Showing posts with label running. Show all posts
Showing posts with label running. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Construction Week 3 + Weekend Update

Hello friends - hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend! It was great to have the house to ourselves for a few days.

They made a lot of progress last week. I didn't take picture of this but they finished putting the siding on the front of the house and exterior trim around all the new windows/door.

The floors were revealed and the first coat of paint is up.



I tried out the rug to be sure it fit - it does (or will once the new peninsula is finished)!





No cabinets yet. This color looks a bit dark right now, but most of the walls will be covered by cabinetry.



The backsplash will be one of the following. Any votes on which you like best?





The floor stain might be a bit lighter than this - it's going down tomorrow!



That's about it on house stuff. We gave the Weekend Eater the finger over the holiday and had some fun instead.

It rained on Saturday and Sunday. Are you surprised? I'm not. We slept in, took Will hiking, saw Hangover 2 (not nearly as funny as the first one), and did some more decision making on our living room decor.

Sunday was Marathon Day! Yipee! We ran the marathon as a relay team of 5 with cousin and some friends.

I stole these pics from cousin :)

The day started out rainy. Note that we're the only crazy nuts with an umbrella (hey I can embrace the rain but that doesn't mean I'm willing to get more wet than necessary).



I ran the third leg, which was the longest and ended going straight up this hill (can you tell how steep/long it was?). I couldn't complain - those running the full marathon had 11 miles to go after this! (Note - I'm not in any of these pics so don't try to find me - we took them after I finished...)



These awesome drummers kept everyone motivated starting at the bottom until about halfway up.



I lost a bit of motivation after that so can you blame me for missing this sign?



Apparently I was really concentrating on making it up the hill or maybe I wasn't looking very hard because I went the "marathon" route and missed the pass off to Rebecca. She was pretty confused when I ran in from the wrong direction. Oops.

Our team finished in 4 hours - a pretty good time considering my mishap. It was sunny by the finish and our VIP wristbands (a very exciting thing - we scored free drinks and a private porta potty) allowed us to sit by the lake in the sun and watch the finishers.



Monday was sunny and in the 80s - finally finally finally!! We spent the entire day enjoying it.



Plus we had our first creemees of the season. Yum!



More progress pics hopefully after this week. I did learn that the cabinets won't go in until next week. The lake level is still up so we continue to be stuck here in the construction zone. At least it's still moving along....

xoxo

Sunday, May 1, 2011

I did it!

My first half marathon is finished! I ran the 13.1 miles in 1:55:19 (unofficially). I think I really ran about 1 minute faster than that :) Hooray!

It was such a fun day. Mom and Matt came down to cheer me on and a bunch of us ran....Here we are before the start.



What's that? You're wondering why I'm so pale? Remember that we live in Vermont and barely saw the sun for the month of April. More on the rain in a later post - ug.

And we're off!




The race was in Middlebury, which is such a beautiful place! About half of it was along dirt roads and the other half through the little town of Middlebury and Middlebury College.

Here we are right after the halfway point.







The end is in sight! I felt great for most of the race - I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow....







So proud :)




We spotted some other neighbors/friends running as well....




An after picture.




We had a delicious pizza lunch with our cheering squads afterwards (I'm so sad I don't have a picture) and came home to enjoy the sunshine and 70 degree temps with the dogs.

Aren't they pretty?










What a happy day! I'll be back soon with a house update!

Friday, April 15, 2011

Training

I've been running. It feels like I'm running all the time, when I actually only go 4 days a week. I'm doing a modified version of this program, recommended to me by a friend up here. It is a 12 week program and you're supposed to do a stretch/strengthen day as well as cross training. I skip the stretching and count skiing as cross training. That works, right?

My body hurts all over. Is it normal for your sides and back to ache as well as your legs? Good thing I'm only doing the half marathon - I'm not sure my body would forgive me if I tried an actual marathon. Perhaps the lack of stretching is my problem? I started today after my 11 mile run. Better late than never!

I also tried one of these on my run today.



My sister recommended I try some sort of gel or cubes when training. It made me feel GREAT. It almost felt like I was cheating the system or something with all the caffeine and sugar! Perhaps I'll eat 2 of those during the real race.....

I realized this morning that I haven't set a goal time for the race so I'm going to put it out here for everyone to know. Hopefully it'll spur me on. I'm going to try and run in under 2 hours (which is around 9 minute miles). I ran 9:30 miles today and I'm really hoping the adrenaline will kick in on race day to help me go a bit faster. Any tips from the experts out there (MEG?!)?

I run May 1st! Wish me luck!