That's a sexy ride...

That's right, I'm lovin' my loaner ride. My beloved Ford Escape is currently in the shop. It's making this weird, whirring/warbling noise when I first start it up. It is not a noise that any healthy car should ever make. What sucks about this is that the car in question is only four months old. Oh well, at least it's still under warranty. The dealer issued me a complimentary rental to drive until they figure out what's wrong with my car. I'm not really all that stoked about what they gave me. They gave me a lovely old granny sedan, in an appealing shade of maroon, that kind of smells like stale ass. I'm so not feeling the love from this vehicle.
I guess I should just count my blessings that the car has all four doors and an air conditioner that works, sorta. I cannot wait to switch this thing back out. They tell me that my ride will be done by Wednesday at the latest, so let's all keep our fingers crossed.
In other news, this morning's run went well. I churned out a quick five miles on the treadmill before work. I thought it was going to be tough, as I did not sleep well at all last night, but it actually went very well. I also had a student therapist start her internship at my office today.
This is nice, because we've been pretty busy lately and I can desperately use the assistance. Although student interns are free and occasionally competent help, they are also a lot of work. There are midterm, and final evaluations, daily work reviews, and discussions of the next day's tasks, and this one does not really seem to have much initiative. I cut her some slack, as today was her first day in my office...but she's going to have to work a smidge harder to be successful here.
My boss does not seem to understand that having an intern does not mean less work, it just means different work. I spent over twelve hours at my office today, and I can count the number of times I got to sit down on one hand, and still have fingers left over. Fun stuff.

Stupid Garmin

I usually love my Garmin Speed/Distance System (even though it's an earlier incarnation of the one that everyone else has now...that's right, I was doing it before it was cool). It truly is my best friend when it works the way that it is supposed to work. Last week, we were in harmony and everything went very smoothly on my long run. This week, we were not only out of synch, but we weren't even singing the same song.
My run was over my usual five out, five back course...and I was going to add an extra mile onto the end of the course to make up my twelve for today. At about the 3.75 mark, I looked down to check my pace and to my horror, noticed that the pace was missing from my screen. I immediately checked my arm GPS receiver and realized that somewhere along the line, my signal had dropped. This sucked hard core. I kept running while trying to convince my somewhat temperamental piece of technological crap to suck it up for a few more miles. Yeah, it finally kicked back on at the normal ending point for my run. I lost at least 1.25 miles there, maybe more.
So being the smart cookie that I am, I thought I'd just try to run the extra mile out and hopefully the signal would hold strong for another nine or ten minutes and then I'd turn around and run back to the car and be close enough to twelve miles to call it a done deal. Of course, little Garmin crapped out on me another couple of times during this last mile. I ran at least twelve miles today, but maybe closer to thirteen or fourteen...who knows.
Despite the numerous issues with the Garmin (which dear husband feels may be due to me needing new batteries...apparently the rechargable batteries are not meant to last for two or three years, who'd have thunk.) the run went okay. I was a lot slower (a whole 48 seconds slower than I was last week) but it was also about fifteen degrees hotter. My ankle felt pretty good the whole run, but is slightly sore now. I plan on doing an easy three miles tomorrow and then icing good the rest of the day, so whatever was going on with the ankle seems to be improving and is now squarely placed in the "not serious" injury category.

Unforeseen complications

Tuesday night after my speed session I felt a little pang of soreness along the anterior aspect of my left ankle...the so called good ankle. I didn't think it was any big deal, as it just felt like a little muscle soreness. So I pretty much ignored it. I know...this was very smart of me.
So Wednesday, I got up and went down to the treadmill to put in my four miles. About 3/4 of a mile in, my left ankle started hurting again. Bad sign. I thought that I'd slog through a few more miles and see if it calmed down any, and it did slightly, so again...no big deal.
I went to work Wednesday and as I'm working, I realize that my left ankle really hurts. In fact, it hurts so much that I go home at lunch and get tennis shoes to wear for the rest of the day instead of the little cute slip ons that I normally wear.
Long story short, it's now Thursday and after treating myself last night and again today, and cross training only today...my ankle still is mildly sore. It does seem to be getting better, as it's not clicking or having sharp pain anymore, but it's definitely still there. For the love of all that is holy, it's far too early in my training to be having an injury.
Hopefully, after resting it all day tomorrow, I'll be back to close to 100% for my twelve miler on Saturday.

