Coming to my senses...

So I didn’t enter the half marathon I’ve been mentioning in my previous posts this morning. Oh how I wish I could’ve, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes. It’s probably a good thing that how it worked out because as I mentioned before too that I haven’t been running a whole lot lately. I probably saved myself from embarrassing myself especially after the way a five miler nearly left me in shreds on Wednesday. It felt really good for the first mile, then my lungs started burning with heavy breaths and my legs brought me to a shuffling fashion especially during the last mile. I guess that’s bound to happen after five weeks of sporadic workouts, cardiowise anyways. My pace went from 8:50 per a mile to 11:00s that day.

I just been on the go nonstop beginning mid November, doc appts, vet appts, dental appts, other interruptions(weather), volunteer work, etc, that it’s gotten a bit out of control it seems. Just when it seems like when I going to have a moment to catch my breath and organize, another thing pops up like a couple of appts that didn’t make it into my planner. Thank god for the reminder calls the day before the appts. So it was like Tuesday evening while I was rehearsing the songs for this Christmas program with Sunny D, I started thinking about the upcoming race and the Christmas program. It dawned on me that the race is Sunday morning and so was the play! And it’s my daughter’s first time participating! Not only that, but she has a major role! No way was I going to miss her performance, but still I took in a breath of prayer as I got up from my seat to double check race date in hopes that I misread it and it’s actually on Saturday the 15th. I race into my office and quickly pulled up the race website, nope, no luck, it even state “Sunday, December 16, 2007”! Like a desperate fool, next I went on to compare the start time for the race and Christmas play time. The race start is half an hour earlier than the play, wouldn’t work. After all of this, looking back I still can’t believe I still held out for the possibility that I was still going to enter and run in this event. I mentioned the schedule conflict to my husband as soon as he walked in the door after returning from an aid call with the fire dept. I was delighted to hear him say that I should go ahead with my half marathon plans because I’ve looking forward to that for awhile and he was going to take lots of pictures & record our daughter’s Christmas play. And of course like a spoil selfish person, I was relieved to have my running event restored that night before going to bed.

It was during Wednesday’s noon run, that I finally came to my senses…probably when I was really started to hurt everywhere. I couldn’t believe myself. When did I become so self absorbed that I had actually made a choice to skip my child’s first major event!? What kind of a mother does that? I mean there’s always another race around the corner, but my daughter’s first play! Once you miss out, that’s it, no do-overs. Pathetic and unbelievable!

It’s almost like an addiction, where I had this compulsive desire to run in this race even with the lack of training. I had blocked out everything else and I was going to do whatever it took and cost to get myself there to take part. Mostly, I think because how busy my home and work life has been lately, I’ve been looking forward to this event to briefly take me away from the “real world”. A time not to be on the go with a ‘to-do’ list, a ‘get list’, a ‘to do’ list, and never feeling like you’re catching up. Half of it, I bring it upon myself, stuff I volunteer for, projects I dream up for myself, etc...some of you might have an idea of what I’m talking about. Something about racing, poor or strong performance, it always revitalized me.

As my daughter entered a packed sanctuary on her way to the stage with the rest of the kids, I knew I was where I should be no question about it. And she did one of those:
“Hi mom! I’m up here on stage mom!” as she’s waving her arms and hands with excitement. And the whole congregation laughed. I was one proud momma!

Aftermath....

It looks like I’m going to try something new this coming weekend. I’m going to enter a ½ marathon after long extended weeks of tapering! Or I could just pull out of another running event, but I think I want to go for it anyways. With all of the recent disruptions, I finally set foot outside with my running shoes on Saturday morning for seven miles around town.

The story of the recent storm is old news, but the aftermath is still very much alive. Cleanup is a slow progress, but well on it’s way. It seems like almost every waken moment is spent outdoors in grungy clothes and work gloves sprucing up the landscape. You cannot imagine all the trees taken down by the windstorm. I discovered that I won’t be running two of my favorite running routes for a while. Up rooted trees blanket the trails from the trailhead heads at both places I’ve learn as I jogged to these locations on Saturday morning. I started praying while I started jogging towards to the second spot where the trail winds around a wooded lake with campgrounds lined on one side, but my hopes were dashed as soon as I crushed the hill just before dropping down towards the lake. There was a ‘road close’ sign with trees and power lines mingled across the road behind the sign. After I crawled through one side of the heaping pile of mess opposite side of the power lines, I jogged half mile down to the lake where I found that the destruction was much worse. The entrance trees that greeted you with the park signs are all blown down or uprooted. It was a very sad moment. I stood on the bridge for a long while taking in the grim scenery then I finally went on to explore a bit more on the campground side of the lake, same story.

