material (these are 87% Polyester/13% spandex vs. the old ones being 87% Spandex/13% Nylon), and they have a bit thicker waist band (the inside of it leaves funny marks on my skin, ha). The new shorts have been working for short runs and I am anxious to try them on a longer one! This is not sponsored, I bought these with my own money.

• The ducks have stopped visiting. Wah! I haven’t seen them in a week. The pond must be too low for their interest. Sadness. But that’s okay because we have a new friend, Burt (see first picture, below). My mom found Burt when she was out cutting hosta leaves to put in these pretty flowers she picked up for us when she went to run errands. Steven does NOT like spiders. When I showed Burt to him, he jumped back and said “it’s time to get a shot gun.” Ha ha.  (Well, I am laughing – he may be serious.)

• Besides helping with house projects, cooking for us, and surprising us with flowers, my mom also helped me out by wrapping some gifts for me. I am horrible at wrapping gifts, which is funny, because that is kind of what our Tuesday night house project was (more on that tomorrow).

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 105

Comments (13)

By kilax, August 17, 2016 7:45 am

Working all day and night (and trying to fit in short workouts) is getting to me. I’m exhausted by the end of the day, every emotion is 10x more intense than it should be, and I’m incoherent and out of it.

So all that being said, I’m super impressed that I realized my shirt was on inside out on the train ride in to the office, and not on the way home. Ha!

Comments (13)

By kilax, August 16, 2016 6:33 am

When Mica and Harrison visited and we went to the North Dunes Nature Preserve* we noticed the beach had a ton of smooth, flat rocks (from the tide hitting them up against the barrier along the shore?).

I immediately told my mom about it, because I know she and her mom have a “thing” for flat rocks. So when Mom was out here this weekend to help with the house stuff, I said “It’s too bad we won’t have time for you to go check out all those flat rocks!”

Hold up, that is not what she had in mind! “Let’s just get up early and go before we start work.” Okay, then!

And that is what we did (um, we left about forty-five minutes late though – but we were there and back in fifty minutes!). We drove to the beach (fifteen minutes from my house), found some cool rocks, took some pics,

and then drove back and got right to work! Zoom, zoom, zoom!

It was nice to take a short amount of time to do something fun on Saturday (a bike ride with my dad) and Sunday (finding rocks with mom). I haven’t had much downtime lately. And it sucks when you have people come help you and you don’t even get to catch up with them because you’re working so hard. So yeah – it was a nice treat.

Mom said she plans to leave the rocks in a basket to let the grandkids play with/try to stack because “it is relaxing and fun.” Then after awhile she’ll put them in a jar and label them with the date and location where she got them. She was impressed by Lake Michigan’s size and the sound of the waves!

And I am sure I’ll be taking my mom and her mom out there, if they visit together in the early winter as they sometimes do!

*which I erroneously called Illinois Beach State Park in my blog post – not too big of a deal – they are RIGHT next to each other

Comments (14)

By kilax, August 15, 2016 6:27 am

We had another weekend of house work, and my parents came to help us! We’ve been really lucky to have friends and family help us with this project – Steven’s dad and two of his friends were up here last weekend, and our friends Eric, Bobbi, John, and Troy have all been here a few days. It’s so helpful to have extra hands, and especially people like my dad, who’ve been doing stuff like this for years.

Steven, me, Mom and Dad

We tackled the ductwork this weekend. We took out all of the flexible ductwork when we demolished the attic. It was in bad shape – animals has chewed holes through it and it was barely held together with duct tape. We bought rigid ductwork to replace it, hoping that if animals get in the attic again (nooooo), that they can’t chew through (as fast?).

Our plan, which Steven did a “sh*t-ton of research and maths to figure out” (<—- that’s a direct quote):

No bathroom return because you don’t want those fumes circulating around the house!

It’s A LOT of metal parts and pieces to put together:

Eek!

(I’d like to mention, we tried to get MANY companies to come out and do this for us – if they returned our calls, most wouldn’t come visit. If they visited, they didn’t want to do it/never got back to us. Um, the ceiling is down, making it MUCH easier to work on. Why doesn’t anyone want our business?! Frustrating. I GUESS WE’LL JUST DO IT OURSELVES IF YOU DON’T WANT OUR MONEY.)

On Friday night, Dad and Steven got right to it, and started putting the ductwork in.

Troy replaced the nailers for the new drywall that’s going in (Steven cut them all), Steven worked on getting another (grrrr) nest out of a rafter, and mom and I cleaned up the nest, and the mess it made, and started vacuuming and checking all the drywall tops for animal smell. Oh! And I got to take some of the plastic down (it was time – it had so much stuff on it) and vacuum! I’ve never been so happy to vacuum – I hadn’t seen the carpet in over a week! And I was pleased to see the tarps and plastic protected it.

Dad and Steven continued working on the ducts and supply and return vents – we picked new locations for them – on Saturday

Installing the trunk line

Putting in the east master bedroom supply vent

Marking for the west master bedroom supply vent

Supply vents up, and starting to add the ducts

Installed (and pic of a drywall nailer)!

and I continued vacuuming the drywall tops and checking for smells.

And found another spot that needed to be entirely ripped out (plus Steven had found another in the am!).