Any guesses as to how hot it was tonight at my speedwork session?

93 degrees...that's how hot. The humidity wasn't too bad though, and there was a slight breeze, and I only felt like I was going to puke for the last two miles instead of all five miles. So I guess it was a pretty good session. Tonight we did six repeats. We did them as an inverted pyramid and then a traditional pyramid, with the idea being that you would speed up over first three repeats and then slow down a bit over the second three. All I can say is that I did not get faster...but I stayed just under the recommended goal times for each of my repeats though, so I feel like I still got something from it.
Speedwork sessions have become kind of frustrating for me as the summer has progressed, primarily because I hate to finish at the back of the group, and most of the runners out at these sessions are F-A-S-T. There are guys there that run five minute miles. I've found that as the weather has gotten uglier around this neck of the woods, a lot of the people who started the sessions (and many of them who were slower than me) have dropped out. This leaves me as one of the last finishers pretty much every time. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm only competing against the clock and that to ask my body to run too much faster is going to only lead to trouble. It's very hard to convince myself of these two items though.
The other reason that speedwork sessions has become slightly frustrating is because some of the "seasoned" runners are just plain mean and/or rude to other not so experienced runners. There is one guy that I always see on my long runs who also comes to speed sessions and he's always got comments for slower runners that I'm sure he thinks are "helpful" but in reality are just ignorant. So far he's not said anything to me specifically...which is surprising considering he's had something to say to just about everyone else, but God help him when he opens his fat trap to me. He will definitely get an earful.
Fortunately, there are also some runners at the speedwork sessions who are truly nice people. A lot of the fastest runners are also very encouraging to the slower runners. There are a couple of guys (five minute milers) who always stand at the finish line and clap and cheer every other racer in. Every Tuesday when I see them doing that I always promise myself that if I am ever that fast, that is how I will conduct myself. I don't want to forget where I came from.
As far as the running itself goes, I felt like even though I don't usually see an improvement from one repeat to the next, I am getting faster overall. I am now running my track workouts at a 8:30/mile average pace, which is down from a 10:00/mile pace last April, and my long run pace has dropped down to almost a 9:00/mile pace.
I've decided just to train as hard as I can and as smart as I can and hope for the best.
I'd really like to run Chicago in under four hours, and ideally would love to run a Boston qualifying time. I don't think that shaving 39 minutes off my last marathon finishing time is an unrealistic goal, but we'll just have to see how it works out.

Electrical difficulties

There's been a couple of major storm systems that have moved through the St. Louis area over the past week or so. We've escaped the majority of them without any damage to the house, and lost power for only two hours on last Wednesday night here at Casa de Johnson. My office though, has not been so lucky. All four clinics and the corporate office escaped the first storm unscathed; however, last Friday's storm knocked power out to one clinic for an entire afternoon, and the corporate office for the whole weekend.
Normally, none of us would be bothered by this...but as we discovered on Friday, when the corporate office is powerless, the computer system is down company wide. This is a major problem, as we do all our scheduling, entering charges, and documentation on the computer. I sent my office staff home around two on Friday because there wasn't anything they could do other than answer the phones...and I figured I could handle that. We all though that the server would be back up this morning...but of course it was still down. So today was kind of like a surprise day all day. I had absolutely no clue who was coming in for treatment today, what time they were coming in, or whether they were on time or not. It was just one surprise after another.
The computer system finally came back up around one o'clock today, but of course we're so far behind that it'll take the rest of the week to catch up. What fun!
On the running front, this morning I did five miles on the treadmill. I felt really good as I was running them. I didn't feel any of the sluggishness that I felt on my long run on Saturday, so maybe I'm finally starting to get back to normal. Tomorrow I've got another five scheduled. Two easy miles at the track followed by a three mile speedwork session. I also need to do a little weight work tomorrow. I actually did the weights twice last week! I was so proud of myself.

