Queen of the Hill

Today was day one of marathon training. After six months and two weeks of NOTHING. 

My stitches don't come out until tomorrow, but my ankle has felt so great.....

So when the VERY SAME LADIES that I was with the day I broke my ankle called and asked if I was ready to head up Lost Lake Trail, how could I refuse? Sure....darling Dr. Chang said that I should be wearing a boot, but I think that was just a suggestion....right?

As I was getting dressed love-of-my-life-wilderness-rescue-man opened one eye and peeked out from under the covers. He noted that I was not dressing for a little walk around the neighborhood.

He is a trained observer, you know.

He asked where I was going. He has been just a wee bit protective since he organized my 

oh-honey-don't-worry-but-I-need-your-help-because-I've-fallen-and-I-cant-get-up-and-I'm-laying-in-the-woods-a-couple-miles-from-the-car rescue.

When I told him I would be going up the trail with the broken ankle posse, he decided to get dressed and go with us. He even brought a gun with bear bullets for good measure.

All that worry for nothing. The first training hike is complete. Really can't call it a run, but we climbed 700 feet over a mile and descended with no problems. Not even a bear.

Oh. Dear. Me. Oh. My. I just signed up for another marathon. I understand you may not be as excited/concerned/afraid as I am, but then again, I am the one with stitches still in my ankle.

What happened you ask? Well, last November, I was training for a 50K.

 

And then, I decided to catch up to my training partners. On a downhill. With my spikes in my backpack. Instead of on my feet. 

Silly girl, spikes are for feet, not backpacks.

Oops. That hurt. Your arch should NEVER touch your calf. That is bad. Very bad. Quite painful, in fact. But then the nice doctor put this lovely plate in and made my bones right again.

The only teeny tiny itsy bitsy problem was that it turns out my body was not so keen on that plate. 

Nor the screws.

So last week, I had them back out.

And today, I signed up to run a marathon.

The End.

Or maybe, The Beginning.

Brooke's TNT Marathon Page

Carbo Loading by Dinky-T

Tonight, for dessert, the kids had angel food cake topped with red and golden raspberries picked from our yard and homemade whipped cream.

While the kids were eating their dessert at the breakfast bar, I had my back to them, cooking tortillas for their lunches. (Lately they have been making tortilla pizzas with turkey pepperoni.)

Dinky-T asked, "Mom, can I have a tortilla?"

"I don't know, can you?"

"Mom, may I have a tortilla?"

"Sure."

Dinky-T grabbed a tortilla and went back to the counter with the other kids. I continued to cook tortillas until I heard, "Now that's what I call carbohydrates!"



Hmmm...I am thinking that an angel-food-raspberry-whipped-cream-burrito is not exactly ideal carb-loading...

Excuses, Excuses...Wait, Have I Used That Before?

Since the plane crash, I have been a little leery about running.

Okay, not really, but I have been very busy with a project and getting my new company fully up and running (yay).

Okay, I have been busy with the project, but honestly, I have skipped some runs. I was a cruddy running partner and cancelled a run with H3 just to take the kids to a movie. And to eat buttered popcorn. Sprinkled with M&M's.

There, it's out. Whew. Don't you feel better now? I do.

I did manage to run with Pacemaker and the new TNT gang last Saturday. I did 7.09 miles, 10:39 average. I am getting to my speed goal, slowly but surely. Emphasis on slowly...wait, I am starting to see a connection here...NAH.

After the run (and a much needed shower), the kids and I headed to Seward to help Nana & Bumpa winterize the boat.

Big-C was more thrilled than he looks.

Tinkerbell was under the weather with a nasty cold. Gia's daughter Cari-boo came along for the ride because (1) we invited her and (2) her sister got-to-go-to-the-fair-and-life's-not-fair-wait-that's-too-funny-to-be-whiny-so-can't-she-come-with-us-we-are-going-to-stay-in-the-hotel-and-swim-in-the-pool.

I am glad Gia puts up with my whining.

Winterizing the boat was pretty labor intensive. The first day we worked in the cabins, cleaning and removing everything that might freeze. The second day was to be spent on the "mechanical" aspects of winterizing. The second day brought a gripping realization that I have not been doing enough upper body workouts.

Oy.

The engine and pump compartments are way too small for a man of my dad's size to fit into. It is also worth mentioning that my father had a heart transplant 4 years ago this weekend, and I hate to see him crawling around and contorting his body trying to squeeze into spaces filled with machinery....so in I went. Unfortunately, there were two problems with my plan to play plumber/mechanic; I have no idea what I am doing and I apparently do not have enough forearm strength to do some of the work.

