Slacker week

Last night was supposed to be another running evening with Amy but I had to bail on her :( My stomach was feeling crappy all day and around 4:00 I knew that the last thing I wanted to do was go running in the heat. So I called Amy and apologized for canceling. She told me she'd probably just run on her treadmill, I told her I might do the exercise DVD from hell if I felt better... we both did nothing :D So of the 3 days that I should have run this week, I just did one day... whoops :)

I went home, caught up on the Tivo'd episodes of Dawson's Creek that I'd missed this week, cooked up some yummy pasta and then settled back into the couch to watch Wed.'s and last night's episodes of So You Think You Can Dance. Ahhh, nice and relaxing!

A few weeks ago I went home for Father's Day (I'm such a good daughter) and took some pics of my parent's doggies. Chloe, a papillon, is a the "older sister" of the pair and Max, a chihuahua and terrier mix, is the pesky "little brother." It's so much fun to watch them interact with eachother :D I'll leave you with a few "Cute Doggie" pictures to tide you through the weekend!

Max

Max and Chloe

Chloe, with her hair all shaved off :(

Max, as a pup, and Chloe, with all her long hair, back in November

Art is pain...

... or at least it is when that art is a tattoo! Yesterday after work I went straight to the Diving Swallow tattoo parlor in Oakland to provide some emotional and hand holding support for Claudia :D She was getting an older tattoo that hasn't aged very well covered up with some pretty plumerias. When I got there, the tattoo artist Leslie had already applied the stencil and it was time for the actual tattooing to begin.

OUCHIE! After 2 hours of tattooing I was sweaty and my hands were numb from Claudia clenching them so tightly. But I'm sure it was nothing compared to what Claudia's back felt like! Just looking at her face you could tell how painful it was, mostly because of the location... right over the spine :( Rocky got there a little later (with some desperately needed sodas) and took over as hand holder while I watched Leslie work her magic. It's really amazing what people can create with a vibrating needle, some ink and a canvas of skin!

Finally at about 8:00 Claudia couldn't handle anymore... the rest of the tattoo will be finished during another appointment. I don't know how she made it as long as she did! All that sweating and hand clenching helped us work up an appetite so we went for some yummy Vietnamese food before heading home!

Tonight I'm running with Amy today... I'm seriously pooped from all the recent social activities, and I know Amy had a busy evening of visiting, eating and drinking last night, so I'm sure we'll be more turtle like than hare like at our run tonight!

Wrinkly knees

Last night I went for a run with Amy-- we switched our running days this week. I was going to be busy tonight, our usual running night, and Amy's usual weekly running partner was going to be gone so we decided that we'd just meet on Tues. and Thurs. instead of Wed.! Works perfectly for both of us!

We met up at our usual place at the usual time. We decided to run Amy's short, short route instead of the trail so we don't get too sick of running the same route everyone time. The short, short route took us through the streets of Danville and by some very cute homes. After a couple of miles we hooked into the Iron Horse Trail and headed back to the Lunardi's parking lot. It was really nice to take a different route but it was harder on the legs running on the street since the road isn't perfectly flat right next to the curb. I also don't think that the bottle of wine I had the night before helped at all. :( I definitely felt a little sluggish.

After we got back, 3.15 miles and 36 minutes later, we walked around a little to cool down. I looked down at my red, blotchy legs and noticed that my knees were totally wrinkly! Okay, I don't like my knees; they're a little on the chubby side. But last night they looked like the skin on a Shar-pei. Gross, gross, gross. Of course I couldn't stop obsessing about them. :( Amy thought that maybe it was because I was dehydrated from all the wine-- she suggested I drink some more fluids and apply my Hello Kitty ice pack to my poor wrinkled knees. :( So that's exactly what I did and I'm happy to report that my knees are back to their chubby normalness!

As I mentioned, tonight I will not be running. I'm taking the night off :D I will be holding Claudia's hand as someone pokes her in the back with an ink filled needle :D I'm going to go with her to Diving Swallow tattoo parlor as moral support while she gets her tattoo redone. I'm so excited to see the process and to see what the final result is... I'm sure it'll be gorgeous!!