So fun

The spa party last night rocked. It was a BeautiControl party, and I swear, everything I got to try I wanted to buy. I loved this stuff so much that I'm thinking of having my own party just to get the free swag. Seriously, I never want to throw those cheesy buy my stuff parties, but this one was totally different than any Pampered Chef, Jewelry Mart, or PartyLite "party" that I've ever gone to.
We gave ourselves facials, got instant manicures, got head massages, and mini-pedis. Such a good way to spend a Saturday night. I will admit, it was kind of weird giving myself a facial with twelve other women (only five of whom I had actually met before). I did meet two other runners though, which was cool. One of the women was training to do the Nike Women's 1/2 in San Francisco, the other just runs for fun.
It was really a pretty cool experience though, even though I ended up buying a bunch of stuff that I probably really don't need. I was pretty pleased with my purchases this morning though, as I had a giant pimple last night prior to the party and this morning after the "treatment" it's almost completely gone. This always impresses me when a product does what it's supposed to do, especially with my skin...as I have "complicated" skin per the dermatologist.
I was not looking forward to today's three mile run, since I'd had a little to drink last night and thus a small headache this morning. I'm such a light weight these days, it only takes about one or two drinks to give me a hangover. I convinced myself that I would feel better after running, and climbed on the treadmill. So today's run is knocked out and I've got the rest of the day to look forward to.

What a great day for

a run. This morning I got up at 5:15 to head out for my scheduled ten mile run. I got about halfway to the starting point and realized that I had forgotten my earbuds for my i-Pod. I thought briefly about turning around and going back for them, but then realized that if I did it would be about ten degrees warmer by the time I started running. So I talked myself into running without tunes.
I was suprisingly happy during today's run despite not having any music to run to. The weather was nice, sunny but cool, there were quite a few other early runners out, and the new shoes were fantastic. I didn't miss the old shoes one bit. (See how quickly my loyalties turn?) The lack of music gave me a great opportunity to focus on improving my speed. I ran the same course that I ran last week 45 seconds per mile faster than I ran it last week. I'm telling myself that I'm actually getting faster, but I'm sure it's just a function of having a slightly lighter week distance wise last week.
I finished the ten miles in 92 minutes, which works out to about a 9:12/mile pace. The only thing that I was a little concerned about this morning was the fact that we had two major storm systems roll through the St. Louis area on Wednesday and Friday of last week, so there were a lot of trees and other debris on the sidewalks that still needed to be cleared. So it was probably good I ran without music, as I was totally focused on not twisting my ankle.
Tonight I'm supposed to go to a "home spa party"...we'll see if it's any fun.

New running shoes is an emotional event

I bought new running shoes today. I stuck with the same kind that I've been using forever...the Asics GT 2110. It took me a long time to make peace with these shoes when they discontinued/upgraded my beloved GT 2090s, but I've finally become a true fan of this shoe. I was long overdue for a new pair. At best guess, I last purchased shoes in January, which means that my old pair is well past the recommended 500 mile change out point, but they were so good to me I never so the need to replace them. I usually listen to my body to determine when it's time to switch shoes though, and I was just now starting to have some slight aches and pains...so I knew it was time.
As exciting as new shoes are, I always feel kind of sad tossing the old ones. In fact, usually I don't toss them...usually I wash them and then use them as errand running/yardwork/whatever else strikes my fancy shoes. But this last pair...seriously they were ate up. So I pitched them.
I felt a little wave of nostalgia as I tossed them...and I actually stood in front of the trash can with them and contemplated what type of excuse I could fabricate that would allow me to justify keeping them. In the end, common sense beat out sentimental value.
Goodbye old shoes, you have served me well. Wearing you, I ran my fastest marathon ever. Wearing you, I became a "real" racer. Wearing you, I never got a blister or had a serious ouchy. Wearing you, I lost my first two toenails...May your replacement shoe be as good to me as you were.