The solution to problem number one: take a photo of the part, pass the camera to dad, follow instructions. Check. The solution to problem number two: brace my body against anything and use my body weight to add force. Nine ugly bruises and one sarcastic "are you having a baby in there?" comment from my mother (my grunts of effort) later, the boat was winterized.

Before we left Seward, we had to stop and have lunch at the smoke shack. Ohhhh yummy. I chose the healthiest option available, smoked cod, and WOW who new healthy could taste so good. Thank you, Smoke Shack.

So healthy I could almost run. Tee Hee.

Well That Doesn't Happen Everyday

So I have a confession....I may have caused this:

It's a plane crash.

I didn't mean to crash an airplane.

Let me 'splain.

On Tuesday, Unagi (the doggy) and I left the house for a dreaded tempo run. When I told Unagi our plan, she was clearly not thrilled. I thought we would follow a new route I experimented with last week. I have been hesitant to run on the trail system by myself, and I don't care to run along busy roads, so I found a route through the neighborhood that passes through a section of the airport.

So Unagi and I started with a 20 minute warm up which took us to the North side of Lake Hood. We then started the tempo portion of the run. Our goal was 20 minutes at the maximum sustainable pace. Oy.

Twelve minutes into the torture, while gasping for breath and sweating profusely, I heard sirens. My first thought was that a good samaritan had called the emergency vehicles to assist me, as I looked (and sounded) like someone about to have a heart attack.

As we followed the road that winds through the airport, we were passed by police cars, fire trucks, an ambulance and airport emergency response trucks. My relief that they weren't coming for me was tempered by the fact that they were coming at all.

At the fifteen minute mark, as I turned East to head home, I was met by an airport-emergency-response-man. He informed me that the road was closed due to a plane crash.

I immediately felt VERY bad as I realized that my gasping for breath must have created a dramatic and unexpected cross wind, causing the plane to crash immediately after take-off.

I'm sorry.

I felt so bad, I didn't even tell the airport-emergency-response-man that I was in a bit of a pinch now. You see, I had no hydration or fuel with me, and the detour to get home added another 1.5 miles to my route. Ouch.

I opted to slow back to a normal pace, tough it out until the last half mile, then walk the cool down.

I'm sorry Mr. Pilot. Promise not to breathe so hard next time.

Belated Race Report

Okay my dear friends, supportive family, fellow bloggers, and occasional random stranger, time to suck it up as readers, because this post is a race report.

It is not clever. It is not witty. It is dry and meaningless to everyone but me. However, I ran 13.1 miles (painful), so I figure the least you can do is read my recap (slightly less painful).

{Pretty please.}

Unless, of course, you had to listen to my verbal recap already, in which case you may jump for joy now, skip to the end, and leave the comment, "Way to Go!"

If you have had to sit through my verbal recap more than once, OR, if you showed up at the finish line and were the recipient of a very sweaty hug, you may close your browser now. I won't be mad. Promise. Promise-serious. Promise-serious-Evan-pinky-swear.

The race was a mini TNT reunion and my plan was to run with H3.

My goal was to finish the race under 2:30. For my non-running friends: Amazing, huh?

For my running friends: Remember, this is chubby-bubby-turning-athlete-in-the-frigid-north. Last August, pathetically ran a 5k in 47 minutes. Passed by walkers. Thought I was going to die. Sucking air more dramatically than a fish out of water. I realize you are laughing too hard to do the math, so let me help you. That is a 15:16 mile. Yes, I know I could have walked faster.

Anyhoodle. I thought my goal of 2:30 was realistic, my training runs have been averaging under 11:00 minute miles and my last 10k was 1:06 (again, just under 11:00 average).

The race course for the Skinny Raven Half was a very different experience than the Mayor's Marathon. The Skinny Half course begins as an out-and-back along the Coastal Trail from downtown Anchorage to Lyn Ary park. On the return, the course heads East towards the mountains, taking runners to Tikishla park for a keyhole turn-around.
So Holly-Hell-Hills and I set off when the race started, feeling great and taking it easy. Felt great at the turn-around at Lyn Ary. I was excited because the out-and-back course allowed me to see my son clipping at a solid pace. This was his first 1/2 marathon and I couldn't help but be a little worried.

Then we headed East to Tikishla.

Oy.

If only I had remembered that from Westchester to Tikishla is a slow climb. So slow it is hard to see that the trail is climbing. But I didn't remember, so four miles later I felt ready to cry. I was very confused and extremely dismayed that I felt so wiped by mile 7 (maybe 8). We were on the backside of the keyhole turnaround, and I had to do something. I told H3 I needed to regroup and she offered to stick it out with me.

Regroup Plan: walk the water station, hit the porta-potty, refill the hand held water bottle, GU 5 minutes early, remove undershirt, gradually resume running pace.

