Disappointing Last Run

I think I'm in denial that I'm going to Vegas this weekend. It doesn't seem real.

This past weekend was our last long run and it was pretty disappointing. We were supposed to do 10 miles. We wanted to do more like 11 miles. We ended up doing about 8 miles. In two hours. Which is slow, even for us. And I forgot my garm.in at home so we had to guess at approximate mileage. Damnit! I was kicking myself.

C and I were both really tired. I wasn't in pain at all but I was beat. C's hip started hurting toward the end which sealed the deal.

I don't think we both ate well enough that day and the day before in order to have enough energy for a long run. C said she had hardly eaten anything earlier that day because she woke up really late and we left for our run around 2:30pm. I did make a point of eating a good amount that morning but I was sick the night before.

At around 3pm on Saturday I started getting this bizarre aching feeling in my... girl parts. It was annoying but I was trying to ignore it. Then about an hour later I got what felt like AF cramps but higher, to the left of my belly button, which came on in waves accompanied by intense back pain/cramping. It sucked. The worst of the pain I was crying through but it passed in minutes. It peaked about 4 times from ~4pm - 10pm that night and then lessened to a dull ache.

Apparently the appendix and gall bladder are on the right side, and I've been to the ER before (years ago) for weird pain like that and they weren't able to do anything for me except give me pain killers that made me throw up, so I decided there was no need to go. R is super supportive and caring when I'm sick. He took care of me.

Since I felt yucky most of the day, I barely ate anything, and I think that contributed to our crappy run the next day.

I'm feeling a bit better now but occasionally have twinges that worry me since I'd rather not feel pain again like I did on Saturday. I'm feeling a twinge, that may or may not be related, right now in fact.

Oy. This better not interfere with the half marathon trip this weekend.

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Thanksgiving went well, despite the fact that stress is at an all time high at work and I worked most of my 5 day vacation-that-was-only-a-vacation-in-so-far-as-I-didn't-have-to-drive-to-the-office.

We hosted dinner for 10 adults and a 1 year old. I cooked a 16+ pound turkey in Alton-Brown-brining-style, like I do almost every year. In addition to turkey and ham, we have all the "standard" stuff like mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing, *can*berry sauce (it's a must), cranberry salad, gravy, etc. There was way too much dessert, 3 pies and a cake that my MIL surprised us with (she was only supposed to bring the ham).

The 1 year old finger painted her food all over her section of our dining room table and my dog had a wonderful time cleaning up her mess on the floor and chair.

He wishes we had a baby, too.

Finally Caught Up

After being so very far behind in reading blog posts in Oct (1000+ unread posts), I've finally caught up.

Seriously like 2 mins ago when I read the very last post queued in my reader. My reader currently says 0. Yay!

I'm sure I'll get behind again but it feels good to be caught up for the moment :)

I have a lot of blogs in my reader (225 actually) and earlier this year I categorized them all because of a question posed by a fellow blogger about how many blogs is too many to follow and comment on regularly.

My categories are:
Dormant (haven't posted in months or ended) - 40
No Comment (blogs I like to read but I very rarely or never comment on. Things like popular "mommy blogs", food or fitness blogs, humor blogs, etc.) - 75
Comment (blogs I sometimes comment on) - 47
New (blogs I've recently added to my reader and have not decided what category they should go into yet) - 25

The final category is for bloggers I feel I have a "connection" with. They read my blog (can be often or rarely) and/or "follow" me and I make a special effort to follow their blogs in detail and comment as often as possible. There are 38 in this category.

Does this sound bad? I hope not.

I do it this way so I can keep this crazy hobby manageable :) Some blogs I look at like a magazine - I read and am interested but I'm probably not going to write a letter to the editor. Some blogs I look at like a FB update from a long lost classmate - I might comment, I might not, it depends on the subject and how much time I have at the moment. And some blogs I look at like a phone call from a friend - I listen, try to understand, commiserate, cry with them, rejoice with them, and reply.

My categories are very dynamic. Blogs are moved around often due to adding subscriptions, moving abandoned blogs to "dormant", and connections with the individuals behind the blogs that I read changing. The connection doesn't have to be profound, sometimes it's even one-sided, but these are the blogs I reserve most of my time for.

When I have 1000+ unread blogs, it's so easy to quickly read the "no comment" blogs in a few minutes. It's very easy to skim and skip over posts that don't look interesting in this category. The posts that build up into gigantic piles are the ones that I want to spend my time reading and commenting on.

For anyone reading this: Do you have a system like this? How do you manage all the blogs you follow?

Progress

"Sign up for a 5k, it will totally motivate you!"

I didn't believe this at all, even though I read it everywhere. When I signed up for my first 5k in the early spring it didn't serve to motivate me, it only stressed me out. I was sick for weeks leading up to it so that is definitely part of the reason but it really didn't motivate me.

I've proven myself wrong though. Being signed up for the half marathon has DEFINITELY motivated me to stay on my current training program. If I didn't sign up there would have been so many times in the last month that I'd have procrastinated or skipped running. There has only been 2 days that we haven't run (or run/walked) so far and that was because of specific events - one was Halloween weekend where we hosted a party for about 20 people on Saturday and then I went with C to our mom's house on Sunday. No long run for us that weekend but I did spend most of the entire Saturday standing and cooking and decorating and cleaning. :)

Anyway, we've been kicking ass and I still can't believe we are doing this. C is officially registered as well now. We have air and hotel booked. I received my race number and final instruction email. I'm in corral 31 - it's gonna be a long, chilly wait at the starting line!

We've found, to our surprise, that we can jog longer distances than we ever thought we could.

• On Oct. 3rd we jogged 3.5 miles straight for the first time.
• On Oct. 12th we jogged 4 miles straight for the first time.
• On Oct. 17th we jogged 6 MILES straight!! We couldn't believe it. We still can't.

Since then we've gone up and down in our run mileage, sometimes walking part way, and we are still getting faster, little by little.

Here's one of our recent awesome (for us anyway!) runs:

11/17/10
Run Time: 1:08:05
Run Distance: 5.00 miles
Ave Pace: 13:36/mi

Mile 1: 13:30
Mile 2: 13:31
Mile 3: 13:55
Mile 4: 13:39
Mile 5: 13:28

Originally when I contemplated the half marathon I thought if we could run the first 3 miles and walk the rest we would still do pretty well. I didn't really see myself being able to run very much further than 3 miles. Now I know I can. Now I think we have a good shot at running the first HALF of the half marathon. Holy crap.

53 Outside, 35 Inside

It's 53 degrees outside and very cloudy. I'm hoping it doesn't rain out my already-postponed-once 5 mile jog tonight.

Why is the AC on in my office when it's 53 degrees outside?? I can feel frigid air blowing on me. I'm currently wearing finger-less mittens and my jacket. Apparently the room I'm in by myself is in the same zone as the room next to me which houses about 8 people and all their computer equipment, meaning they have it turned DOWN. Holy balls I'm cold.

I can't believe I have 18 days left to the half marathon. I'm very excited and feel very unprepared all at the same time. Yikes.

Fertility Cure

I'd almost feel better if this were our problem...

http://www.evilmilk.com/pictures/Fertility.htm