Metro Maddness

Thanks to Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Insanity and Stephen Colber’ts March to Keep Fear Alive, the crowds on the DC metro system made packet pickup for the MCM10k a complete nightmare.  Adding to the mayhem were the Homecoming weekend celebrations for the University of Maryland and Howard University and thousands of exuberant Halloweeners. 

Enter all the crazies in the tri-state area.

We ended up walking past 3 stops until we found a station we could even get into, let alone a train with space for us to board it.  Need a visual? 

Yeah, it was kind of like that.  Ok, I may be exaggerating, but seriously?  Not by much.

Here’s to hoping that tomorrow’s second trek into our nation’s capitol goes a bit more smoothly.  If I can just get to the start line, the rest is in the bag.

There’s Life Outside of This Blog

Or my office for that matter (not that I would know it).  I haven’t seen daylight in five days.  I’m at work before the sun rises and don’t leave my desk until it sets.  It’s a good thing I love my job and the amazing crew  I work with, that’s all I have to say… 

Since life is crazy (and I got to work an additional half hour early to post this) I’m giving you less words and more pictures today.  Because it’s Friday and I can.  

Marathonfoto emailed me saying they’d catalogued additional images of me at the marathon, and guess what?  There were FINISH LINE photos!!! 

Mile 20

Mile 26.2

That’s a happy girl right there.

On Sunday Uncle Paul and I are running the 10k race at the Marine Corps Marathon.  Riding the metro makes me nervous, but riding the metro at 5am, to DC, before a race?  I’m not sure it gets anymore fun than that.  Oh wait, actually I know it does.  And it looks a little something like this:

Yeah, I’m not going to let this one go for a while…

My aunt sent me photos of us after the marathon.  I look equal parts happy and exhausted, but I guess that’s the idea.

Hugs from my mama

 

 

Lauren and Uncle Paul ran the half marathon!

The best part about Friday?  I get to wear jeans and (one can only hope) the work day ends at 4pm. I packed a gym bag full of trail running gear this morning and hope to use that extra hour of daylight to the maximum extent possible.  It’s even scheduled in my Outlook calendar just like the rest of my world.

Gotta run.  As you can see I have a meeting first thing this morning!

Question:  What’s the first thing to go when you’re schedule is overloaded?

Five Things Friday

Things have been crazy lately and I’m planning on fully enjoying my Friday night so we’re going with bullets today folks.  No hard feelings, mmmk?

1) It’s FRIDAY!!!!  And I sooooo earned it.  Two back to back deadlines, a board meeting and two photo shoots have been a huge time/energy suckage this week.

2) My foot hurts.  I think I may have just laced my shoes too tight on last night’s run — it’s almost like it’s bruised on top.  Anyone else ever have this problem?  Anyway, I’m resting up tonight in anticipation for…. [drum roll, please]

3) Tomorrow’s supported course run on the Baltimore Marathon course!  They’ll have water and gels for the participants and I plan on logging my longest run to date — 22 miles.  I’m slightly worried this course run will detract from the “newness” on race day, but I still think it’s a good idea –most my long runs have been on flat courses which the marathon most definitely is not.

4)  After the run I have two work-related networking events to attend– the HCC Grand Prix Horse Races and the Baltimore Claywork’s Clay Ball.  I’m totally looking forward to both (obviously, one is a ball!), but we’ll see how enthusiastic I am after four hours of running.

5)  And last, and perhaps most exciting of all, I finally dragged my butt to the Apple store today.  You may remember I ruined my Nano with my less-than-sexy and profuse sweat.  Unfortunately, the tech team couldn’t revive her.  My options were to pay $79 for them to replace her with another Nano of the same generation (circa 2006) or trade it in for a 10% discount on this baby:

 

I’m sure you can guess which route I chose.

In Numbers

8 Days
7 Nights
2 Cities
8 Reunions
12 Restaurants (!!)
2 lbs lost (?!?)
34 miles run

Countless friends
Innumerable family
Infinite laughter
Endless new memories.

