Monday, October 11, 2010

The Hills are Alive.........With the Sounds of Me Wheezing!

Saturday was a BLAST for many reasons:

1)  I beat my previous 5k time!  The official time for me in my one and only previous 5k was 36:22.  My official time for this one was 34:08!  http://www.arkansasrunner.com/misc/results2010/wrw5k10.htm

2)  I feel very good about this because I ran/jogged the whole time and did not walk.  And the entire 3 miles went over hills!!!  Argh.  It was horrible.  The first mile was decently flat, but after that they just kept getting bigger.

3)  It was super fun hanging out with Dianna, Mike, and Kyle before the race.  Those boys are seriously funny (and super fast......Kyle ran in 20:21 and Mike ran in 25:25).

So we left Conway at 6:30 and drove to the start of the race.  It ended up being a smaller race pool, and a lot of the people seemed to be pretty hardcore, running warm-up laps and stuff.  Dianna and I just stretched a lot.  We were saving our energy.  I got sucked into the run really fast with the pack at the beginning, but after a couple of minutes I slowed down to the pace I needed.  Sure there were 60 year old men and people pushing strollers literally sprinting past me, but I just kept my own pace (while feeling a bit ashamed.....I mean seriously, little old men were running right past me like it was no big deal.....).  The first mile went by before I knew it.  But then the hills started getting bigger.  And I started getting inside my own head.  And then I started getting tired, and started feeling sick.  This was around the 2.5 miles completed mark.  I really almost stopped.  I felt horrible.  And then what happened?  I am dead serious about this, I didn't rig anything.  The song on my iPod ends.  I'm stumbling up a big hill.  And the new song starts.  It was Journey's "Don't Stop Believing."  Seriously.  So with my last breath, I start laughing because it is just ridiculous, and then I pick up the pace.  Once I crest the hill it is downhill all the way to the finish line.  And just like magic, I feel better, and finish out the race without walking.  This is so cheesy that I am rolling my eyes as I'm typing, but it sure makes for a good TRUE story about the race!!


5k Finishers!---Kyle, Mike, Dianna, and Kelsey





This is how hardcore I am.  My running shoe now has a hole at the pinkie toe!



On Sunday I decided to do some sewing (after sleeping until 11am, which was great).  After a lot of sewing things, and ripping out seams, and sewing again, I actually finished the quilt top!  Here it is!!!!!




We start training for our November 10k tomorrow morning!  Let the second leg of making me into a half-marathoner begin!!  Gulp.........

Friday, October 8, 2010

Tomorrow...........

Tomorrow will mark the end of the first quarter of the training plan!  Running a 5k at 8am (we have to leave town at 6:30 to get there.....ew).  I'll post my time on Monday if I am proud of myself.

I'm really worried because this week has been totally off kilter, and I've really only run twice-ish, so we will see.  Cross your fingers for me!!

Tomorrow is also the library used book sale and a home football game, and the usual post-home game football gathering at Casa de Smyth, so it should be an epic day!!

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

It is now Wednesday, and I am sorely behind again.  So here is another really long post!

Saturday:  I.  RAN.  THREE.  MILES.  WITHOUT.  STOPPING.  I am awesome.  That's really all I have to say.

(I do realize that there are a lot of people out there who can do this too, but for me, and those who new me when I was in high school, this is kind of unfathomable).

I also went to go see Easy A on Saturday.  It was super cute and it confirmed my loves of Emma Stone and Stanley Tucci!

Monday:  We wussed out.  Two of us couldn't run, so I used that as license to not run myself.  I went to sleep planning to get up and go, but when push came to shove, I just couldn't do it.  In my defense, we slept with the windows open, so the house was nice and cold and felt like fall, and snuggling into bed just seemed like the better idea.  That afternoon I did take Lauren Joy (aka Monkey) on an hour long walk around campus while I was watching her during band, so I did at least exercise.

