catherine's running efforts

I was totally going to run last night. I even made it to the gym parking lot. But Elliott's 5 months old on Friday and I had decided that I'd stop pumping for her at 6 months and I was pre-sad about it and some people going into the gym saw me crying and then I was embarrassed so I went home. 

But today in my class some students were talking about the Halloween Half and their times, and I thought to myself, "Self, you should have run that race." So I was all sorts of motivated to run tonight. 

Speaking of running and babies, lots of times I feel sorry for myself because of all the fatness I got when I was pregnant. But the other day I noticed that I was only about 10 miles lower than Eric for the month, and I realized that he's had to sacrifice a lot too. I'm proud of him for still doing something every day, especially since most of the time it happens after midnight.

I'm pretty sure that at some point my body is going to naturally not want any more Halloween candy. I'm all about being natural (much like the tarahumara), so until that happens I'm going to keep eating it. All day every day. 

Three easy miles on the treadmill, but .10 at 6:00 twice during the last mile. 

Elliott likes oatmeal. 

Thursdays are like my Fridays because once I teach my class in the afternoon I don't have anything else I really have to worry about until Monday nights (my Friday/Monday job requires very little thought). And lately even Tuesday-Thursday hasn't been that bad because we have someone come over to watch Elliott for about 8 hours during the week, so I've actually been able to prepare for my classes. This means that often I feel like everyone else is taking care of Elliott more than I am, but I figure it's just until the end of the semester (when I quit the Friday/Monday job! Yay!). 

Three easy miles on the treadmill, and Cold Stone for dessert (we got those discount coupons from Costco). 

I didn't think I'd run today - late night last night, early morning this morning, and then right after work we're heading to Orem to babysit Elliott's cousin so his parents can go to the BYU game. But I realized that I could run to meet a friend for lunch at Himalayan Kitchen. It was warm enough to run barefoot. My tummy was too full of yummy food to run back to work, though. 

Gym was closed. I ran towards Cold Stone until Eric and Elliott picked me up. 

Last .25 at 6:31.

I went to Penn State for the PhD I haven't yet gotten (deadline:2014). I never went to a game and I hated campus on game weekends, but I still felt and appreciated Joe Paterno's influence while I was there. And Graham Spanier is a sociologist and demographer and plays the washboard (three things that make people cool). I'm sad about some of the decisions being made, though I know I don't know the whole story.

Anyway...tomorrow I'm going to see a urogyn for the pee problem. Sometimes I think that talking about the pee problem on a public blog is TMI, but then I think that sometime someone else trying to run with the same problem might read my blog and find it helpful.

And here's Elliott! She turned 5 months old on Saturday. I love looking through my posts over the past few months and seeing how much she's changed.

Spent a bunch of the day with Eric and Elliott at Jun's Half-Pregnant Half-Marathon. I was glad I wasn't running since (1) I don't like running in the wind, (2) I don't like running on trails that have big hills, (3) I'm not in shape to run a half-marathon, and (4) what to do with Elliott if Eric and I are both running? But there weren't any women running the half, so I totally would have won! Bummer. :)

It was a lot of fun to meet other people who like running, and the barbecue/Altra lovefest after the race at Jun's was a good time. 

In between getting home, pumping for Elliott, and going dancing with Eric (yay! And he did great! We're planning on going again after Thanksgiving, so all you couples who want to be out dancing on the weekends should join us) I did a quick mile at the gym. Easy first half, 6:31 last half. I need to run more miles (to be able to run longer) and get stronger (to be able to run faster), so I figured I'd try to work on the getting stronger part in the time I had left myself.

P.S. On the pee thing - (1) totally should have gone to a urogyn sooner. We have a great non-surgical, non-pharmacological plan that will eventually include some sort of device. But (2) apparently there's some other pregnancy/delivery-related problem that has to get resolved first (not at all running-related, so I won't go into it here), so the fix is really at least a month or two away.