Training update

Last night was a speedwork at one of the local high schools. The high temperature definitely kept most of the participants away, and even the hard core people slowed down a awful lot. The heat index was 103 when the workout started, it was warm enough that the coordinator felt the need to rattle off the symptoms of heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Very encouraging.
We did 1000 meter repeats last night. Five repetitions in all. The idea was to work at 85% of VO2 max, and also try to get just a hair faster with every repeat. It's that getting a hair faster thing that always kicks my butt. I finished to workout, but felt a tad queasy afterwards, and still felt kind of crummy this morning when I first woke up.
So, before I could talk myself out of it, I decided to head down to the treadmill and see how many of my four miles that I could get in before my stomach decided to stop cooperating. I made it about halfway, then had to rest for a couple of minutes. I was able to hammer out the last two, but I really struggled with it.
I'm glad that the rest of the week is cross training and rest until my long run on Saturday. I need it already.
Today sucked all around, what with the stomach issues when running, and a just generally slow day at work. I get so nervous when the clinic isn't really busy. I use the time to go market to physicians, but there is only so much of that you can do. After awhile, I feel like they get tired of me coming around asking for referrals. It's frustrating, because even though the numbers have been up slightly over the past few weeks, the income is still low (damn insurance companies) and my office is not turning a profit right now. We'd have to have an absolutely stellar second half to even break even this year.
The only consulation right now is that there will always be jobs available in the market, should this one suddenly disappear...but I really hope that it doesn't disappear. I kind of like working close to home, and I like this company overall. Keep your fingers crossed that things start to go better soon.

Long short runs and other random thoughts

Short runs should be just that...don't you think? Why is it that five miles always seems so much longer than four miles? Even though my short run today went well, the whole time I was running, I kept having to convince myself that it really wasn't as long as it felt like it was. I sometimes have a hard time remembering that I can run twenty or twenty six miles without much trouble, and when I forget, boy do those five and six mile runs seem tougher.
This morning I slogged my five out on the treadmill. And I am so glad I did it , because I really thought long and hard about sleeping in and just doing the damn thing tonight. Now, as I sit here blogging I'm feeling pretty relieved that I didn't give in the the sleep fairy this morning.
I also ate healthy today. I try to eat well during the week, but sometimes struggle a bit if I end up having just a small amount of free time around my lunch time. I am so tempted by the big salad from the local grocery store. In and of itself, this is not bad, but I cannot eat big salad without drowning it in some type of ranch/blue cheese/creamy Italian like creation. Yum, makes me hungry just thinking about that dressing.
So now, I'm off to vegetate, I'm going to cheerfully watch some brain draining television. (I think my Tivo saved Made from earlier today...which I am addicted to) Happy Monday everyone!

Race report: Missouri River 8k

Hot, hot, hot. Those are the three words that come to mind when describing this morning's race. It was a short race, which was nice, but it was a scorcher out even at 7:00am. The course is a loop course that starts with a nice downhill for the first mile or so. The middle three miles are all flat, and the last mile and change is a huge uphill followed by some gentle elevation changes mixed with some more flat ground. So, except for that huge hill just after the four mile mark, it's really a pretty nice race.
My only complaint about the course is that the middle three miles follow a road that winds through the farmland in the Missouri River bottom area. Not a single shade tree for the entire distance. It was so stinking hot for those three miles. Of course, if there had been a slight breeze, like there has been during other races on this same terrain, it would have been much more tolerable. But of course, nature simply could not cooperate with the race today.
There were only two water stops on the course, but there was a wet sponge station at the top of the huge hill, plus the last mile was through a residential area and a lot of the residents were out with their hoses squirting runners down if they needed it...I guess they really didn't want anyone passed out on their lawns.(-:
It was a pretty fast course as well. I ran the best time I've ever run for a race of this distance. My finish time for the 5.5 miles was just under 47 minutes. And I was towards the back of the racers as far as my finishing time went. I heard a lot of people commenting that they had never run a race so fast before.
Overall, it was a nice race. This year was the thirtieth anniversary of the running of the race, so they had nice commemorative ball caps for the first three hundred entrants. I'd say that everyone who ran today got one, as there were only about 150 or so people running. They also had Nike squirt bottles filled with Gatorade, and a ton of fresh fruit at the finish line for everyone.
The best part of racing this morning though, is that now I'm done with my running for the day. And since I finished all my chores and errands yesterday, today is totally mine to do with whatever I please! I think that today will entail relaxing, reading, and maybe catching a movie. I am so excited!