Today:  We actually went running, and it was just a weird day.  It was super cold---40 degrees when we ran, but I warmed up way faster than I thought I would.  Really the only part of me that was too cold was my mouth.  The run itself was great, and I felt great except for one thing.  And it is kind of major.  My pants kept falling down.  I had on pants that were between capri length lounge pants and tights, and the waist is super stretched out compared to the rest of the pants, and it has been this way since I bought them.  The legs are fine, but the waist is oddly huge.  I was really worried, and constantly tugging at the beginning, but I finally got things arranged so that I didn't feel an inadvertent self-depantsing would happen.  So I had that going for me.  We went the usual distance in a bit faster than the usual time.  Bring on my Wednesday afternoon mile run with Clara!!
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I have also gotten more done on the quilt!  I bought some printed fabric, and here is the block I came up with.




I have 22 of the other blocks, so I decided to mix them up.  I could have made this way cooler if I had planned ahead at all, but hey, this works for a first try!

Here is Pattern 1.


Here is Pattern 2.


Here is Pattern 3.


Here is Pattern 3 with a possible border.


I did a really bad job planning and having enough of everything, so this will probably end up being a smallish quilt.  I still have a lot of the solid red and black, so I'll try to make a cool wider border with that.

Let me know what you think, and which pattern you like the best!  I am kicking myself for not doing it all in the print, but hey, live and learn.


Friday, October 1, 2010

Great run! Huzzah!

Friday morning:  55 degrees.  Pitch black.  Some tunes.  Awesome run.  Today felt great!  I finally did a better job keeping up with Dianna and Amanda, which I was very proud of.  And I ran for 28 minutes without stopping, which a year ago I would never have thought I could do.  Total mileage was 2.72 and total time (including warm up) was 33 minutes, so I feel pretty good about that, especially since I'm pretty sure that the five minutes of walking at the beginning covered at least a quarter of a mile, which would have meant we ran 2.5 miles in 28 minutes.  Still not super fast, but not too shabby either.

Registered for the 5k for October 9th today!  Yippee!

I'm not going to do the extra-after-work-mile today because we are running 3 miles at 7:30 tomorrow morning!

Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the UCA Marching Band are playing a concert downtown tonight, and then the run, and hopefully sewing and going to see Easy A tomorrow, and then sleeping in on Sunday.......sounds like a great weekend to me!!

Thursday, September 30, 2010

I Need to Get Better at Bloggin

Obviously it has been several days.  Here is the running update:

Monday afternoon:  Decided to run a mile as fast as I could while blasting "Semi-Charmed Life" (Third Eye Blind), "Separate Ways" (Journey), and "Shake Me Like A Monkey" (Dave Matthews).  It is a pretty epic three song playlist and these three are all back-to-back alphabetically on my iPod.  I did this in 11:11.  The reasons I feel ok about this are threefold:  1) I didn't do any warm up walking; 2) I had already run about 2.25 that morning; and 3) I got a killer stitch in my side halfway through, and almost couldn't walk, so there was a pretty big sucking it up and powering through element to completing the mile.

Wednesday morning:  I almost didn't get up.  I am so over the 5:20am wake-up.  But I did go, and it was 58 degrees, and it was great.  My breathing didn't get as out-of-control as usual, and nothing hurt!  My kness just felt tired, which is much preferable to things being actually painful.

Wednesday afternoon:  It was a little hot, but I decided to take my precious Clara running with me!  She was totally amped at first, but then kept getting distracted by smells and her propensity to try to poop in other people's yards.  With all the slow downs, and the fact that her legs are about 6 inches long, we finished the mile in 12:30, which I think is great!

Wednesday night I went to Steve's jazz concert and the group did great!  They just played two tunes, but they are great ones (Splanky and Blue Skies)! 

Tonight I'll be rooting on my Cowboys to beat Texas A&M, and eating dinner at Mike's Place with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band!!

Hopefully an update tomorrow on how the Friday morning run goes, otherwise, I'll see you back here on Monday!

Dignity, always dignity.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Can I Stop Yet?