Insert clever title here

A blog title should be clever... this one short phrase should entice the reader and set the tone for your post. Mine don't do that... they are so unclever and boring and I spend way too much time thinking about them. :( Sometimes I will avoid writing my blog because I can't think of a good title. Yes, I know, I have serious issues. There are way more important things to spend my time thinking about than blog titles, like who will be kicked off this week's So You Think You Can Dance. Can someone please invent a clever blog title generator for me?

So anyway, last night I did absolutely no exercising. :( My coworker Ann is getting ready to sell her house and has been having some work done on it over the past couple of weeks. She just had her floors redone and was informed that she couldn't go home until about 8:00PM. I told her that she and her son Sean could come over and hang out at my place after I got off work to kill some time. She brought some yummy CPK pizza and salad, I opened a bottle of wine (and then another, and then one more) and we had a grand old time visiting until about 10:30!

Her son is such a little cutie... when she first got there he was totally conked out in his stroller. Then he woke up, got out of the stroller, laid down on the carpet and went right back to sleep! We were chatting and laughing and none of it woke him up. Once he did wake up he just walked around the apartment checking out everything, babbling on and on and completely entertaining us with his little 80's dance moves. :D

Busy, busy weekend

Wow, this was a super busy weekend, which means lots to blog about :D

Friday seems so long ago I can hardly remember what I did. I think I ran a couple of errands after work and then went home to plop myself on the couch and catch up on shows I've Tivoed and hadn't had time to watch yet.

Saturday I got up early and headed out to Oakland for the Bay Side Coached Run (NOT the Diablo Valley side run as I stated in my blog on Friday-- I'm still having issues keeping the two teams straight). We met at a new location near the Oakland airport. It was a pretty nice trail but NO SHADE! I had deja vu from a training run we did last summer in Antioch!

Side note: For those of you who don't live here, the Bay Area can be a funny place in terms of weather (well, it's a funny place in other ways too but let's just stick with the weather :D) The east East Bay where I live (east side of the Caldecott Tunnel) is always warmer during the summer than the west side of the East Bay (which is usually warmer than SF and the peninsula). Rule of thumb: the further east you go, the warmer it is. Many times when I've driven west on 24 Walnut Creek/Lafayette/Orinda is sunny and hot, but the minute you come out of the tunnel in Berkeley and Oakland it is chilly, overcast and windy! Because of this local weather phenomenon, I was glad that our run was in Oakland on Saturday-- I was hoping for that overcast, chilly weather. Of course this weekend, the weather on the other side of the tunnel was gorgeous but too warm for comfortable running... GRRRR.

I had initially wanted to do 6 miles, 2 before the team started and then 4 with the team. But because of a little mix up with the location, I get there right on time and decided to just do 4 with everyone else. I started out with Phil, Claudia and Jeanette... after a little chit chatting Jeanette and Claudia forged ahead and Phil and I stuck together. After the infamous Ditching Incident at Nike, Phil vowed never to ditch me again. True to his word, he stuck with me the whole time, even when I pooped out and had to walk for a minute a couple of times! Our final time for 4.06 miles was about 47 minutes (I already uploaded my info from my watch onto the computer so I don't remember the exact time-- I'll update the real time from home).

After the run I went home to relax for a little bit before Claudia and I went out to do a little shopping. We had a very productive shopping trip but we were good girls... we only bought the items we went shopping for! We also treated ourselves to some yummy gelato afterwards :D

Later that night a group of us met up at Pizzaiolo in Oakland for our friend Petra's birthday. The food there was SO yummy but my hungry tummy did not like the long waits between courses! I ate my fill of salad, bread, meatballs, prosciutto and fig, polenta, pizza and a couple yummy desserts! Okay, that sounds like a TON of food but I had very small portions of each since 10 of us were sharing! By the time we left it was very late but my belly was happily full of all the yummy food. It was a wonderful night hanging out with some old friends and meeting a few new ones!