The rest of my run was unusual as well. The whole place was roaring with the sounds of saws and other machineries at 7 am in the morning. Utility crews were still out hard at work too in the outlining areas of town too.

Sunday morning, I took advantage of getting some much needed ZZzzzs. It seemed like every bone in my body ached from the nonstop physical labor…which I’m not used to. I was gonna go for another run Sunday afternoon but it didn’t happen, time got away. My lower back has been killing me too from all the heavy lifting and carrying. It’s pretty sad that one has to look forward to going to work(office), so they can get recuperated.

It’s going to take me while to get back on a running routine. I also need to get back to my holiday planning as well, the shopping, the decorating, all the fun stuff

p/s I'll get back to reading and commenting on your entries as soon as I get up to speed. Btw, sorry about the lame invite, it'll be temporary, I had to delete a bunch of spam(blogspot sites) attack comments.

Raging Storm

It just seems like we’ve been left out the loop with the whole rest of the world since Sunday night. We’ve been without power since then. Much of western Washington state got hit with a massive storm with winds gusting to 81 mph, taking down trees, power lines, blowing off roofs, etc. I received very little sleep Sunday night listening to the howling wind blowing everything from pieces of fence, tree limbs, roofing materails against our house and shaking it. I was afraid that it was going to take out one of our south facing windows or blow something into our house any moment. I was also worried about the hubby responding to 911 calls from people having run ins with the weather. He came home briefly before 6 AM Monday and told me that they lost a patient during a transport to a hospital. And it was taking 2-3 hours longer getting there because of trees across the roads. They were cutting their way out and back to their destinations. It was just insane.

It seemed like it took forever for daylight to break. When it finally did, it was still blowing hard and raining, but just from looking out the windows I can see quite a bit of damage; mostly trees down, partially of neighbors roofing missing, a fir tree laying over a house down the road from us. The local radio stations were down until about noon. We eventually ventured out a bit and the devastation was unreal; power poles snapped in half as if they were toothpicks making all but one of the roads out of town accessible. We stayed home most of the time, made use of the fireplace for cooking, heat, and we shared a generator with the grandparents by taking turns to keep the freezers/frig from thawing out.

Between all the family and friends, we've been taking turns hosting potlucks, giving water, helping fix a wells, clearing away the driveways full of trees, or inviting everyone over for a dinner & “shower” because you’ve received power back before them, it’s an awesome feeling.

Anyways the kid especially had a great time. She set up her tent right in the living room with a sleeping bag and her little canvas camping chair. We had so much fun with flashlights, packing out all board games, playing cards, roasting marshmallows and hotdogs in the fireplace. She never made one mention of watching one of her Disney movies until of course the power came back on! Funny how that is.

We received power back at 7:25 Tuesday evening and taking a warm shower was the first thing I did. Hopefully the rest of the folks that live quite a ways out of town will get their power back soon as well. And I’ve miss two days of work so far. I’m planning on going to today(Wednesday). It’s amazing how the weather changes so rapidly over the course of a weekend. Saturday, it was calm and snowing. By Sunday morning it was raining with increasing winds. And now the water levels are rising, flood warnings in effect in our surrounding areas. Hopefully, this will turn around for the better.

I apologize if this hardly makes any sense because I'm exhausted and I just sat down, started typing away.

5 facts tag, but I'm doing 6...