67 degrees is a lot hotter when the humidity is 86%

Today was my regularly scheduled long run. I set my alarm for five o'clock in order to get out and beat the heat. When the alarm went off, I proceeded to hit the reset button and did not actually manage to drag my butt out of bed until five thirty. At five thirty the temperature was only 67 degrees, but much to my dismay...the humidity was 86%. It was actually so humid this morning that the outsides of the windows of my house were all fogged over. That's pretty bad.
I contemplated running my eight miles on the treadmill, but then realized that my fuel belt bottles were already filled and waiting for me in the fridge. So, I felt like I had to run outside. Stupid logic, I know. So I got ready to go, loaded my various paraphernalia into the car (remembering to take a towel this time) and headed out.
I started out on the road at about twenty after six, and it was miserable for the first 3/4 of a mile. The close proximity of the river, seemed to almost intensify the humidity. Once I got away from the river it got a smidge cooler, and I even thought about going an extra two miles. (My usual long run course is an out and back course and I feel like such a slacker if I turn around before I hit the actual turnaround point). Fortunately logic beat out pride and I turned around at the four mile mark.
Turned out to be a good idea, as I got really tired at about the six mile mark and would have probably been in big trouble if I had four miles in front of me instead of two. I finished the eight miles in 76 minutes, which works out to a 9:30ish pace. Not too bad for the course in question. Especially considering that this pace is a full thirty to forty five seconds faster than what I was running on the same course last season.
The rest of the day was consumed with running errands, including picking up my race information for tomorrow's race, cleaning house, and taking a much deserved nap. I spent the better part of the day scrubbing my kitchen floor, which sucked big time. It was well overdue though, and I'm quite proud of how nice and shiny my floor is now.

I'm in the wrong profession

I should have been a plumber...I just shelled out a seriously large amount for less than an hour of work by the guy. Lets back up a hair. Remember the little plumbing drama from Sunday night? Well, as it turns out the leaky valve is soldered onto the pipe in question...thus turning what should have been a simple repair job into a major repair, that was way beyond the scope of our expertise. So upon the advice of my construction knowledgable father in law, we hired a professional.
Four days later,several hundred plus smackeroos lighter, and my plumbing is finally fixed. I am so glad to have this problem solved. Now, we just have a hole in the ceiling in the kitchen to fix. Perhaps husband o'mine will take that task on when I am doing my long run this Saturday morning...and might I add here that it's only supposed to be a balmy 90 degrees on Saturday in the Lou'.
The plan for this weekend is an easy eight or ten on Saturday morning, really early as to beat the heat. I'm supposed to do eight and may stick with only eight since I've been having a smidge of anterior ankle pain for the past two days. Pretty much ever since my speedwork session on Tuesday night.
I'm also entered in the Missouri River 8k on Sunday morning, so technically I'm already doing an extra mile on Sunday...so I may let myself off with only 7 miles on Saturday as to keep my weekly mileage within the prescribed amount.