Sunday I relaxed all morning... Claudia hosted at Stitch 'n Bitch at her new place later in the afternoon so I had plenty of time to sleep in, watch some TV and read. :D Lindsay and I carpooled over to Claudia and Rocky's and soon after we walked in the door we were served a VERY yummy pomegranate martini! Since I don't do well with Vodka, Claudia had made these martinis with white tequila.... YUMMM! Rocky BBQ'd us up some Maui style short ribs, chicken and corn, and Claudia made rice and a really good macaroni salad. The Mac salad was a Weight Watchers recipe so it was even good for us, or at least not BAD for us! Usually I'm iffy about diet recipes but it was so good I never would have guessed if she didn't tell us! Jeanette also made us some macerated berries (we had a lot of fun with that word) which were poured over angel food cake... okay, now I've made myself hungry!

We spent a wonderful evening eating, chatting, knitting and drinking! We got to break in (but no literally breaking occured, thank god) some of the beautiful dishware and stemware they've gotten recently as wedding gifts! Poor Rocky and Patch were the only males there... hopefully we didn't scare Rocky with all of our girly chit chat! THANK YOU Claudia and Rocky for being wonderful hosts!

Lafayette Reservoir

I had full intention yesterday of getting up early yesterday and doing the same morning workout I did last year. Yeah, that didn't happen. I think the big spike in my activity level and all this running I've been doing lately has just tuckered me out... I've been so pooped lately! The day ended up being so warm and I didn't really feel like running but I told myself that I had to at least do something!

For a change of scenery, I headed out to the Lafayette Reservoir. The reservoir has a really nice 2.7 mile paved trail that circles the lake and it's usually cooler out there because of a breeze coming off the water. The trail is really hilly though, almost as bad as Lake Chabot, so instead of killing myself trying to run it, I decided to just walk it. My final time for 2.73 miles was 45.33. Some of those hills are a real bitch (sorry mom :D) so I feel like I got a nice workout in even though I just walked it! I think that when I get in a little better shape I'll start running there every couple of weeks... it would be great hill training for Nike.

As I was driving out of the park, I noticed some turkeys along the road in this little field. Did I stop and "gobble, gobble" at them out the window? You bet I did. :P

Happy Friday everyone!! I'm so happy that I have NO plans for tonight! Just me, the couch, trashy tv and then early to bed! After that it's a busy weekend... tomorrow I'm going to run with the Diablo Valley team, go shopping with Claudia, then head to a birthday dinner in Oakland. Sunday it's some kind of workout in the AM and then Stitch 'n Bitch at Claudia's that afternoon! Is it bad that I'm more excited for the bitching, eating and drinking we're going to be doing than the stitching part?!

Short and Sweet

That's what last night's run felt like! After just a week and a half of training, I can definately feel an improvement in my running. I can go longer without feeling like I'm dying. My legs are recovered from Monday's night exercise video, the weather has been much cooler and last night's run actually felt good!

Claudia, Amy and I met up at our usual spot. We did our usual 30 minute/2.7 mile route but this time spread out a little more instead of staying together the whole time. The major benefit of running together is that we're OUT THERE together, even if we're not hip to hip the whole time!

The first 2 miles felt really good but I could feel myself slowing down during that last mile. I've run that route a million times but each time I forget that there is a minuscule uphill incline on the way back. It's just enough of a slope so that you feel really good on the way out, and a little sluggish on the way back!

After the run we didn't hang out and chit chat with each other like we usually do :D Even though it's a little warmer at 5:30 than it is at 6:30 (the time we used to meet for our TNT buddy runs) it's nice to get home with enough time to eat, and shower before I plop myself down on the couch to watch my fave summer TV show, So You Think You Can Dance! Ahhh, trashy TV I LUV you :D

Good Girl/Bad Girl

Last night I had planned to run on my own a little later in the evening when it was a little cooler. But yesterday my friend Amy emailed me to tell me that her dinner plans with a friend had fallen through so she could run with me. Yay... a running partner! We met up in Danville at 5:30. Even though it was a little earlier in the evening, the weather was very nice... a little cool with a nice breeze.

