Busy Busy Busy!

Again it has been a long hiatus since my last post, you would think that in the mist of summer I would be full of free time with which to detail every moment of my day! HAHA! Funny! Just when I thought I had settled into a comfortable summer routine my darling husband had to go and throw in a monkey wrench, a big one! I was informed last Thursday that we would be taking a road trip to Texas by way of Baton Rouge this week! What! So I was given less than a week to get all our ducks in a row, find someone to watch Lucy and figure out how to pack for a two year old in our tiny Honda Civic Hybrid! Because traveling in a vehicle other than the Hybrid was not negotiable! In the past four days I have done more loads of laundry than I can count and packed and repacked the suitcase at least four times! I have managed to fit all of our clothes for a 9 day trip into one suitcase (yes all three of us!), I have prepacked most of the toiletry bag and the entertainment bag for Riley, I have packaged up road snacks for us for the 21 hour trip and managed to clean my house from top to bottom. Today after my less than stellar run at the gym I even managed a quick trip to the Hope Mills Library to pick up some reading material for the drive. (On a side note I really wanted to pick up Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, but they were all checked out so I got 3 political thrillers by authors I have never read before. I love political thrillers, but going with a new author is always interesting, lets hope they are good!) All I have left to do today is pack a few PBJs into the cooler and reload the car before we head out at 2am!

I am dreading the drive! If it was just Chris and I, I wouldn't be worried, but 21 hours with a 2 year old! Shoot me! At least I get to see some friends along the way. Tomorrow morning we will be stopping at Ft. Benning to spend a few hours with Megan and the boys so that we can get out of the car for a while and Riley can play. Then Thursday I get to see my KDaddy!!!! I haven't seen KD since Riley was 2 months old, so this will be super sweet! I can't wait for KD to see Riley and see how much he has grown :-)

Thursday night its off to Texas, that should be a relatively short drive from Baton Rouge to Columbus so I won't complain. It a week of catching up with family for Chris and I get to take Riley to see Shamu! :-) Riley loves fish so Sea World will be right up his ally! :-)

So I will sign off for now! Update in a week or so when I get back!

Yay! School is OUT!

This past week has been a crazy mess, but its done! Another year in the books, I have officially survived 4 1/2 years teaching! Woot! Now I get to bask in the glow known as summer! :-) I jumped back into my summer routine yesterday, dropped Riley off at school at 8:00 and was at the gym by 8:10. Did a nice 3 miles on the treadmill then body pump! In the bright light of the morning after I can say that I over-did a bit yesterday! Oops! Oh well! For the next three months my days will be filled with more of the same and I'm very excited about that! I think today is going to be an easy day, just some jogging because oh momma I'm sore. Then its off to the pet store with the Bean to pick out more fish for Daddy's monster aquarium!

I did it!!!!

(Sorry for the delay in my posting. . .we've been busy!)

Saturday was my 5K. Megan and Joe and the boys cam in Friday night and we didn't stay up too late talking and catching up knowing we had to be up early Saturday. I fell asleep Friday night and tossed and turned all night, to be honest I don't know if I actually slept! Before I knew it it was Saturday morning and that meant judgement day had come. We packed up the three boys and all bedecked in our race gear headed for down town. I had already picked up our racepacks so we were able to skip check-in and pick up our chips (official timing thingys). That left us about 10 minutes to mill about and stretch before the race began.

I was sooooo nervous! Literally I kept telling Megan that I thought I was going to vomit and like a good little coach she kept telling me that I would be fine and that before I knew it we would be running and fine. (Dammit I hate it when she is right!) So the race starts and first off is a hill! Thats not nice! But up up up we went and it wasn't bad, I have hills in my hood so its not like I've never run on one. So anyway up we go, then down we went, down a big hill (that we would have revisit later, oh boy did it suck!). Still doing well. I kept running, Megan tried to keep chatting with me as we went, but being that I am not in as good shape as she is, I didn't talk back much. :-) We made it through the first mile in 9:20! I've never run that fast! It was scary!