On the treadmill at the gym. Bedtime Stories was in the cardio cinema. 30 seconds at 6:00 twice in the last half mile.

Yesterday was my last day at one of my jobs. I'm very very happy to be finished there. Onward and upward, I always say. 

Cardio cinema, Kate and Leopold. Interesting enough, I guess. Two bouts of 30 seconds at 6:00 in the last half mile. 

Good luck to everyone running a turkey trot tomorrow!

My mom started a walk-run program about a month ago and decided that she wanted to register for this race with the goal of running the whole thing. Eric and I decided to run it too to show support and get a baseline as we go into the winter. And my swimmer brother ran it too.

Eric and I tried to start near the front (rightfully so for him, not so much for me) and tried to distance ourselves from the people talking about walking. The start was almost 15 minutes late, but once we were off it was a nice little course. My parents live in Bountiful so it was nice to be familiar with the streets. My goal was to be under my time from a 5k in January 2010 (24:20) because I figure I'm somewhere around there fitness-wise right now, and I think I was close (I'm not sure about my exact time because the finish line clock was at least 5 minutes off and I forgot to stop my garmin right away and I can't find if the results are posted anywhere). My splits were 6:59, 8-something, and 8-something. I missed getting a pie (I ended up 4th in my age group) by about 30 seconds. I probably would have tried harder if I had known it would have been that close.

As with all of my post-pregnancy runs, it was a bummer to see how far I am from where I was. But it was also encouraging to see that, even given my inconsistency, I'm improving. And I know more now than I did last year, so hopefully it will take me less time to get faster.

And of course it was fun to run with my family. Elliott and I wore the matching purple running shorts Eric bought us while I was pregnant, my mom made her goal of running an entire 5k for the first time ever (go Mom!), and my brother was 4th in his age group too (a bigger accomplishment than my 4th place because he had the high school cross country people in his group).

Eric and I (and Elliott) met up with RAD, the QP, and several other runners from the blog this morning for a nice out-and-back. It hadn't gotten so windy yet, so the weather was almost perfect (for November). I'm really glad we went - it's fun meeting other FRBers, and I always love running with Eric. 

At the gym. I really really like The Devil Wears Prada. It makes me hope that someday I can buy all the clothes. Then I feel shallow for hoping that. Plus, Anne Hathaway is probably 2 inches taller than me, so it's not like I'd look the same in all the clothes anyway. 

Highest mileage week of the year! :P

Today was the first Monday in a few months that I haven't had to drive Elliott to/from Bountiful before/after working a long day. Yay! (But my mom misses taking care of her.) Three miles in the gym in the afternoon. 

We had our physicals tonight for our life insurance applications. I wore my cascadias because I'm afraid of having a higher premium because my BMI is lower. I wish they'd go by % fat or something.

On the treadmill at the gym. A little too soon after eating. But the soup I had for dinner was so good that I didn't mind and I'm even looking forward to having it tomorrow (for the third day in a row). For reals. Here's the recipe. 

2 cans diced tomatoes (including liquid)

2 cans chili beans (drained)

1 diced sweet potato (but we'd probably do 2 if we made it again)

1 cup corn

1 chopped onion

1 tbsp chopped/minced/whatever garlic

1.5 tbsp chili powder, 1.5 tsp cumin, 2 tbsp brown sugar

Everything goes in the crock pot for awhile.

Super lame about all the cold tonight. Three treadmill miles.

About halfway through I got some kind of nerve-ish pain in my right bumcheek. I finished my planned 3 miles, but over the next couple of days I'll have to figure out if I just need to stretch more or if I'm increasing mileage too quickly. Since quitting the church job my goal is 20 miles/week for probably a couple of months while I get my body used to running consistently. I feel like 20 miles isn't too big of a jump even if I wasn't running at all (but I was running some), but maybe it is. Or maybe it was just one of those random still-lactating-and-so-still-have-loose-joints (that's real, right?) pains.