Yet another speed session knocked out

I swear, you'd think these weekly speed sessions would be getting easier, but no, instead they're getting harder. Tonight was 200m repeats...thirteen of those bastards. I really think that five or six would have been plenty for me, as I was completely beat by the last one. The plan was to sprint 200m, then jog or walk 200 more. Of course, being the smart bunny that I am, I figured that if I walked the 200m like all of the sane people were doing, I would have to do more laps to make up my full mileage for the day...and I was not, not, not going to do that.
So, long story short, I sprinted out my 200m at my recommended pace of 55 seconds...okay I admit, the first five were much faster and the last eight were just barely on target. And I jogged my "recovery" stretch at an extremely slow pace (so slow that I really was almost walking.). I averaged out the 3.1miles at a 9:00/mile pace though, so I'm satisfied.
I was pretty pleased with my warm up mile, which I ran in 8:30 though. So I guess all the hard work at the Tuesday night speed sessions is starting to pay off a little. I'm not noticing much change speedwise on my longer runs, but I'm also running a lot more hills than I used to. I figure that even though there aren't many hills in Chicago, I'll be stronger and have a better time of meeting my goal if I run my long runs on a hilly course.

Why do all our emergencies happen at night?

Last night, as I was preparing to head off to bed at the ripe late time of nine o'clock, my husband noticed that there was a small waterspot on the kitchen ceiling. Now, this would not be disturbing to most people, but as I have a two story home, and my laundry facilities are on the top level...this was a big deal in the Johnson household last night.
So, I went upstairs to check it out. I did not see any water at all in the spill pan that the washing machine sits in. In theory this pan is a great idea, and should prevent leaks from seeping through the floor to the ceiling below. Yeah, that's great, but what about the leaks that aren't from the machine, but rather are from the pipes themselves? You guessed it, that's where our leak last night was coming from. So of course it dripped down the inside of the wall and through the kitchen ceiling. It wasn't a huge leak, but it was enough to be a major problem if left unattended.
So as I was trying to determine where exactly the water was coming from, dear husband...who hereafer shall be referred to as Mr. Fix It, was cutting a hole in my kitchen ceiling. Just a small hole, but a hole nonetheless. Now, in addition to the leak, we also have a hole to patch in the ceiling. And of course, once it's patched the entire kitchen ceiling will have to be repainted, as the house is almost four years old and that one spot of fresh paint will stick out like a sore thumb if we don't do all of it. Did I mention that the kitchen ceiling is huge?
So the valve upstairs is still leaking, so per my father in law's advice, we turned water off to the laundry machine. Only problem with that idea is that to turn water off to the laundry machine, you have to turn it off to the whole house. So every morning when we leave for work, we have to shut off the entire water to the interior of the house so that if the leak "gets worse" it won't flood everything. And every evening when we come home we have to turn it back on to shower, toilet, drink, and wash dishes. Very convenient.
Hopefully we'll get this problem taken care of within the next few days and things will get back to normal. On the bright side, I guess I could just look at this as a much needed break from doing laundry.

I am T-I-R-E-D

Too much weekend for me. Three and a half days at my inlaws on Table Rock Lake is about a day and a half too many. We got down there about two on Thursday afternoon, and were pretty much going nonstop from the second we arrived. All told, there were ten adults and two kids there, and it's pretty safe to say that after that much "togetherness" we were driving each other crazy.
It was a pretty fun weekend though. We went waterskiing, tubing, and swimming just off the back porch at the house. We drove into Eureka Springs (gay/lesbian capital of the world...seriously there are more same sex couples per capita in this town than there is anywhere else in the US) for dinner one night. We also went into town to the little waterslide for one afternoon.
Anyone who's ever been to a big city waterslide can appreciate how stringent the regulations are there. Big city slides include no multiple riders at one time, waiting for the person ahead of you to clear the landing pool, etc...yeah, this slide had absolutely no rules. Kids were riding down this thing in long chains of ten or twelve people, landing all over each other at the bottom, and riding down it standing up or kneeling. It was an accident looking for a place to happen, but it was so much fun!
I got up early Friday morning to do my long run. I did ten miles, at a much slower pace than I would have liked to have run it. I averaged slightly less than ten minutes per mile, but I figured that was pretty good since the house is situated firmly in the middle of the rolling Ozark mountains and there isn't any flat ground there at all. My biggest problem with the run was that one of the lids to a Fuel Belt bottle was not securely fastened, so it leaked all over my left side. I was not a happy camper when my butt started to chaff where the belt was sitting. It was nice weather for running though. I left the house at 6:00am on Friday morning and it was not even 60 degrees yet.
This morning's run was much tougher that Friday's, even though it was shorter. I felt like my legs were made of lead this morning. It might has something to do with all the playing on the water yesterday, or maybe with the jello shots from last night....