The second mile went a little slower as we had a few ups and downs to go over and I'm sad to say at one point during the second mile I did have to stop and power walk! Not stopping was on of my biggest goals, too bad I didn't factor in the hills. We made it to the turn around and started back the other direction. I was doing great until we got to the base of the big hill! It was right after a water station, I took a swig of my water, tossed my cup and looked up and for all it mattered I could have been staring at Mount Everest! That damn hill was STEEP!! I made it 3/4 of the way up before I about tossed my cookies in a bush! A bit more walking ensued, oops!

But once we made the turn off the big hill it was all down hill from there and we about sprinted to the finish. 5K in 40:50 seconds. Or so we thought. I had a few guys I work with running the 5K and one doing the 10K. When Matt finished the 10K he came by to talk to us and ask how I did. I told him I was a bit upset that my time was soo slow. Normally it takes me between 33 and 35 minutes to do a 5K, but I figured it was the hills that got me. NOPE! Apparently the 5K course was miss marked! We actually ran 6K! They had put the flag for the 5K turn around where the 10K turn around was, the 5K was supposed to turn around much sooner (so instead we ran 2 bonus hills, nice, right?) So Megan and I figure that our actual 5K time is closer to 32 minutes! :-) That I can live with!

All said and done I feel great! Two months ago I couldn't run more than 2 minutes straight, now I can do 30 minutes! My body is still paying the price in fractured shins, but I'm still moving and that's what matters. Megan thinks that now I'm going to jump on the half marathon bandwagon, I'm not ready for that yet, but I'll do another 5K this summer and I would like to do a 10. One step at a time right!?!

So in closing I just want to thank everyone who has supported me through this first race. There were days I didn't want to do this, days when I really wanted to quit, but you all kept me honest and for that I thank you! :-)

Love you!

DD

Its that time of year. . .

So in addition to my mounting stress about Saturday's 5K (yeah its THIS Saturday people!) its also EOC time. Add to this that I'm playing single mommy again and Riley has been sick, I've had to let something go and its been my blog. I know my 5 faithful readers miss me! Here is a quick running recap. . .two wednesdays ago I had a break through, I ran 20 minutes not stop. It was amazing, liberating, insert more adjectives here! Then last wednesday I was supposed to run 25 minutes, no good! It was hot as hell and I barely made it 20 much less 20. SUCKS! Anyway super busy weekend leads me to Monday. It's hot as hell out so I went to the gym to run on the treadmill. I hate treadmills, I get so bored, but I knew I wouldn't make it outside so I sucked it up and actually did well. Today I had to stay home with the bean because he was sick, hopefully he can go back to school tomorrow because I really need to go back to work. And the race is SATURDAY! Holy crap! I think I'm ready (at least I hope I am!!) Wish me luck!

making lemonade. . .

I had a horrible day! Not just a bad day. I mean sinus pain, bratty kids, though I was going to cry in the middle of my lecture horrible. I barely made it through my workday without tears (or murder) but I made it. I was supposed to go running, during 4th period I definitely considered not going. Boy am I glad I did! Today's Podrunner track was the big one, run for 20 minutes nonstop. I didn't think I was going to make it. I figured about half way through I was going to have to stop and walk for a few minutes. I thought that there is no way that a girl who just 5 weeks ago could barely run for 60 seconds was going to run for 20 minutes, but I DID IT!!!!! I made it through the entire 20 minutes without stopping!!!! That is huge for me! I'm not scared of my 5K anymore thanks to today's run. I know that I can do it! I have 15 more days and that means about 7 more runs and I'm going to rock them out!

I came in and once I finished stretching I called my Megan to tell her my news. I got her voice mail and proceeded to burst into the tears I had been holding back all day and thank her for making me do this. I really didn't think I could do it, in my heart of hearts I never thought I would be able to run one mile not stop, I hadn't done it since high school, but today I ran nearly two!

That's progress people. . .that's lemonade!

Yay for me!