Amy and I headed out on the trail for a short 30 minute run. My legs were still super sore from that darn exercise video the night before and I could definitely feel it in my quads and thighs while we were running. After awhile the muscles loosened up a little but by the end of the run they were tight again. Amy and I really pushed it... we went out a little fast but slowed down on the way back. Our final time was 30.21 minutes for 2.7 miles ... not too bad for us!

After the run we ran into a TNT alum who had done NY the year before. He gave us some really good tips-- especially about what we should do while we're waiting around for hours for our wave to start. :( He said it's an amazing experience and the crowd support is awesome! I can't wait!!

After we spent about a half hour chit chatting, we headed over to Amy's house to eat the food she had bought for her dinner guest :) A running partner AND dinner... I'm so lucky! The dinner was super yummy-- I had a chicken breast, some corn and tomato salad and broccoli salad. What good girls we were. Ummm, that is, until we started drinking the wine! Bad, bad girls! I was just going to have a glass but Amy, sneaky lady that she is, kept refilling my glass! And who am I to tell her no!! Next thing I know, she says something about it being 10:45... WHAT?!! 10:45PM?!! I was still in my previously sweaty and I'm sure stinky running clothes! Time to go home, take a shower and put myself to bed!

Tonight Claudia, Amy and I are meeting again in Danville for our run... it's pretty cool out right now so I think it'll be nice. I'm just hoping my legs feel a little better tonight!

Cherries, how I love you...

... but oh man, my belly sure doesn't :( I bought some cherries on Friday night and I've been really good about not eating too many until today. I ran out of the yogurt I eat for breakfast so all morning I've been snacking on a bowl of cherries. Yuuummm, but now I have a belly ache. :( I always go overboard with the darn cherries... it's just so easy to keep popping them in my mouth! Next thing I know, the bowl is empty :(

And on a semi-side note, when I bought these cherries at Safeway, they rang up for OVER $30!! Thank god I have a club card which brought it down to only $14 for the two bags but STILL!!! How do two bags of cherries cost $30?! Are they not in season yet? Are they super rare cherries from some far away place? I think I scared the guy at the check out counter because I kept going on about the expensive cherries.

The rest of my body is also sore today :) Last night when I got home I did an exercise DVD that I have. It's a super good workout and fun because there are 9 sections that you can mix and match: 3 ab workouts, 3 bun workout, and 3 that are arms, legs or both. Each section is 10 minutes long so you can customize your workout depending on how long you want to workout for and what areas you want to work.

I did one leg workout (lots of lunges and plies), one bun workout (more lunges, some squats and ballet type moves) and one ab workout (a few core moves and crunches). Boy is it a good workout... it's enough moving around so I work up a sweat and I can already feel it in my booty cheeks, abs and legs. Hopefully tonight's run will loosen up those tight muscles!

Where did the weekend go?

Wow, that seemed like SUCH a short weekend! Probably because it was a busy one...

Friday I went straight from work to Lindsay's parent's house in Orinda for her graduation party. A bunch of people from our TNT gang were there and it was really fun to be able to socialize at a non-TNT event! Just like I anticipated, there was lots alcohol and some very yummy food (like this pine nut covered wheel of brie.... YUUMMM). I was a pretty good girl and just had a beer and a little wine. After Lindsay's party a few of us headed over to our friend Bryan's, a TNT alum, to help him celebrate his 40th bday. We caught up with some more TNT peeps and enjoyed some of the best BBQ'd pork I've ever had! But man did it ever get chilly out there! When I had left the house that morning I contemplated grabbing a jacket but didn't, remembering how HOT it's been lately. Yeah, that was a mistake! Bryan's wife Jennifer provided us all with sweatshirts and long sleeved shirts. They're both tall people so I just want to know how I ended up wearing a shirt with sleeves that were two inches too short! Oh well, I was warm and happy with my margarita so I didn't mind :)

Saturday morning I went to go run at Heather Farms with the Diablo Valley team. Our Spring team was also having our last Mentor Led Run there for the people going out to Anchorage. The temperature was SO nice out there, at least for running! It was overcast, cool and breezy :D I decided to do about 4 miles and ended up running with Joseph, one of our Spring mentors. Despite the beer, wine, margaritas, brie, pork, cherries and HUGE slice of chocolate cake I had the night before, I felt pretty good out there... at least I did after the first couple of miles. My end time was 51.02 minutes for 3.98 miles. My actual running time was a little less than that-- I kept forgetting to stop my watch while we were waiting for lights and chit chatting at the water stop! Oops!

