There goes my PR

Uh oh...this can't be good. We just ordered champagne.

Live from the airport

Yeah! I'll be able to blog from New Orleans! KT is cool with her fancy iPhone. I'll let you know how the run goes

A New House!

We just got back from settlement on the new house. Everything went really smoothly and we were in and out rather quickly, after signing our life away of course! We were going to go out for a celebratory lunch/drink but decided to run some errands first. We leave town very early tomorrow morning to head to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras Half Marathon. With the crappy week of work behind me and settlement over, I'm going to throw my running clothes in a bag and get into vacation mode!! I am really looking forward to around 9am Sunday morning when I'm done running and the fun can begin!

Good luck to everyone racing this weekend. I won't be back on line until mid next week, but it will be a post filled with exciting race news (please PR!) and probably pictures that I really shouldn't post. KT and I plan on earning our beads! ;-)

Now it's time for some packing, a quick nap, then off for celebratory happy hour.

My First Award!

Look what showed up in the mail today! My award from the Philly Distance Run!! It's my first award and needless to say, it's going to be displayed proudly in the new house.



This really cheered me up, since I've been having an insane week at work. Not only do I not get to check in on all the blogs I follow over lunch, I've been working at night from home so I haven't had a chance to do it then, either. Grrrr...don't you hate it when work gets in the way of blogging?? So my apologies for not commenting lately.

Even with work being nutso, I have been getting my workouts in. I ran 5 miles in a hurry on Monday after work and was happy with the pace (mile 1 - 8:30, mile 2 - 8:00, mile 3 - 7:40, mile 4 - 7:30, mile 5 - 7:30-8:00), finishing 5 miles just under 40 minutes. I realized that I really don't push myself enough. I could easily have done several more miles under the 8:00 pace. I felt like I could still talk and wasn't that spent afterwards. After the half marathon on Sunday, I'm going to start running harder a few times a week. I think I should wear my heart rate monitor to keep better track of things, too. I'm planning to run 6 miles tomorrow morning and a few on Friday with some added cardio and lifting. I'm off from work on Friday for settlement so I am going to get a long workout in since Saturday will be shot traveling to New Orleans.

Eye Twitch

I get an annoying eye twitch when I'm REALLY stressed. It's been twitching for a few days straight now...ugh, so annoying. Work is piling up and it's not stopping (and yes, here I am blogging), settlement on the new house is this Friday, then we leave town on Saturday for New Orleans. I'm not nervous about the race, but really excited!! I'm past the point of getting nervous for runs now, the marathon cured that!! I'm just completely overwhelmed with house stuff. There is so much to do, line up, order, buy, organize, decide, decide, decide! I've never renovated a house before, on a timeline nonetheless. I know it will all fall into place, but just thinking about all that's to come over the next 2 months is very overwhelming.

I didn't run this morning because Andy decided to sleep in and since it sounded so nice, I thought I'd join him. I will head out after work for a 5-6 miler, though. I'm also going to do one more progress test for the 100 push up challenge. See if doing them later in the day when I'm all warmed up makes any difference. If at this point I'm still not ready to move on to week 5, I might call it quits. Will kill me to do that, but I've already repeated week 4 twice. This 6 week challenge is going to turn into a 6 year challenge at the rate I'm progressing. I won't stop push ups all together though because I've noticed a HUGE change since starting this. Instead, they'll become a part of my routine lifting.

*Fingers crossed* that I can squeak out at least 31 solid, good form push ups tonight!

Not Race Ready

I just got back from a 12 mile run and I am a little disappointed. I just don't feel like I'm in shape to run a race. Now, it could have been the conditions. It was cold and we were running on packed down snow so it was pretty slippery. But I just felt slow and out of shape. My body wasn't tired, I just didn't have much to give. I finished what I set out to do and averaged a 9:37 pace (total time 1:55), just wish I felt better at the end of it.

Next Sunday I'm running the New Orleans half and I was hoping for a PR (need to beat 1:46), but I'm not sure that's going to happen. Today's run just left me feeling sort of defeated. :-( I have 10 more miles to get in to reach my goal of 100 each month so I'm thinking of doing that early this week and then not running the rest of the week. Maybe a little rest would help me feel more into it come Sunday morning.

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Frosty Fingers Photo Friday

Well, it's Photo Friday over at Nikemom so I thought I'd post a picture I took on Monday after my run in the snow. I have Raynaud's Syndrome, sometimes referred to as a "Raynaud's Phenomenon." I have it pretty good not only in my fingers, but also my toes and nose. When it happens I can't feel my fingers and they are extremely sensitive to temperature. When the blood starts to come back, they burn like hell and turn fun shades of blue/purple/red. (I'll have to get a picture of this for next Friday!) It is almost always triggered during cold weather, but air conditioning and even eating cold foods will also cause it to flair up. It's really bizarre. While it's usually contained to just finger tips, Monday after my run I could just not warm up (story of my life!) and I lost feeling in ALL fingers, the entire finger. This picture doesn't do it justice because I had to wait for Andy to get out of the shower to take the picture for me. At that point, the blood was starting to come back a bit.

I took today off from running and did the elliptical instead. My IT is feeling sooo much better since I've been using the painful, but oh so wonderful, foam roller. But now my left knee is hurting. I thought I'd give it a rest since I'm planning a 12 miler tomorrow morning. We have a little bit of a heat wave here so it will be in the 30's for my run tomorrow. Woo hoo! That's almost shorts weather!