Shhh don't tell, I'm blogging while my 1st period is working! I'm having them make a flipbook of 10 of the biomes and the cycles for matter in the environment. So I figured I would use this time to do something productive too! :-)

I had a great run yesterday! No really it was great! I smiled while I ran and that has never happened before. I really thought yesterday's run was going to be really hard. I'm still using the Podrunner First Day to 5K plan (and honestly I can't stop telling people how awesome it is! Anyone can use it and succeed) so I'm still running on intervals. Well I'm on week 5 (week 5, run 2 to be exact) and the schedule for my run yesterday was a 5 minute warm-up fast walk, a 8 minute jog, a 3 minute fast-walk, a 8 minute jog and a 5 minute cool down. To be honest I was kind of freaked out by the 8 minute sections, really up until this point the longest stretch that I had run was 5 minutes. So to say I had some trepidation wouldn't begin to cover it! But I did it and it was great! I still run at a snails pace, but at least I'm running! Now Wednesday's run will be the true test, I'm scheduled for a 5 minute warm up, 20 minute run, and 5 minute cool down! That's 20 minutes without stopping, without slowing down, without quitting! Say a prayer that I make it because the IDEA of running for 20 straight minutes seems insurmountable!

On another note I got a few new running toys! :-) I bought two running skirts from target and I have to say I am enjoying them a lot! I am not a person who can exercise in pants, I get too blasted hot, but my running shorts make me feel NAKED! Megan suggested a running skirt, she did her Half in one and had no problems. So before I went and spent $60 on the nice Nike version I bought the $20 version from target. A lot of the reviews I read on the target skirts were negative regarding the length of the compression shorts, but given the fact that I am super short I though I would probably be okay (and I was!) So running skirt I give you two thumbs up!

The other new toy I got was a running water belt thing (yes there is probably a technical term for this, but well its me and I don't know it!). I had tried a camelbak waist pack last week and it was just too much, the stupid tubing kept getting in my way and I was having to adjust the pack my entire run. For walking it would probably be okay, but not great for running. So on Saturday I ventured back to Dick's and found a waist belt by Nathan's with just a water bottle. Its great! It also has a zippered pocket that fits my ipod, house key and chapstick (because I cannot run without my chapstick, no really I'm serious!). My only complaint isn't really even about the pack, more about my odd frame. I have to belt the pack around my skinny part (Megan I can hear you laughing from here) so that it doesn't slide up! (Oh for the rest of you the skinny part is my natural waist, its my favorite part for Megan to measure when she does my measurements because compared to the rest of my measurements . . .well its the skinny PART!) The overall look with the pack strapped around my skinny part and the running skirt and the mini pigtails I was rocking yesterday was pretty amusing. I'm sure the people riding by me in their cars were wondering what was wrong with that girl, but oh well! I'm out there, I'm running and for once I don't really care!

So everyone (that is my 5 faithful readers) say a little prayer that I survive Wednesday. If there is no blog by Wednesday night you may want to send an ambulance over to Brightmore to scoop me up off the road, oh and could someone please pick up Riley from daycare too! Thanks! Love you bye!

Phone Fight

This weekend I got into a fight with my cell phone! I love my blackberry! Seriously I don't know how I ever lived without it. I love it so much Chris got one this weekend! Anyway in our excitment over our new twin blackberries (yes Megan, Chris and I are now phone twins like you and Joe, sorry i made fun of you for it!) we found a new program. Blackberry App World, yay, one stop app shopping right from your phone. Well not yay! Apparently Blackberry App World hates my phone because right after I installed it it started being glitchy and my internet started to act up and in my world that is a NO GO! So I tried to uninstall it, no! I tried to hard reset (take the battery out), no. Chris did something to the host tables, no! So finally tonight I resorted to my backup plan, the one thing I did not want to have to do, reseting to a previous save on my harddrive. Knowing I would lose the last 3 months of my blackberry existance I plugged in and restore back to March 5! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Do you know how much information I have added to my phone since March 5?!?!? A whole freaking lot! And now its GONE! So if you got a new phone number or moved since March 5th I need that info again! Pronto people!