After the run and a shower, I headed up to my parent's house in Yuba City for the rest of the weekend. I did lots of laundry, watched movies with the folks, played with the dogs and just spent time relaxing. I got to hear all about the cruise my parents went on last week-- they had a good time and even brought me back some jewelry from Mexico :D While they were on this cruise, they booked their next one... through the Panama Canal!! I'm so jealous excited for them! Umm, maybe I could stowaway in their luggage. :D

I even ran into a couple of friends from high school, John and Karen, when we went out to lunch on Sunday. If turning 30 didn't already make me feel old, this did... they have a son who is going to be a freshman in high school next year! AHHH! Okay, so they had him when were in high school but still... that means I could technically be the parent of a high schooler.. oh lord, now THAT is a scary thought!

Happy, happy Friday!

Woo hoo! First week of training is over! Only 20 more weeks to go! Wow, that doesn't sound very long does it? :(

Usually when I'm training, Fridays are a very low key night. No parties, no going out, no craziness-- it's too hard when we have to get up at the butt crack of dawn the next day to run. Well, who am I kidding... even when I'm NOT training there's no craziness on Friday nights. I know, I'm such an old boring 30 year old :( BUT, tonight I will not be spending the evening catching up on trashy tv... I have 2 party's to go to! Right after work I'm off to Lindsay's to help her celebrate her upcoming graduation! CONGRATS LINDSAY!! Right after that, it's off to Bryan's 40th birthday party! HAPPY BDAY BRYAN!!! I have a feeling both parties will have a large supply of booze but I'm going to TRY to be a good girl and not have too much :D (Yeah right) I do need to get up tomorrow (the earlier the better with this heat) to go for a run. After THAT, it's off to Yuba Duba to hang with my parents for Father's Day :D It's going to be a busy, but very fun weekend!

Have a safe and wonderful weekend everyone!

Running update for the week...

I've been a good girl all week and got my running in-- I even did 3 out of the 4 runs on my own! Here's the break down:

Saturday:
Last Coached Run of the Spring team, first Coached Run of the Summer team. I went out to help at one of the water stops and decided that I would get my run in by running towards the start for 1.5 miles and back. My Garmin says that I did 3.08 miles in 36.42 minutes. Not too bad for my first run. I did go out a little too fast and on the way back took a couple of walk breaks. I felt really good afterwards but two days later I was SUPER sore!!

Tuesday:
I decided to wait and do my run about 7:00PM since it would hopefully be a LITTLE cooler at that point. Yeah, not so much. It was still really hot out then. I started out on the Iron Horse Trail that runs behind my street and ran out one direction and back, and then out the other direction and back. There are tons of big, tall trees along the trail which provided some wonderful shade, but also screwed with the GPS on my watch. I ran for 25.21 minutes and my watch said that was 1.86 miles-- the Iron Horse Trail map says that section is 1.18 miles so out and back my REAL mileage was 2.36.

Wednesday:
I met up with Claudia and Amy to run the Iron Horse Trail in Danville at 5:30PM. I was seriously scared about running that early in the evening when it was supposed to be nearing 100 degrees. I had vision of me fainting with heat stroke and Amy and Claudia dragging my body back to the car. No fun. BUT, it wasn't actually as bad as I had anticipated. There was no fainting, no heat stroke, no hallucinations. It was super hot yes, but we still did the damn thing, with only a little bit of complaining! It definitely helped to run with other people... on my own I probably would have walked much more! Final time was 33.35 minutes for 2.65 miles.

