alphasarah

I started swimming about a year ago because I was tempted by that mini-triathlon that never actually happened.  At first I really didn't like it - I had never enjoyed swimming laps.  I would get in and muddle through half an hour or 35 minutes of breast stroke and elementary backstroke, usually about 25 laps.  I would try to throw in some freestyle and would find myself floundering in a big way after just a lap or two, so I just stopped doing freestyle. 

I slowly started swimming for longer, both in terms of time and distance.  25 laps became more like 30, 30 minutes became 40.  My breast stroke, which I think of as slow, made me one of the faster swimmers in the pool - I routinely pass people doing freestyle with my breast stroke.  I figured out what was wrong with my freestyle (I was expending FAR too much effort kicking) and I can now do 5 laps of freestyle easily and could probably do more if I paced myself better.  I re-discovered the joy of a good backstroke.

About 3 weeks ago I didn't feel done after 30 laps, so I tagged on the 6 more I needed to make it an even mile, and have been doing a mile in about 45 minutes, 2 or 3 times a week.  I only did 25 laps today, since I'm still coming off of that stupid cold.

I still don't LOVE swimming.  But I don't hate it and since my knee is back to being a pain in the, well, leg, swimming is making up a significant proportion of my exercise these days.

What was it, three weeks ago that I did a trial shamble on the treadmill, just a mile to see how I felt afterwards?  Then I got sick, and then I twisted my ankle, so I hadn't been up to another try until Tuesday, when I shambled another mile and felt just fine.

Today, it was 53 degrees when I left the house to go to the gym, and I knew for a fact that the sidewalks downtown were clear of snow and ice.  So I SHAMBLED OUTSIDE!  I thought, I'll go a mile and half or so...

Apparently my memory of my running routes downtown is very faulty.  2.58 miles.  In just over 20 minutes.

My hip hurts.  We'll see how it feels tomorrow.  The knee feels fine, though, so that's positive.

Apparently what I need to do to have an AWESOME spinning class is a) not be able to go for several weeks (hard to attend an 8:45 fitness class when I have to teach at 8:34 every TTh) and b) turning my ankle on the way to the car in the morning. It's stiff & a little sore and I think when I take my shoe off it's going to swell up like a balloon. Fun!

There is coffee brewing, I should go get some.

But the real reason, the really REAL reason for this post is to tell you about fashion. :^D I haven't blogged about my clothes in a while, but I had a supercute outfit last week that I wanted to document (in writing at least).

• light grey pencil skirt
• graphic print wrap shirt
• charcoal grey one-button blazer
• black tights
• patent leather wingtip flats

I just hadn't worn anything worth blogging about in ages, don't know why.  This weekend we went to the outlets and I got some cute shirts and a pair of supersoft grey cords that I have to lop like 6" off of before I can wear them.

That is all.

I shambled.

For the first time in SIX MONTHS, I shambled.  I strapped on my birthday present (in those colors, too!), got myself on the treadmill, and I shambled.  I took it easy ... I limited myself to a mile, at a relatively slow pace (started at 5 mph, worked up to 5.8 over the course of that mile).  I could have EASILY gone another mile, which is awesome, considering that I haven't run in half a year.  Right now my hip is feeling it just a little; we'll see what things feel like in the morning.  If it's OK, I'll go again sometime early next week.  And so on, until I no longer feel like a total slacker.  Whoo!

I just bit the bullet and signed up for my first official 5K race.  I haven't been running much the past couple of weeks, what with twice-weekly spin classes, swimming on Monday mornings, running errands on the bike on Fridays...  Went out and did 2.5 miles pretty easily yesterday morning (I felt totally fine, could have easily kept going for a while, coming into the last quarter mile, at which point I decided to kick it into high gear just for fun), though I did not stretch sufficiently afterwards so my hip is sore today.  The sore hip is just from running; the sore quads are from the sprint at the end.

Just out of curiosity, I looked at the top 5K times for local women in my age group.  Times range from 20:32 to 21:28.  To which I say DAMN!  World record is 14:11.15.  Just TWENTY MINUTES faster than me.  No big deal.  ;^)  My goal for the race is to run the whole thing.  I figure if it's fun maybe I'll do it again and try crazy things like going faster than I have previously.  The challenge of this one (besides it being my first race ever) is going to be that it is on a weekday evening, when I will have been home with TRex all day so I will possibly be a bit tired to begin with.  Oh well, it's the one that fits our family schedule best.

• Finally saw Garden State this weekend (M and I had our anniversary chinese take out and a movie Saturday night).  Loved it with huge big piles of loving.
• In research news, I closed my survey last week and have started coding data.  Whoohoo!
• The reunion of the original cast of Rent was underwhelming.  Am I wrong in thinking that Jesse L. Martin was in the original cast?  Because he certainly wasn't on stage last night (but Taye Diggs in glasses and a bow tie?  hee!  so much adorable!) 
• Also, we are probably in the minority in America in having felt torn between watching the Tonys and the basketball game.  Plus I had baronessmartha telling me I need to watch In Plain Sight as well.
• I am feeling very productive today, despite having not actually done much but swim most of a mile. 
  