Speedwork is harder without moral support

I got up semi-early this morning...although not as early as I wanted to, in order to get my speedwork out of the way since we were going to my parents for dinner tonight. I wanted to be up and at the track by six thirty, but when I rolled over and checked the time/temperature readout, it was already 73 degrees, so I figured screw it, it'll be even hotter later, I'll just do my speedwork on the treadmill.
So I slept another hour and a half or so, and it was still 73 degrees out when I finally got up, so I went ahead to the track. It was actually pretty nice. I did 400m, 600m, 800m, 1200m, and then repeated my first three sets in reverse order. I met my time goal on all of my sets so it's nice to see that I'm getting a little faster and not struggling as much to meet my time goals. I ended up covering the three miles of speedwork at about an 8:30/mile pace. I tacked my last mile for today onto the end of my speedwork at my "ideal" marathon pace of 9:00/mile.
I've learned that speedwork is much harder when you don't have the entire group of runners behind (or in my case, in front) of you to motivate and push you. I find I do much better when there are other people to pace myself off of and when I can use the pounding footsteps behind me to fuel myself to run faster. It's also kind of inspiring to see some of the people out there who can run at a5:00/mile pace. I can only dream of being that fast.
Today was basically a pretty laid back day, I spent the remainder of the day doing laundry, and trying to get stuff ready to head out to the lake this coming weekend. Tomorrow I've got to get my stuff packed up, probably do some more laundry (you wouldn't think that just the two of us would make so many dirty clothes, but we do), and try to get everything else done. I've also got to plan when I'm going to get my running in this weekend. I've got a ten-miler scheduled for Saturday and a three mile recovery run for Sunday, but I may bump these both forward by a day just to get them done with.

Woo hoo, day off, day off, day off

Who would have ever thought that I would be so excited about the Fourth of July? I'm mainly just excited because it's a day that I don't have to work...and because I only have one more day after that to work this week. We're cutting out of work on Thursday and Friday to go to my inlaws house at Table Rock Lake for a long weekend. Most of the fun part of the family is going (ie: the three cousins and their significant others that we were supposed to sit with at the wedding from hell over this past weekend.) It'll be one long weekend of running, waterskiing, and tubing, with a fair amount of drinking thrown in for good measure.
I usually don't really care much for Fourth of July. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for independence and whatnot, but I really think that adult men, alcoholic beverages, and explosive devices don't mix too well. (And no dear, you may not go buy any fireworks!) I really dislike the jackasses that think that the Fourth of July should be a weeklong celebration. There is no real logical explanation as to why people think that they need to fire off bottle rockets, Roman candles, and the worst of all... those damn screamin' Mimis for three or four days prior to the actual holiday.
Why is it that Fourth of July is the only holiday which prompts people to celebrate early? It's not like you see people opening gifts early at Christmas time (unless they're Jewish, but then that kinda takes the whole celebrating Christmas thing out of the equation and thus doesn't really qualify as celebrating early), or going door to door trick or treating a week before Halloween...although, if I had kids coming to my door asking for candy and wearing costumes a week early I'd probably give them candy anyway as a reward for showing good initiative.
I'm all for well done, professionally orchestrated fireworks displays. I figure the odds of someone who I know losing a finger, or eye, or both are probably pretty low if we're stationed three or four hundred yards or more from the actual site of ignition. Now, if I could just convince the neighbors that dry grass in the backyard is not a good site to launch their display from...

