Triathlon Training - Week 8

Here's how triathlon training went for the week:

Monday:

Goal: 35 minute bike

Accomplished: 16 mile bike ride. We rode most of the bike course for the triathlon. There are some monster hills! We ended up riding a longer distance than the bike course (14 miles) because we took off on our ride a couple of miles before the start.

Tuesday:

Goal: Yoga, 17 minute swim

Accomplished: 35 minute swim. I switched swims to Tuesday/Thursday this week. It seems easier to get out of bed at 6:15 am on a Tuesday than a Monday, so this might become permanent.

Wednesday:

Goal: Weights, 35 minute bike ride

Accomplished: Brick- 38 minute mountain bike ride, 21 minute trail run.

Thursday:

Goal: 17 minute run, 17 minute swim

Accomplished: 30 minute swim. This swim felt awesome! I sped up my laps, and didn't feel like I was going to die. My parents came into town this afternoon, which definitely interfered with my training.

Friday:

Goal: 35 minute bike ride

Accomplished: Ummm...I did half of a bike commute...so, um a ten minute bike ride?

Saturday:

Goal: Rest day

Accomplished: My mom and I swam in Lake Taco for about 15 or 20 minutes. I love swimming with my mom.

Sunday:

Goal: 17 minute run

Accomplished: Threw rocks into the American River, watched HP 7.5 again, and splashed around in the MontBleu pool.

While I didn't do much (any) training while my parents were here, I stacked enough working out into the first half of the week that I got all of my minutes in swimming and biking, and a little over half running. So that was good. But I need to get better about getting my workouts in when my routine has changed.

Sprained toes?

Jodi and I on Clearwater Beach in Clearwater, FL.

Unlike the above picture, we've been having not the nicest weather in Tahoe lately. Like snow. In June. So yesterday I decided to get back in the running swing of things and do a little run on the treadmill at my gym. Due to the fact that it's been about three weeks since I last ran, and I'm getting over a cold, I decided to go for a lovely run/walk pattern of run three minutes walk one, run three walk one, etc.

Did you know that the Collegiate Men's Rugby Championships are televised? I didn't, but it sure made my time on the treadmill more entertaining. About 15 minutes into my run, I was reminded of something. Painfully. While I was in Florida, I sprained two of toes on my left foot.

Probably while sprinting across Universal Studios Islands of Adventure towards Hogwarts.

They were all purple and gross and painful, but I thought that they'd healed during my post-travel/cold/horrible allergies convalescence. Apparently not. When they started hurting, I stupidly mostly ignored them, just changing to three minutes running/two minutes walking.

That was not a smart decision. Now I am hobbling around. I should probably ice my toes, but my feet are always so cold I am a little worried that my toes might literally fall off if my feet got any colder. So for now, it's just hobbling and no more running until they are not purple or sore at all.

Maybe Erin stomped on my toes when I tried to drink her butter beer.

I'm going to try spinning after work today, to see if that's ok, but if they hurt, I have promised myself that I will stop. After years of team sports and "playing through the pain", this is sometimes difficult for me to do. If my silly toes hurt to much for spin class, I will do an upper body workout instead.

In other news, I successfully changed my bike tire yesterday. It was much easier than I thought it was going to be, as I'd only changed tires on my road bike before. Yet another reason I like my mountain bike so much more!

Three Things Thursday - I'm Back! Edition

I am back from a lovely extra-long weekend in Florida with my favorite people. My main souvenir was a nasty cold that has resulted in two half days at work and no working out. Boo, crowds of people!

We listened to a lot of Pitbull & Lady Gaga, drank a lot of PBR, and used a lot of sunscreen. I'll do a more detailed recap sometime in the future, but in the meantime - Here are 3 quick highlights from my trip:

1. I got to hang out with the most awesome people in the entire world.

Posing with our Butterbeer shots in the "game room" of the vacation rental we stayed in and managed not to trash.

2. I got to visit Hogwarts with my favorite people.

We even wore matching shirts. I love matching other people. Must be all of the years of team sports.