Gah. Good thing we found it though! Mom painted the first layer of Kilz on it and I did the second.

And I put a small layer of plastic up on Saturday. And decided I never want to see blue painters tape again. I kind of reached my breaking point on Saturday. No surprise there.

On Sunday, Steven and Dad finished up the ductwork install, and moved on to lighting and electrical. They got a few lights up, and fixed a few switches.

Ductwork leading to supply vent in bathroom

Hi, Dad!

Guest bedroom supply vents

I spent most of the day sealing all the connections with acrylic duct sealant. Gawd, it took forever.

Partially completed sealant work

I don’t know all the details of the work Steven and Dad did to put up the ducts since I was busy doing other stuff while they did that. But man, I was impressed that they got most of it up in a day and that it looked so nice (before I painted it)!

The ductwork is what I felt most concerned about because we’d never done it to that volume before. But Steven and Dad seemed to whiz through it! Even though we have so much left to do (including cover the ductwork with insulation), I feel relieved that is done!

My parents were so helpful when they were here! We worked all day and in to the night, and Mom cooked all the meals, which saved me time driving to get them, and more importantly, made me feel better, physically, eating less take out!

Fajitas and naan!

This weekend felt like a big help to getting us on track for the new ceilings in one week (on August 22). And this will be another week of work. We still need to put the insulation around the ductwork, install some lights, fix electrical, install a catwalk in the attic… and much more.

We’re all ready for this to be done! Especially Data. Um, he was not too happy this weekend…

Comments (4)

By kilax, August 14, 2016 8:36 pm

Highlight of the Week: A bike ride with my dad!

Monday | August 8, 2016: 5 m run + attic work + teaching strength class
Loc: hood, Temp: 78°/79°, Time: 50:47, Pace: 10:09 avg, Difficulty: medium/hard, Felt: tired
Strength: plates and cards, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good!
Tuesday | August 9, 2016: 3 m run + attic work
Loc: Chicago Lakefront Trail, Temp: 83°/85°, Time: 29:23, Pace: 9:47 avg, Difficulty: hard, Felt: not good – too hot, headache, might throw up
Wednesday | August 10, 2016: 12 m ride + basement work
indoor Ride Time: 48:24, Pace: 14.9 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Thursday | August 11, 2016: 5 m run + basement work
Loc: hood, Temp: 84°/89°, Time: 50:44, Pace: 10:08 avg, Difficulty: hard, Felt: so hot, thankful for the breeze
Friday | August 12, 2016: teaching strength class + 700 m swim (breastroke, w/Anne) + 4 m run (incl. 5×400) + attic work
Strength: plates and cards, Difficulty: medium, Felt: good
Loc: Grayslake pool, Temp (outdoor): 75°, Time: 21:58, Pace: 2:40 min/100m, Difficulty: medium, Felt: okay! (but tired and hungry)
Loc: hood, Temp: 79°/77°, Time: 38:56, Pace: 9:44 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: better than earlier in the week!
Saturday | August 13, 2016: 9.7 m ride (w/Dad) + attic work
Loc: DPRT, Temp: 75°/75°, Time: 53:01, Pace:11.0 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Sunday | August 14, 2016: rest (attic work)

Notes:

• After taking four days off running to work on house stuff last week, I thought my legs would be peppy on my first run back on Monday. Nope. They felt SO tired. Blah! I was standing on my feet and going up and down stairs and ladders, and in and out of the attic for days, so that explains it! Tuesday’s run was even worse – hotter and I felt headachey and like I might throw up. Oh joy. At least now I know what to expect next week!
• My running mileage was ridiculous(ly low) again this week, and I think it will be again next week. Sigh. I need those runs – I am starting to lose it, a bit! (“It” being my mind, but also, my fitness level.) But, I did get to run more this week, than last (since I took lunch breaks at work, and worked out then) and I am grateful for that.
• I am also grateful my dad and I could do a short bike ride on Saturday! We rode mountain bikes on a crushed trail by my house. It feels so different for me to ride a mountain bike when all I’ve been riding is a road bike!
• We’re at that time of year when lots of people are missing strength class because of vacations/etc., and to be honest, it’s discouraging to instructors to have so many people not show up. Hopefully things will get back to “normal” in September!

Link to Training Week 355

Comments (7)

By kilax, August 13, 2016 6:23 am

It’s been a year since we first “officially” looked at our current home with a realtor! I was immediately smitten with the house. Steven? Not so much. I think that may be influenced by the fact that he had just had a temporary crown put on, though. Poor guy. (Obviously, he came around.)

I remember calling my dad during my long run the next day and just gushing about the house. I felt kind of foolish, since I thought there was no chance in hell we’d ever sell our place and be able to move, but I couldn’t help but talk about it! Ha, I bet during that conversation, my dad never thought he’d be at said house, a year later, helping install ductwork. Thanks, Dad!

Out of curiosity, I opened up the photo folder from August 13th last year to see if we had taken a photo of the pond when we visited, to compare the levels to what they are at now. Yeah, definitely higher then (and more wild!):

But you know what? If the pond hadn’t gone down, we wouldn’t have discovered there were urns in it, and where’s the fun in not knowing that?!

I think we’ll be finding lots of interesting things here, in years to come. Ha.