I have another number for you.  311.  That’s the number of unread posts on my Google Reader.  My apologies to all my bloggy friends for my disappearing act this past week.  I’d love to say I plan to lounge around tomorrow morning and get caught up, but this girl’s got her first big Two-Oh planned for this weekend.  Yup, 20 miles. 

In case you’re wondering, my planned 20 mile speed for this weekend is 10:47/mi and I don’t plan on finishing one minute faster.  I’d blame jet lag, but I’d be lying. 

Woe Is Monday

It always unnerves me when the week gets off to a rough start – as though the universe is going to have to work double-time to redeem itself.  Such is the case today.  Actually, the trend truly began on Saturday, so perhaps this stretch of bad luck is nearing its end?  I’m trying to look on the bright side of things, but it’s been a challenge.

Kirk and I attended a wedding in Delaware this weekend.  The fam booked rooms at the Hilton so we were all excited to sit in the lap of luxury.  However, our day dreams failed to include the fantastically over-chlorinated pool, the out of service elevator, or the broken AC.  Yeah, 2am doesn’t yield much sleep for those trapped in a 12×12 room without air conditioning when it’s 95 degrees out.  (Pro side: the AC was working in the gym where I punched out 6 miles on their state-of-the-art treadmill while being fully entertained by the antics of the Real World New Orleans’ cast.)

We returned home excited to relax with a few DVDs and our window unit on full blast.  We ripped into our Blockbuster mailers with zeal, but were disappointed to find they were Season 1 discs of Glee.  Don’t get me wrong, Glee is great, but we’re on Season 2.   (Pro side: we have the no-longer-offered All Access membership that grants unlimited in-store exchanges) We high-tailed it to Blockbuster and rented A Perfect Getaway and Green Zone (4 stars to the first, I slept through the second – that’s no reflection on the movie itself though, just an unavoidable consequence of running 6 miles on little to no sleep).

This morning I walked into a dark and a suffocatingly dank office.  The storm that passed through yesterday afternoon apparently knocked out the power.  We had a small bid that was due at noon, which had people in a frenzy.  Even though we’d likely be up and running before then, I had to be prepared for the chance that our computers might still be down and so I wrote up the entire proposal by hand.  I don’t think I’ve handwritten that much text since my college years and I do belive  I actually got a blister for my efforts.  Worse yet, I was forced to do this without caffeine as no power = no Mr. Coffee machine.  (Pro: Someone finally made a Dunkin’ Donuts run for brew and the power is back up and running) but, of course, the AC failed to fire up with everything else and it’s still steamy as all get out in here.

Last night Kirk and I did something extraordinary however.  We cooked. Together.  And get this: we didn’t fight once.  If you know anything of my relationship with my husband you know what a feat this is because we bicker like nobody’s business.  Hey, conflict is what keeps life interesting right?  I’m sure my mother is beaming with pride as she reads this (and perhaps exhaling a sigh of relief?).  Oh, and the stuffed peppers were excellent too!  See Bobbi’s recipe for Red Quinoa Salad in this post that we used for the filling.  Mmmmm…. I LOVE cilantro!!

Hitch was on TV last night - I love that movie!  Only Hitch and The Hangover can make me laugh so hard that I should probably avoid watching them in public. I thought this quote summed my outlook on life pretty accurately:

Max: Spoken like a true cynic.
Sara: I’m not a cynic, I’m a realist!
Max: Or a realist masquerading as a cynic who is secretly an optimist.

Are you a glass half full or half empty type?  I’m defintely the later – prepared for the worst, but secretly hoping for the best. 

 

Redesign

Things that made my week:

I actually woke up wanting to run this morning.  As I mentioned earlier, my motivation for morning runs has been lacking lately, which is a shame since that’s the only time the temps drop below 80 degrees.  It’s also a shame that I couldn’t give in to this unexpected urge this morning.  You see, I have a 14 mile long run planned for this weekend - a new personal distance for me – but since I’ve run 18 miles in the last three days I had already decided that today should be a rest day, or at the most an easy cross-train.  So even though I was roaring and ready to go at 6am I made myself go back to sleep.  Poor self, I know.