I am definitely hitting a wall with the running, and I'm sure it is 80% mental.  The whole group got out of sync last week (none of us ran on Wednesday!), and then we were all in various locations that were not Conway over the weekend, so this morning we got back on track.  I actually tried to run yesterday--we were suppose to go 2.75 miles last weekend, but I only made it 2.25 miles.  Which made me feel pretty bad, but it was after a LONG weekend, and I was alone instead of with the pack (and I knew the husband was back at home taking a nap).  I haven't felt like getting up to run at all for the last week and a half, and I hope I get over that soon.  But it only gets harder because I'm more tired, and it is darker and darker at 5:20am.

The run this morning was fantastic because we FINALLY got a break from the humidity.  It was about 54 degrees for the run, in the dark, and it was great.  I was hashed at the end (as usual), but felt way better than normal.  I am the slowest in the group, but I just put on my headphones and keep trucking, so it's all good.  I feel bad while I'm still with the pack when I have my tunes, but I get into my own head too much without them, so I just apologize and keep being rude!  We walked five minutes, then ran 25, then did a short cool down walk today.  We went 2.5 miles in the 30 minutes of quick moving, which is ok.  I'm worried about beating my previous 5k time on Oct. 9th, but hopefully the rush of being in a race will give me some speed!

The weekend was great!  We went to the University of Tulsa football game, and I got to see my cousin, who is at OSU (Go Pokes!) and my old rommie, and that part was great.  We left on Friday, and then the band played at the Owasso/Bartlesville football game Friday night, with great reaction from the crowd!  We watched the high schools march post-game, and Owasso, as usual, was amazing.  Their show looks like it will be pretty cool. 

More later!  I will have another running update on Wednesday (running for 28 minutes......kinda terrified) and hopefully more pictures of the quilt!

I don't have any relevant pictures, so I'll just post one of Clara, because she is the light of my life (it is actually kinda sickening.........but she is definitely the pack leader at our casa)!


Monday, September 20, 2010

Belated First Post!

I meant to post on here much sooner, but sometimes life just gets in the way.  Right now I am starting my sixth week of running, and I think I'm about to hit a wall.  I've been getting up at 5:40am on MWF and semi-early on one weekend day.  We've been doing various interval training scanarios and then a longer run on the weekend.

The run this morning was good until about the last eight minutes.  We (DF, AB, and MS) turned down a street and just all of a sudden got hit with humidity.  Even though it was about 68 degrees and still completely dark, it made the last few minutes tough.  We covered 2.5 miles in 30 minutes, and this included a 5 minute walk to start.  I am definitely the weak link (although it is probably as much in my head as it is physical) but I am super proud of myself.  Now, if only I could stop eating McDonald's so I would loose some weight, life would be grand!

On Saturday we did a warm-up walk, then ran 2.5 miles straight, without stopping.  This is only about the second time in my life I've done this, so I was VERY proud of myself!

Below are some pictures from other weekend activities over the past few weeks.  KJ and I hiked Pinnacle Mountain one Saturday when our husbands were busy, and we had a blast. We climbed up the "hard" side (it is pretty steep, as signaled by the sign.........it was really intense), descended the "easy" side, and then hiked back around the base to our car.  All told, it was about 3.5 miles, and I got some incredible pictures!



Also included are pictures of my most recent jump into sewing.  I've been able to do the basics since I was about 8, and we had an epic weekend of pillow making (thanks Granny!).  I tried making a skirt because my little sister (a link to her blog is on the left) has become fantastic at clothing, and I can't let her one up me.  After this weekend, and a failed attempt at a dress about a year ago, I have decided that clothes are not my thing.  The purple skirt turned out ok, but not great.  If you know me, you know that I'm a very ordered, rule following type of person, and quilts just fit that personality so much better!  And I loved sewing these four blocks!  It is a simplified Log Cabin block, and I just got inexpensive red, black, and white for my first attempt.  I'll keep putting up pictures as I get more done!  And for those who have used a rotary cutter, I managed to refrain from cutting myself with it!!






The 5k is three weeks from last Saturday!  Gulp.  I'm so excited!