As most of you already know and have participated in some serious blog tagging game swirling around the blogsphere. I was tagged some time ago by Deene, then just recently by C. Thanks for thinking of me, I guess I’ll play.

rules: • link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog. • share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. • tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. • let them know they are TAGGED by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. First in the family to graduate from college(& graduate school) and I have a jumble of older siblings.
2. 
   I love the outdoors. Plain and simple. I love to hike, backpack, camp, fish, run, etc. Starbucks is probably the only thing I’d miss about city life if I end up living out in the mountains somewhere in a cozy cabin with my family. Of course I wouldn’t miss it too much because I’d hit up the coffee house during my race travels.
3. 
   I miss coaching little league soccer. Before I became a mommy, I coached for three years after my then seven year old cousin asked me if I coach her soccer team. Previous coach quit after one season with 1 win record. Well after countless drill experiments, we made playoff every season and came very close to claiming the championship title once.
4. 
   I have a tattoo – a beaded leather armband with arrowheads and feathers. At the time(college) I wanted to get something that had some significance to my native background. Ironically, tattoos clash with my traditional upbringings.
5. 
   My husband and I met for the first time in a computer lab in college through a mutual friend. My friend and I decided to meet at school one evening after work to complete our lab assignment. And it so happened that we bumped into a friend of his. We hit it off so well that I was ready to call my boyfriend at the time to break up with him, well it eventually came to that a few weeks later for mostly other reasons.

And I'll throw in another one....

• I have yet to master a consistent nutritional streak. It’s the one thing I continue to struggle with. I mean I go for weeks being smart about when and what I feed my body, then like without even realizing it I take a nose dive. It’s a lot of little things that add up, like eating bits off the kid’s plate when she doesn’t want anymore. Or snacking on the ingredients while I’m cooking, then not hungry when the meal is done. Just having coffee for breakfast, topped with eating a LATE lunch(2-3pm) because I get so consumed with work stuff. Which means I’m not fueling my body efficiently. Because of that, I end up bonking miserably in my workouts and my attitude sticks too.
  

And since I'm so late on this, if you haven't been tagged already and would like to be, consider yourself tagged!

Bogged down with a cold...

My running clothes remained untouched in the closet all last week and all weekend long! My ugly sweatpants that for some reason I can’t bring myself to toss out and takes up space finally got some use along with my oversized cotton t-shirts that I hardly wear. I started coming down with some awful bug Thanksgiving day. By Friday morning, I was running a temp range of 101.2, sneezing, coughing, sore throat, dripping in sweat as if I was out running in some heat blast, going through Kleenexes boxes, not a pretty scene.

Frankly, I was in no shape to do any form of workouts. The only form of workout for me was crawling out of bed, travel to the bathroom, and back. Oh I really felt it in my arms when I brushed my teeth and pulling my hair back to tie it. I broke out in sweat every time I tried gagging down over the counter drugs to loosen up my clogged sinuses.

I was not my normal multi tasking self that’s for sure. Luckily, I have such a sweet husband that made me soups, bought cart loads of juice, bathed the kid, dressed and fixed the kid’s hair daily. It was cute and funny watching the two ‘running’ the house, you know just the little things. Especially when it comes to 3 yr olds. I heard her telling her dad one evening, “mommy brushes her teeth while I’m taking a bath.” And another evening, “mommy washes the pans as soon she’s done using them, she doesn’t pile them in the sink like that daddy, I’ll show you how.” After they took the last package of crackers out of the box she says “you have to put it on the grocery list so we can buy some more, daddy.” And one that took me by surprise, she told her dad that when the hamper is getting full, it’s means it’s time to do a load of laundry.

I did get in some TV time. I came across this show on Discovery channel; Everest: Beyond the limit and I was glued to the screen all day long either on Saturday or Sunday, can’t remember exactly which They were doing re-runs up to the current show which airs tonight(Tuesday). It’s a pretty captivating show where they are following separate teams(fast & slow team) making their summit bid on different days. Climbers have to deal with high altitudes, icy and windy conditions, and unpredictable weather. Fatality is there, people die each season. And even those that live to tell about the experience are very susceptible to losing toes and fingers to frostbite. But if you have the chance to sit down to watch a bit of tv, I highly recommend this show. As many of you are outdoor lovers, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Hopefully, I’ll get over this cold in the next day or so. I want to get out in the frosty weather. Btw, as you probably already noticed, but I just found out that the registration for Chuckanut Mountain 50K has been moved to January 1st. And the course is changing too. Doesn’t make any difference for me because I’ve never run it before, so I have no opinion on the change.