Wow, just wow.

My husband's cousin got married last night...it was ummmm, interesting. To set the scene, his family is pretty huge. My step mother in law is one of six kids, and each of the six kids has as least three kids of their own. Most of my husband's cousins are around our age, give or take about five years.
We get along well with some of the cousins, and there are others that we'd just as soon not see...just like in most families, I'd imagine. Last night was the last wedding out of all of the cousins that are "of marrying age" (the rest are way too young, or already married). It was messed up.
Each table had a cake on it as a centerpiece, apparently the bride was trying to avoid a per slice charge for cutting the cake. It didn't seem to work out so well though, as she ended up with forty small cakes, and most of the small cakes were still half uneaten at the end of the night.
Then there was the alcohol issue, beer was free, but soda was a cash item. Not cool, since we had all brought flasks of liquor to mix with what we thought would be free soda. The younger side of the family is really not all that big on beer. Wouldn't you think that you would have charged for booze and had soda free?
Finally, the groom went MIA at the reception. Dinner was the last time that anyone saw the groom. We saw the bride all night, cutting it up on the dance floor with her sorority sisters, but where was the groom? He just kind of disappeared about ten minutes after they cut the cake.
There was some smokin of the ganja taking place by almost all of the wedding party in the limo on the way to the reception, as well as a few groomsmen doing some harder drugs...very classy for a family function. Oh yes, and we mustn't forget the mother of the flowergirl (mom was about mid-thirties, and extremely married) telling the seventeen year old brother of the bride that "It's too bad you've got a girlfriend, cause I could show you a real good time."
I am so glad that this wedding is over.
On the running front, I woke up S-O-R-E this morning from those hills in Hannibal yesterday. I run a lot of hills when I'm doing my regular Saturday morning long runs, but usually I have a brief break of flat road between them, unlike yesterday. So I was very glad that today was just a short three mile recovery run. I managed to finish that this morning and am now once again thinking about lifting a few weights. I'm going to try to get more consistent with that part of my training. I can so do better than I've been doing with it.
The results from yesterday's race were posted today. I finished 154th overall and was the 8th female finisher in my age bracket. This isn't too terrible for me, but is a slight drop in the standings from the last race that I ran. I'm going to blame it on the hills.

Hannibal Cannibal

It'll eat you up is the slogan...and it did. Big ass mean hills throughout the entire course. We're talking about only 1/2 mile of flat ground through the entire race. These hills were monsters, each one was bigger than the last one, and just when you thought the worst was over, you reached the turnaround point and had to do it all again.
As if that weren't bad enough already, at the bottom of what I thought was the last hill coming back into the finish area, they were diverting racers into this little park on the side of the river...and let me tell you...it wasn't so we could admire the lovely view of the river. That little park had the biggest freakin' hill I'd ever seen. This bad boy had to climb at least 100-150 feet within a 2/5 of a mile. There were not too many people running this hill. In fact, I'd say 90% of the people I saw on the hill were walking it. I kept running, because I have this serious mental block to walking and I knew that I'd beat myself up for walking it the rest of the day if I gave into the hill.
Now granted, my pace dropped significantly (from about an 8:45/mile to a whopping 14:00/mile)...but I was still running, and that's all that really mattered at that point. I so wish I would have had a camera to take a picture, because I just cannot do this hill justice with mere words.
Anyway, I finished the 10K in 58:20, which is a bit slower than I wanted to finish in, but considering the hills I'm pretty happy with that time.
Then I did a slightly faster additional 3.8 through the extremely flat riverside portion of the town. So that makes ten miles total for me today, at what averaged out to a 9:00/mile for the entire run.
So, in summary, Hannibal is not a good town to run through if you don't like hills, but it's fun to run one race there each season, just to be able to have done it.