Ohhhh did that feel better. As we started back towards the finish line, it dawned on me that the struggle had been the uphill, because we were flying (okay, 9:30) and it felt great.

At mile 10, H3 started to struggle with a recent injury. We decided to stick it out together, so we started run/walk cycles to ease her back.

Mile 12 we moved to mostly walking.

In the end, we finished 2:39, and I am okay with the time. It was great to stay with a friend, enjoy the company, and finish together.

H-Bomb was there at the finish and presented me with my finisher's medal

He enjoyed a fabulous race, finishing 1:51. Not bad for a 14-year-old's first race.
This put him 5th in his age group (14-19) and 107 in the men's overall. I am so proud.

In the end, the race was a good lesson, my time was okay, my son had a great race, and (drum roll please).....another toenail down.

Made ya look.

When I'm Not Running...

I have been trying to stay busy while Nick is gone by taking on a few projects around the house.

This project started innocently. A few cans of leftover paint from various projects around the house.

A few creative children with a playhouse painting plan.
Painting Plan: paint 3 walls solid colors, 1 wall for murals, then "splatter" the solid walls.
Did someone say splatter?




What is proper etiquette with regard to the laundry of children you invited over and participated in a full-on paint fight with? Tide? Replacement clothing? What if said children were provided paint smocks, however, said paint smocks failed?
Hosing them off seemed like the best option. Notice the clean child in the foreground. She opted out once the paint started flinging.
Smart girl. The others should have followed.
Hmmm, Tinkerbell looks like she has war paint on....rumor has it she actually started the paint fight. But that's just a rumor.

I'm Not That Kind of Girl

Dear Nick, Nickie-Poo-Poo, Nickles & Pickles, Hon, Man-O-My-Dreams,

I miss you so much my heart aches and I can't quite catch my breath and I feel kind of mopey and discombobulated.

I am just not normally that kind of girl.

Really. I don't believe in letting boys do this to me.

But I miss you. And I don't really want to tell you how much until after you get home because I don't want you to worry or be sad because I am so thrilled that you are chasing your dream right now.

I must be really out of sorts because I don't even feel like blogging or facebooking or tweeting or anything. I don't even want to type LOL.

And I feel like a schmuck for being such a sap because Debbie's husband is deployed and she isn't whining randomly on the Internet.

So I promise to stop whining. Promise-Serious. I want you to know that I am really proud of you. I believe in you!

Love,

B


P.S. I think the cure for feeling like I can't quite catch my breath is to run a half marathon next Sunday. Then I definitely won't be able to catch my breath.

During Intermission, We Have a Guest Blogger...

Translated:
One day a girl named Ella went to buy a blue purse. She also bought a medium dress. When she got dressed she was pretty. She had a date. She loved him. She kissed him. She almost fainted. She thought she was love sick. She danced until midnight. She lived happily ever after.

By Dinky-T who is sooooo cute I want to kieest her.

Chain of Events (or) KARMA (or) Mother Nature's Revenge, Part 1

Where to begin this tale of woe that leads us from cheery, sugary penguins to sweating, swearing and pain....

I think we should follow the chain of events that allowed KARMA to bite us in the tuchis.

The wheels of motion were set in place with the making of the penguin cupcakes for Tinkerbell's birthday. As you may recall, the creation of those cupcakes kept me up until the wee small hours on Friday night. Nick was also up late, putting the final touches on the interior of our playhouse so it would be ready for our backyard barbecue on Saturday night. While both activities (and maybe our inner over-achievers) caused us to oversleep on Saturday morning, I was quick to blame those sweet little penguins for our failure to show up at 8:00 am to run with our training group. It was easier than self reflection on five hours of sleep.

{I believe this would be the point at which Mother Nature nudged KARMA and said something along the lines of, "Can you believe her? Always pointing the finger of blame elsewhere. First her friends and family, now innocent members of the animal kingdom. We need to teach her a lesson!" KARMA, too humble to point out that sugary penguin cupcakes are not exactly part of mother nature's kingdom, responded, "Okay."}

The rest of our Saturday was so jam-packed that we were unable to make up our run. Tinkerbell's birthday filled our afternoon. Nick did manage to squeeze in a workout since Tink's party was at the Alaska Rock Gym.

My workout at the rock gym was centered around straining to look up (can you blame me??) and taking care of these spawn:

After the birthday party, we had to skedaddle home to get ready for Nick's going away barbecue. He is leaving next weekend for the Alaska law enforcement training academy. Since he will be gone for close to four months, we decided to throw a little shindig to wish him well.

The barbecue was a blast - somewhere between fifty and sixty friends and family members showed up.

I am pretty sure everyone had a good time....

Doesn't everyone love goggles?