Thursday:
To avoid another hot, evening run, I decided to drag my lazy bum out of bed and go for a run early this morning. Ahhh, SO much nicer out there at 6:30AM than it is at 6:30PM. I decided that since Thursday is usually our track day, I would do something a little different than just run. On the section of the Iron Horse Trail near my apartment, there are two overpasses that cross the street-- they both have a set of stairs that go up one side, and down the other. One overpass is right where I access the trail and the other is about a half mile down the trail at the high school. I started out from my apartment and ran the 100 yards to the trail, then I ran up and down both sets of stairs on the one overpass. Pause... catch my breath. Then I headed out towards the other overpass, did those two sets of stairs. Walk break... catch my breath. I ran to the end of that part of the trail, and back to the overpass to do those two sets of stairs again. Walk break... catch my breath :D And then I ran back to the start of the trail and the first overpass. I skipped the stairs on that one since I need to get back, shower and get ready for work! Even though I started super early, I was still a sweaty mess when I got back-- I don't think I really cooled down until the drive to work with the air blasting! (I know you all really wanted to know that!) Final time: 25.29 minutes.

Quickie update

A lot has happened during the 5 months of my blogging sabbatical-- Here's a quickie update for you all! I running update for the week will come tomorrow!

I'll do the sad stuff first. Many of you knew Brenda personally, but many of you may only have know about her through my blog. Last time I wrote in January, Brenda had undergone a stem cell transplant and we were all very optimistic about her recovery. Unfortunately, 110 days after her transplant, she developed graft vs. host disease in her lungs. Despite numerous efforts on the part of her doctors to get rid of it, and after many months of bravely battling it, Brenda passed away on April 14, 2007. Brenda was an incredible person-- I've never seen someone who smiled so much, even when life wasn't treating her so well. She was an amazing inspiration to so many of us that knew her, and countless others who didn't, and she continues to inspire us to get out and do the damn thing! This is my favorite picture of her...

The other semi sad news was that my roomy and bff Claudia left me to move in with a BOY!! :( BUT, that leads me to the good news ... they got hitched :D They had a beautiful, private wedding ceremony in gorgeous Maui and are now very much the happily married couple! I couldn't be more excited for them! So I did lose a wonderful roomie, but in the process gained an equally wonderful BFF-in-law! :D Just look how cute they are...

Well, I think that covers the major things that have happened in the last few months... check back tomorrow to hear all about how the running is going (that is if I survive tonight's run in the 95+ degree heat!)!

New York here I come!!

Woo hoo!! I just found out yesterday that I got into the New York Marathon! Yeah! Oh wait, that means I need to start training again... CRAP :( Is there such thing as a pinch runner for marathoners? If so, where could I find myself one of those? :D

After swearing off marathons for a year and a half, I was finally ready to tackle another one. A few of my friends had gotten into the New York marathon over the past few years and had rolled over until this year, so they'd all be able to run it together. I was all set to head out there and put my marathon cheering skills to good use when I figured "What the hell... I might as well see if I can get in too". It's not like I'm going to go back years from now, take my chances with the lottery and make the trek out there by my lonesome. So I entered the lottery and spent months fretting over it. I decided that even if I didn't get into NY, I needed to get my jiggly butt back in shape and train for a marathon. My 2nd choice was the Nike Full Marathon... hills, EEEKK!

LUCKILY, I got into the New York Marathon, as did good friends Jeanette and Raji! The girls seemed to have good luck, not so much the boys... Rocky and Phil didn't get in :( Sad Pandas :( They will be out there cheering for us though and it will be a wonderful treat to see their smiling faces (along with Karen) along the course!

So this means I've got to start running again. SIGH... I haven't run since the Arizona Rock N'Roll Half Marathon in January. I think my running shoes are filled with cobwebs at this point :( Our unofficial coach Claudia put together a training schedule for us all and darn it, I'm going to stick with it. I have a couple more weeks until that training calender starts so I'm going to spend that time getting back into running. Wish me good luck... I'll need it!