SALES!!!  Compression socks are on sale at Rite-Aid.  Buy one ($18) and get one half off!  Woot woot!  AND oatmeal was on sale at Superfresh.  When I saw the buy one get one free sign, I scored 6 boxes.  I think I’ll be good on oats for, you know, like a week or two. 

I got my own office!  I used to have my computer and everything set up in a big open space in our estimating department at work.  It looked a lot like a reception area except that it was nowhere near the front entrance of the building.  However, one of our project managers retired and our VP had us do some shuffling around.  The new office is smaller than my previous space, but it’s mine!  And it has a door which excites me to no end (there’s nothing like working under a deadline and having people stop to chit-chat every 5 minutes). 

The only downside is that everything in there is white.  White walls, light grey counters, and white shelves lined with white binders.  My black and white art prints aren’t making the same statement the did before – they’re just blah.  I’m thinking I might buy some contact paper to wrap my floating shelves in.  And a maybe a new art print from Ikea.  Hmmm…

 OR!!  (oohh, I’m getting excited now!) I could purchase some fabric and wrap it around  scrap wood panels from the shop (working in construction comes in handy on just about a weekly basis) to make my own wall art!   And THEN…I could buy a coordinating pattern to cover the shelves!

Ok, must stop.  I could spend all day putting amazing pattern combinations together!  I’m a bit obsessed with the pink and green color combo, see Exhibit A.

Oh, I am SO on board with this idea though!  It’s super inexpensive and even better, it’s all perfectly temporary so I wouldn’t have to worry about damaging office property.  Of course, I would hit up Michael’s before purchasing designer fabric from an international retailer, but it’s still fun to pretend I’m rich and can afford such luxuries!   

Do you enjoy interior design?  Redesigning a large space such as my whole house intimidates me, but I find smaller spaces totally doable.  I’ll be sure and share photos when I’m done!

Three Things Thursday

1)  Revelation of the summer: I like strawberries.  This is strange as I’ve always hated strawberries, but it seems I now hate peaches instead.  How is it that the fuzzy crud never bothered me before?  It’s like biting into a caterpillar. *shiver*

2) I attended the wake of a distant family member on Tuesday in lieu of my scheduled run which ment double duty come Wednesday.  I woke up bright and early and hammered out a 5 mile run with two 1 mile speed intervals at an 8:46 pace.  A funeral, oodles of family together time and two plates of food later I came home and logged another three miles.   I’m calling it even.

3)  My calves are achy.  I’ve been reading about compression socks and wondering if they might help.  I’m not about to shell out $50+ for them though.  I’m thinking of a trip to CVS where I drop $12.99 instead.  Havn’t you heard?   Beige is so the new black.

Have you used compression socks for recovery? Do you run in them?

Three Days of Tranquility

I hope everyone has been enjoying their holiday weekend - I know that I have!  It would appear  that  I’ve not been getting ample rest lately, as my naps have become too numberous to count the past couple days.  I do believe I’ve already had three today and it’s not even 11am.  But I must say, there is something so wonderful about not needing to do anything at all.  Pure bliss I tell you.  I have much more lounging to do today – mostly with this captivating book by my side and so I will give you the highlights.

Saturday’s run was 10 miles on the NCR Trail.  Where the trail crosses Glencoe Rd (mile 4.5) a family had set up a yard sale just to the side of the path.  I’ve been keeping an eye out for antiques lately – my house looks like a Pottery Barn catalogue, so sterile and unlived in and I think the older pieces will warm it up nicely – and so I stopped my clock to take a look around.  I got all sorts of goodies including an old milk bottle, a small wall-mounted cabinet and a huge clay pot with the No. 6 painted on its side.  All for $10!  The man was nice enough to hold it for me for over an hour while I made my way back to my car and then took on the challenge of finding him again via the country roads.  If you’re in the area and haven’t taken a scenic drive though Sparks, I highly suggest it – the estates are just gorgeous!! 