3. After days of concrete, sweating, and hordes of people, Blue Spring State Park was just what my body and soul needed.

If you're ever in central Florida, this place is worth the drive. Get there early, because there's a line to get into the park.

Three Things Thursday - Random Edition

1. In less than 12 hours, I will be leaving this:

For this:

And this:

And this:

And my favorite ladies.

2. My mom scanned some of her wedding pictures and sent me one.

Adorable, isn't it? I totally want to get married in the 70's.

3. Earlier today I walked in on a man peeing. Ew. No pictures of that.

New haaaaaair.

So I decided to be impulsive this weekend. I was bored with my hair, so obviously the obvious thing to do was to impulsively dye and cut my hair myself.

Before:

Soaking my scalp with chemicals.

Ah! I'm a red head.

I've never actually cut my own hair before, but I've cut other peoples'. Plus my hair is thin, fine and straight. I just grabbed a section in the front and started cutting.

In process shot. I thought about leaving it like that and having a side-rattail.

I cut about 3.5 - 4 inches off.

The final product! I really like it. It's not perfect, and I had to make a few small snips on longer pieces this morning, but I think that it's pretty awesome for my first self-administered hair cut.

Plus, now I look more like Ginny Weasley for the magical bachelorette party adventure.

Tuesday's Bulleted List

Oh, hey! I thought it was Wednesday, but it's Tuesday. So I made a bulleted list.

• I have trouble keeping my plants alive. If they need to be watered more than twice a month, SOL. Currently, I have one live plant, one dead plant on my desk. Guess which one is the succulent.

KJW and my failed herb garden.

• Yesterday I bench pressed with 25 pound dumbbells. I felt impressive.
• I also kicked ass in spin class.
• It's snowing right now.
• I'm a subtle fake ginger right now. Inspired by my former roommate and all around kick ass person, Jennifer, and her awesome new hair, I'm thinking of kicking it up a notch. Maybe this:

• Tomorrow at our work retreat, we are having a Rock gift exchange. It's like a White Elephant gift exchange, but only featuring rocks. Too bad my most awesome rocks are in Washington.
• I need to go to yoga tonight. Blog world, yell at me if I do not go to yoga.
• It is snowing here today, it is 91 degrees in Orlando. 11 days. I am so excited!

Three Things Thursday - Question Edition

1. What should I do with my hair? Should I get bangs?

Right now my hair looks like this, but it's kind of a bizarre reddish color (thanks box dye!):

While sometimes I really like how I look with bangs,

My last haircut...not so much.

I have not got my hair cut since September because the last one was so bad. I'm now a little gun shy.

So what should I do? Bangs? No bangs? Embrace the whole magenta-hair-thing and dye my hair pink?

2. What should I bring to Orlando with me?

Besides Everclear.

I'm going to Harry Potter Land with the BLs for KJW's bachelorette bacchinalia. What do I bring? My family is not amusement park people. Or really vacation people. We went to Disneyland when I was four, but I literally don't remember anything about the trip other than sitting outside of Space Mountain because I was too small to go on it. I've also never been to Florida.

What do I bring? What are some amusement park essentials?

3. What are some good exercises that I can do throughout the day?

I am inspired by Rose's EXTREME OFFICE WORK OUTS and I want to start incorporating them throughout the day.

What should I try? Squats? Lunges? Bicep curls with my coffee mug?

Three Things Thursday

1. We have mice in our apartment. Ack! Ack ack ack! I can deal with mice, but I don't like them. A certain former roommate's cat brought a live mouse in as a gift once (or twice), and that was was exciting. A mouse also ran in the open door at the Barn and hung around the kitchen for awhile. Because I am from The Country, it always seems to fall on my shoulders to deal with the mice, while certain city girls run around shrieking. But this time, our landlord's son comes by once a day, removes the dead mice, and resets the traps. It's awesome. While I enjoy knowing that I can deal with mice, I really enjoy someone else having to do it.

Our mice are less cute

2. I can count on one hand the number of times I've worn a real bra during the month of March. Why would I want to encase my boobs in uncomfortable pieces of rigging and plastic and metal, when there are more comfortable options available?