• It is to the point that the only part of swimming which I don't enjoy is dealing with my goggles.  I have NEVER liked goggles, but I also really can't stand water in my eyes (like, even in the shower, I can't stand water in my eyes).  And the goggles I have, well, I can't go more than about three laps (half a lap of freestyle) before I have water sloshing in my eyes.  It's annoying.
• We have pretty much decided that we are going to be a public-transit family come fall, as much as we can.  M will buy two metro passes through work (pre-tax, whoo!) and we will make use of the handy park&ride lot at UB on a daily basis.  So, yay for that.
  

... I slept 'til 8:30, lolled in bed 'til after 9, had breakfast, took the shambling zombie out for a 2.5 mile shamble.  Now I'm sitting here nursing my water and contemplating a shower... I don't expect the others back for a bit, since they were going shopping for my present this morning.  The rest of the day... we have no plans except running to M's office to make use of the departmental copier/scanner/printer/julienne fry machine because I have a document to scan that is substantially bigger than bed on the home scanner.

Happy Mothers' Day to all the Mommies, hope you get to do EXACTLY what you want to today!

For the first time since I started running, this afternoon I really just didn't want to.  The motivation was very much lacking.  But it was 60 degrees and sunny, and tomorrow it's supposed to be cooler and rainy, so I had a harder time justifying NOT going outside.

So I went, I started running.  My shambling, zombie run.  The one that on a normal day moves me at the rate of about an 11.5 minute mile.  Except today it moved me at about a 10.2 minute mile, for 2.25 miles.  Yeah, the answer to "I don't want to run" is "go and run further than you've run probably in 15 years".  We'll see how it feels tomorrow - I'd done one 2 mile run a couple of weeks ago, so it's not that drastically more than I'd done previously.

Running in Elmwood Village is dangerous, too.  Makes me want to move out of our nearly-suburban neighborhood down where it's hip and cool.  And then I remember that we are not hip and cool and that I like having a garage.  So I'll stick to running there and fantasizing.  (meneleth, I've taken to running various routes in the square described by Summer, Richmond, Utica (or sometimes as far North as Ferry), and Delaware (or maybe another block east to Linwood).)

Post-run, I lifted weights and then did 13 minutes on the recumbent bike.  Yay, me!

In bullet list form...

• Spent 7 to 7.5 hours yesterday cleaning the house.  Am only about half done.  But ZOMG the bathrooms are extra-shiny and we have clean sheets & mattress pads and I even rotated our mattress all by myself.
  
• Super Sekrit Projekt going well, very amusing to me.  More to come upon its completion.
• Put in plastic garden border this weekend.  TRex LOOOOVES worms.  Loves them, is very gentle with them, moves them from the dirt we just dug up to our perennial bed and then covers them with more dirt.
  
• That 100 bulbs for ten bucks box I bought at Aldi?  Totally worth it.  Hopefully this weekend will be lovely so we can do some planting.
• CF light bulbs are cheaper at Aldi than at Target.  PSA and all that.
• TRex has eczema, not some other bizarro rash, so yay.  Also, 35 pounds according to the ped's scale.
• Swimming gets less annoying every time I do it.  But oh, freestyle kills me ded.  And I do need different goggles... no matter what I do, the minute I start to freestyle they fill right up.  And I was very averse to pool water in my eyes even before I wore contacts.
• I think it says something about my fitness level that I'm planning to go for a "short" run today.  Y'know, only a mile and a half.  But, woe, my iPod is out of battery-juice and I didn't have the cable in my bag, so I will be running with ENVIRONMENTAL NOIZE!
  
• Final exam Thursday.  Have spent most of today doing the administrative nonsense that goes with it.  Now administrative nonsense is all done.
• Hooray for webcams and skype, they mean I get to actually SEE Sam instead of just typing at her.
• Per the cleaning spree... I have two things warring within me.  Thing 1: being thrifty/eco-conscious and not throwing things away willynilly.  Thing 2: decluttering, which means occasionally throwing away things that might have been repurposed.

My miscellanea gun, she is out of bullets.  In conclusion, I give you a macro in search of a picture.

My mind, you haz blowed it.

Whatever issue I was having with my night guard last week (or the week before, whenever it was) has resolved itself and I'm happily back to sleeping very, very soundly with it in.  I don't know if there's actually a connection between my sound sleep and the night guard... maybe I'll have to do a systematic study.

I got 2 compliments on my hair today - one from a stranger and one from a friend.  So yay on that.  I am very much still loving it.  It's kinda like my hair was in 11th grade, actually.  I'll have to dig up a copy of my junior pic to really compare.

There is only one HP geek in my class.  See, I talk about how language creates meaning and use words like "muggle" and "kneazle" and "Voldemort" to illustrate how these concepts didn't even exist until J.K. Rowling made them up.  And only one person snickered.  I also got to tell the story of baronessmartha, mittenydoom, and me accidentally spoiling the book for the poor woman in line in front of us at Wegman's.  Poor woman, I hope she's forgiven us.

New gym clothes make me happy.  I can totally understand why people live in their workout pants - I got these (in both black and grey) and they are oh so comfy, and they don't look awful.  But I know what Saint Tim would tell me if he knew I was considering wearing them anywhere but the gym.  I also got this shirt and this one in white & grey.  I already have a couple of tank tops, so I'm set in that department, and when spring/summer roll around I'll have to get a couple more pairs of shorts.

Sadly, I managed to forget my snazzy new exercise gloves today and so I had to deal with rings pinching and losing my grip due to sweaty palms.  Thursday I will not forget them, but Thursday I won't be doing the Gravitron which is really when I need them most.