4:52am. The iPhone alarm begins to chime. I press snooze. 5:00am. Try again. I rub my eyes and get out of bed. I try and focus my eyes while I have my moment in the bathroom. There is a slight stirring in the nursery. She knows I need her. A light from the other room [...]
I sit here on the verge of having my body back to myself. I guess in a sense it already is back as I no longer house a tiny baby but only her milk supply. It feels good to not have to make a colossal effort to shave my legs. I have reintroduced myself to my toes. [...]
If you have been reading this blog for awhile or know me personally, you probably already know that I like goals. They make me tick. They give me something to look forward to, to work for…I dig them.
Sometimes when goals are lofty, I break them down into smaller goals that when combined and achieved together achieve the greater goal.
Running a marathon, for example, is really three separate races to me: the first ten miles, miles 11-20 and the last 6.2. If I look at it as a full 26.2, it can seem unachievable, but broken down…let’s do this thing.
I also create mental rules for myself. For example, if while running a long run, I am tired, I know I can always make it eight more minutes without stopping. Eight minutes is nothing, I must keep going if I have less than that amount of time left. When running marathons, this can be increased to even eight miles. Once I make it to 18.2 miles of a marathon, there is no quitting…
And since I like goals, I like to measure progress towards goals. Sometimes during a run, I will spend upwards of half the run doing mental math problems figuring out what fraction of the progress I have made.
I am running five miles which will take me 45 minutes at a nine minute pace, and I am 12 minutes into the run, so I am 12/45 reduced to 4/15 of the way through the run.
If you see me running, making what looks like a gang sign, it is probably just the finger configuration for 9 * 7 (hold both hands up facing your face, put the seventh finger from the left down and you get 63…it works for all of the 9′s times tables.) Even though I have a minor in math, my mind sometimes gets tired when running so I resort to the 9′s trick with my hands.
Anyway, so my point. Today I am at a milestone in this pregnancy which I am very excited to reach. Of course, I am thrilled that this wee babe of mine that I have been nurturing for nearly 26 weeks could likely survive outside of my body, if needed, but that is not what I am talking about.
Nope, the excitement, the hype is being generated over something much more arbitrary than that. Today I break the 100 days left mark. I have 99 days until my due date! Doesn’t double digits just seem so much more doable?
The funny thing is that even with my terrible memory which is even more terrible when I am pregnant, I vividly remember breaking this arbitrary goal with my first pregnancy. So yes, it really does mean something to me.
Weight Gain: 12 lbs. Feeling: Awesome! Seriously, except for the fact of my growing belly, I really don’t feel pregnant at all. Have I mentioned that I love the second trimester? I am starting to get those looks from people at work who I don’t see all that often who notice I am pregnant but [...]
This morning I ran Hulls Gulch with my friend Lindsay (behind our other friends). It was great to get out there even though I reluctantly left my bed at 6:10 am on a Saturday. Lindsay is eight months pregnant and I can barely keep up with her, she is truly amazing. I am hoping that [...]
It quickly turned into an uncomfortable encounter as the inhabitants of the car recognized that five women were now walking toward the intersection where they were performing a California stop and they started hooting and hollering and saying a few comments I did not understand. And then there was the one statement that was so clear and so vulgar, it has been popping into my head off and on since.
“I want to rape you!” or maybe it was “I am going to rape you!”
I kept my desire to do a crazy race that I do not have time to train for at bay by going for an hour run in the morning on the race route before all of the races got started. That kept me content such that I could support Andy without wanting to give Belén to one of the other trailing spouses and run the race. I had actually mentioned to Andy a couple of weeks back that I could do the race too and his response was something to the effect of, “Have you ever just come to a race and supported me and not done the race yourself?
Along the way, Erin took a couple of tumbles over some of the aforementioned roots. One was early on, around mile seven and while she rolled her ankle on a root and then fell to the path rolling around in the dirt all the while aplogizing for slowing us down while replying, “only shooting pain, only shooting pain, it will pass. I am sorry. I am okay. Only shooting pain.”
Three hours and 17 miles later, we completed our training run and are probably three of few people (five if you count Kaidree and Jen) who know the dirt side of Eagle Road.
In retrospect, I think the reason the Waterfall run is so hard is because it is all up and then all down. There is not a lot of rolling hills. It reminds me a lot of the infamous 1/2 marathon in Boise called the Race to Robie Creek which is eight miles of uphill followed by five miles of intense downhill. Unlike Robie, waterfall has equal miles uphill and downhill but like Robie, each is equally hard because having your body get pounded on the downhill after so much climbing really takes its toll on you.