Sports bras FTW!

3. In two months, I will be at the Wonderful Wizarding World of Harry Potter with my very favorite people in the world for a bachelorette party. I am so beyond excited about this trip that I can't even think about it. I'm guessing there will be lots of drinking (I'm bringing the Everclear), spellcasting (Jodi already called oculus reparo) and dirty Harry Potter jokes.

Here are some pictures from previous Better Lovers adventures:

Playing Wizard Staff at BLCT #3

L-Budz, Jodi Christ Superstar and I went to Hawaii once. It rained a lot.

You are what you drink party: Person on Safari, Bridesmaid, Teacher, & Groomsman- plus a Rasta photobomber

Halloween Scaryoke at Yen Wor Village: Tourist, Jared from Subway (those are "before" pants around E-bot's neck), Pirate, Person on a 5k Walk for Herpes

Just a typical book club meeting at the Beav. I believe Joderine is plugging her ears because a Creed song is playing on the jukebox.

Nicole & I went to Provo, UT for AmeriCorps training. This is at the science museum on BYU's campus. Nicole is pretending this lion is Aslan.

Can you see why I am so excited? Does anyone else have awesome trips planned in the near future?

If I had one magical power it would be...

Apparation*. I would want to be able to apparate. While there are many situations that apparating would be useful, (saving the environment by not driving to work every day, going to Santa Barbara without spending 9 hours in a car each way, escaping from zombies) I mainly want to be able to travel directly from the relaxation part at the end of yoga to my bed without having to get up or go outside. This would be especially useful on nights like tonight when it is 20 degrees out, and the wind is blowing 30 miles an hour, and my car is at the far end of the dark parking lot.

Instead of walking/freezing/un-relaxing, poof! I would be immediately in my bed. Then I would use the Imperius curse to force my roommate to make me tea. Or maybe I'd just ask nicely.

*I would not pick oculus reparo like someone we know.

In my excitement about the toffee that came in the mail today, I forgot to mention the other exciting package I got this weekend. I got new Superfeet inserts for my shoes! Apparently, I flatten my arches when I run, and along with some congenital knee issues, I had really horrible knee pain in high school. I saw a really awesome sports medicine doctor who diagnosed my issue, and, since then I've mostly run with orthotics in my shoes. When I was on my parents insurance, I had custom made ones that were really nice. Since then, though I've worn Superfeet Green.

In October I realized that my inserts were about 2 and a half years old. Ooops. Definitely supposed to replace them more often than that. I didn't put them in my new shoes, and had been running without them in December and January, but I started to get some twinges of knee pain at the beginning of February so I ordered some from ebay (brand new), and used money I had in my pay pal account, so it's like they were free!

I started breaking them in on Monday (I guess it's more like breaking my feet into them, though!) with a walk/run for 30 minutes. The last time I took a break from inserts, I got horrible blisters on the arches of my feet when I started wearing them for 4 or 5 mile runs, so I was hoping to avoid that by running shorter distances until my feet are used to them. Today I ran two miles at a 9:30 - 10 min mile pace (That's the longest I've been able to hold that pace at altitude! Yay!). I started to get some hot spots on my feet toward the end, but no blisters yet.

Now I'm just wondering if I should put them in my spin shoes. Anyone know? Are inserts good for bike shoes?

texts from today

(509): I asked dan if he wanted to see harry potter tonight. He said maybe. The correct answer is- of course. I'll meet you there in my Hagrid costume.

(360): He didn't say that?

(509): I couldn't believe it. I may have to end things.

(360): I would. You should give him once more chance. Go to the movie dressed as a dementor and see if he can use the right spell to defend himself.

(509): Perfect plan. I was going to go as dobby but this is more important.

(360): It really is. Defense against the dark arts man.

(509): I wish i could go with kris 'luna lovegood' rafferty and jodi 'voldemort' swobodi.

(360): what about nicole whomping willow raden?

(509): You're more of a flying car.

(360): Or a broom stick

(509): Nimbus 2000?

(360): Firebolt