It's Gettin Hot in Here!

Ahhh...Memorial weekend...the kick-off to summer! I've got a busy weekend ahead and I am really looking forward to it! It starts off with my move into an apartment tomorrow morning. I couldn't be happier. It will be so nice to have my own place! And the fun of decorating - I can't wait! My Mom (I am so lucky to have her!!!) and FB will be helping me and I'm hoping we can get it done pretty quickly (and painlessly!). The weather is going to be in the 80's all weekend so I'm hoping to also spend some time relaxing by the pool to rejuvenate after moving boxes & furniture. On Monday FB & I are off to his Aunt's house for a BBQ with his family. Good times!

How are you celebrating the long weekend?

Injured!

Last Friday, I was asked to sub on an indoor soccer team. I've subbed for this team several times and always enjoy playing with them. It's a co-ed team and the rules require two women to be on the field at all times. Since there were only two of us that night, it meant that I had to play the whole game. All was going well until about 7 minutes left in the second half. I don't even remember how it happened, I just remember feeling a sharp pull in my left calf and the immediate feeling of a Charlie horse that wouldn't go away. I knew at this point that I was done for. I tried walking off the field and couldn't put any weight on my left leg without a sharp pain. One of my teammates came over and carried me off the field. I've been limping ever since but each day it's a little bit better. I think I'll be walking normally again tomorrow and will put off trying to run until I know I can walk without pain. I'm supposed to start my triathlon training group on Thursday so I'm a bit bummed that I won't be able to participate in that.

Slacker & moving on

I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since my last post. Life has really been busy lately! At work, we are about a month and a half away from going live with our new financial system. It's been involving lots of meetings & testing. When that's not going on, it's mad catch-up time for the rest of my work. It makes the work day go by quick which is nice, but I'm in shock that Memorial weekend is a week away already!

After the failed attempt at house hunting, I finally decided that my best option was to rent an apartment until I knew for sure where I wanted to live. After a few weeks of researching online and going to look a few places, I finally decided on a complex that would be the best fit. I move in next weekend. I figured it would be a good time since we get the extra day off for Memorial weekend.

Date night was last night and it also happened to be the night of Emily's (FB's niece) school's music performance. She's in Kindergarten. Her school is K-4th grade and the the performance was split in two sections: the K & 1st graders performed first. Then the 2-4th graders sang. It was so cute to see all the kids up on stage. FB's whole family made it, including his Grandparents. We all went to out to dinner afterwards. It was a fun night, but I'm feeling slightly sleep deprived today.

Like my posting, my running & workouts have been slacking too. I've been too tired to get up for the early workouts and have had one thing or another in the evening to keep me from those too. I've managed to get a race in every weekend for the last 4 weeks though. No races planned this weekend (yet!) but I'm hoping to get some good workouts in. I signed up for a triathlon class that starts next Thursday and I'm supposed to get some preliminary workouts/testing in. This is what we've been asked to do:
Swim: Warm up, then a 100' and 500' baseline test. Take a 1:00 recovery between sets. If you can't do 500', then do the longest you can go and record it. Bike: Do a 20 minute warm up, then find a route that you can do a "race" effort for 20 minutes. I want you to gather your average and max heart rates for this r...ace effort. These will be used to establish your training zones. Run: 10-15 minute warm up. Then a 20 minute "race" effort. Same as the bike. Record your average and max HR. record the distances for both tests. I'll give you more instruction on the weekend. As discussed in previous clinics, you need to plan at a minimum to do 2 workouts/week of each discipline. I'll also give optional workouts if your time permits. Good luck. We're looking forward to seeing everyone next week.

So it sounds like I've got a busy weekend ahead of me: swimming, biking, running, & packing!

Off again...

Once again I'm heading out of town for a race. Luckily this one isn't too far away....it's in Grand Rapids which is about 3 hours away. I'm running this race:
Big Red is coming along too. She's running the 10K, while I will be running the 25K. This will be my third year running this race and I've thought it was a good one in the past. It starts & ends in downtown Grand Rapids, then run along the Grand River. We are heading to my parent's farm tonight so that we will be closer to the race.

Boots

I just ordered these:I can't wait for them to get in!

Live Like Andi 10 Miler

Last weekend was the Live Like Andi race. It's one of my favorite races and it's all for a really good cause. You can read about the foundation here: http://www.livelikeandi.org/. I ran the 10 Mile race and finished in 1:26:53.

Country Music Marathon

Part of the reason for the trip to TN was to run the Nashville Country Music Half Marathon. It's fun to make a vacation out of a race and have the experience to run in different cities. We got into Murfreesboro, TN late Thursday night, well, it was actually Friday morning. We sleep in on Friday, got lunch at Blue Coast Burrito, then headed into Nashville. On the way in we got stuck in traffic and could see people walking around with their race bags.

The drive in

We decided to first check into our hotel, which was the Doubletree Downtown. It was very nice and was only a few blocks from the expo and also from the finish line at LP field.

Outside of the expo

With our race numbers

Big Red checking out the fitting rooms

The night before the race we went to dinner at TGI Friday's. I was in bed by 10pm but didn't sleep very well. I was having a dream that I missed the start of the race. We were up early and decided to jog to the start of the race instead of taking a shuttle. The start was 2 miles away but it was a nice, easy warm up. Tennessee was due for bad weather that day so the ended up starting the race 15 mins early. I felt great the first two miles, then the hills & humidity got to me. I was miserable. I ended up finishing in 2:00:37, 10 minutes slower than what I was hoping for. I guess you can't always have a good race. Besides the weather and not doing as well as I liked, I think it was a great race. The Rock N Roll series always do a good job and have well organized races. There were plenty of friend volunteers along the course. I'd recommend it, but I'd also recommend doing lots of hill work beforehand.