When I got back I had a celebratory afternoon planned.  Kirk’s birthday is actually today, but he had to work (boo!), so we decided to plan festivities on Saturday.  I ordered sandwiches to-go  from a nice restaurant up the road and we took our bounty to the woods for a picnic by the stream.   Then I surprised him with a round of mini-golf and a go at the driving range – something he’s been talking about doing for months.  And finally we ended up at the best (only? I don’t count TCBY. Blech.) frozen yogurt place around, YogaFresh.  Which, despite the fact that it’s a 30 minute trek away in Bel Air is totally worth the drive.   Creamiest yogurt EVER. 

Sunday’s run was a HOT 5 mile trek around the neighborhood.  No Garmin, no agenda, just me and the sun and copious amounts of sweat.  When I came home I did a 14 minute ab workout via Comcast’s OnDemand options.  I didn’t think it was that challenging, but man am I feeling it today.  Oddly, it’s my back and shoulders that are sore, but it’s that good kind of sore that lets you know you did something right.  

The rest of the holiday was spent at Kirk’s dad’s house in a suburb of DC.   Usually holidays are a chaotic attempt to see everyone and do everything, but somehow we escaped that this time around.  This year’s 4th was a peaceful respite from the busy humdrum of responsibility.  We swam, I napped in the hammock, we grilled and played frisbee.  Around 9:30 we caught the fireworks show at the fairgrounds which was fun.  I always make a game of picking my favorite firework.  Last night I was torn between a huge white one that turned a brilliant blue at the tips before fading to red, and a smaller white on that fizzled out leaving a shower of twinkling tendrils floating back to earth.   

Fun Facts

Fun facts regarding cell phone usage in Maryland:

Texting while driving? 
Illegal as of October 1, 2009.

Cellphone calls without the use fo a hands free device? 
Becomes illegal October 1, 2010.

Taking photos of your in-dash temperture gauge while driving? 
Fair game!

Oh, yeah.  That’s right, it’s 101 degrees here in good ‘ol B-more today.  Looks like I’m hitting up the gym instead of the trails.  Again.  Can’t say I’m too opposed to a blast air conditioning  at this point, but after a week of indoor workouts I’m itching for some quality Vitamin D!

Happy Administrative Professionals Day!

Today I arrived at work and found a wonderful garden of botanicals perched on my counter in honor of what I recently saw advertised as “Co-worker to Co-worker Day”.  Now, I’m on board with moving away from Secretary’s Day not only for obvious gender equality reasons, but because I’m not a secretary (and who am I kidding, I’m all for presents!), but really?  I think we can do better.

Anyway, aren’t these lovely?  I ♥ my job. 

There was also a card with some pretty swell handwritten notes and a gift card to Dick’s Sporting Goods.  Do my co-workers know me well or what?!  Love them!

More fun stuff:

Teacherwoman over at Dare To Tri posted this today, and since I already had my camera out and clicking, I was inspired to do the same.  It’s amazing what you can find in the depths of your purse!  Aside from two work-related receipts that I never submitted (whoops!),  I found:

• Begamot & Lime body butter (heavenly!)
• Icebreakers mints
• Half Marathon Training Schedule
• Wallet
• Sunglasses
• BJ’s coupon book (Chobani and Kashi granola bars!) 
• Kohls coupons
• A Race For The Cure key chain
• FIVE lip glosses and balms!
• Toothbrush and toothpaste (had an appt a few weeks back)
• Car key
• Coppertone Faces 70 SPF
• Phone (which is doubling as a camera for this pic)

The real fun is in the gym bag though:

(How color coordinated am I??)

• Brooks Glycerin 8s
• socks
• Champion sports bra
• Short sleeve Baltimore Half Marathon 2009 race shirt
• Long sleeved Under Armour “Run” shirt 
• Nike Shorts
• Long pants (not pictured)
• wristlet
• gym lock
• bobby pins
• hair ties
• iPod
• watch
• towel

Got an email today saying that my running group is starting their track workouts tonight (thanks for the advance notice, guys!).  I’m not really sure how to incorporate that into my training schedule, but I also don’t want that to become an excuse for why I don’t take part.  I’ve never done group track workouts before – a bit intimidating!  It’s raining out right now though.  Ehh…

One of the project managers in the office just dropped off a Bog ‘O Goodies for AP Day.  I wonder who ate the other half of that cookie??