{My mother said, "Oh, I think I should get Nick these cool motorcycle goggles for Christmas." I replied, "No." "Why not?" my mother innocently enquired. "Because he will wear them."}

Anyhoodle, you might be guessing already that we didn't run on Sunday either.

Darn those goggles.

The Penguins Made Me Do It

We didn't run Saturday morning. We told our running group we would be there at 8:00 AM, chipper and ready to run.

We lied.

The penguins made me do it.

Sure, they look sooooo cute and innocent now. They weren't so cute at 1:00 AM. Have you ever tried to pipe penguin eyeballs at one o'clock in the morning?

It's not really the penguins fault we didn't run. I blame Tinkerbell, our middle daughter. The penguin cupcakes were for her birthday party. She opened the cookbook , pointed to a picture of these little cuties, widened her big blue eyes, and said, "Will you make these for my birthday? Please? You can make ANYTHING."

Maybe I should blame my niece. She brought the cookbook to our house.

I am such a sucker for the one-two punch of "please" combined with a compliment.

This little guy looks like I felt at 8:15 AM when Pacemaker called to see why we weren't at the Lagoon.

I was so tired, I couldn't figure out how to answer the phone.

The penguins made me do it.

Ohhh Summertime

I am still running, but between the camping, hiking, fishing, and biking with four of our kids and the two nieces, one nephew, and one father-in-law-in-law (it's complicated) visiting, it is a little crazy around here.

This summer has been incredible, and we are ferociously attacking all that it has to offer.

That's Dinky-T. She is my mini-me. That is her summer attack pose.

Here are a few invaluable lessons from this summer:

1. Don't hike Mt. Marathon with 10 kids, 3 adults and 1 dog if one of the adults has a fear of heights.
2. Bananas on a boat are NOT okay.
3. Five-year-olds are impervious to bloody foot blisters if they are having fun.
4. Mothers of five-year-olds who develop bloody foot blisters while hiking 8.5 miles and climbing over 3500 feet into an ice field tend to be VERY unhappy with you, even if you are enriching their child.
5. Not everyone gets "fish fever", therefore not everyone thinks it is okay to keep fishing at 11:00 PM when home is a two hour boat ride and three hour car ride away (not to mention an hours worth of fish cleaning yet to do), and you have to work the next day.
6. It is hard to run at 85 degrees when your body is conditioned to run at 20 degrees.
7. Toenails really are for sissies.
8. Nobody uses Kleenex like the Pacemaker.
9. If your recently-graduated-from-high-school-moving-to-Seattle-for-college-soon daughter chooses to say goodbye to you by bringing the entire family to the restaurant where she sings on Tuesday nights and then proceeds to belt out the lullaby you have sung to her since she was an infant, it will reduce the entire restaurant, including you, to tears.
10. Life is good. Really really good.

I Love My Life

It's Friday and the-gang-minus-one-plus-two are heading to Quartz Creek to camp for the weekend. This trip marks the inaugural voyage of the '66 Clark Cortez motorhome we recently purchased (on a whim). Teg is staying in town and working and barbecuing (minus-one) and we have my niece and nephew from California with us (plus-two).

This is the man who happily bought the '66 Clark Cortez with me.

It's older than we are. And the interior is the color of his shirt. Nick and I are a perfect match. I don't know anyone else who loves orange and green as much as I do.

That's our shed/playhouse. Told you we love green. The paint color prompted my dad to say, "I just don't get you."

Personally, I think my mother is to blame since my baby crib and dresser were avocado green with orange flowers.

Anyhoodle, we are off to camp in our retro motorhome with the Pacemaker, SuperCool and kids. They are part of the added bonus of training for our first marathon; we have made some great new friends. I am planning to run up at the campground, we have a 50 minute run scheduled for tomorrow. We'll see how that goes...

Operation Chubby Bubby Phase 2

With less than eight weeks to go until the Humpy's Half Marathon, I put together a potential training schedule.

Ouch. I am sweating just thinking about it.

The schedule might be aggressive (I would love your comments on this), but I have three goals for this segment of my training:

1. Improve my speed. I would like to finish under 2:30. Don't laugh. To all my non-runner friends, trust me, this is slow. Speed walkers will (and have) beat me.

2. Lose 10 more pounds. To my runner friends and coaches, yes, I know, training is not time to lose weight, but this is a journey from chubby-bubby to athlete, remember?

3. To not run into another dead baby T-Rex.

At least, that's what I thought it was in the dark. In Hawaii. Delirious from a 10 mile run in the heat and humidity. In the dark. Did I mention it was dark?

The Longest Three Miles

How is it that three miles can feel SO hard, so long, so UPHILL, so are-you-kidding-me-with-this-huffing-and-puffing, and so darn sweaty when the first 15 miles of a marathon seemed so easy?

We ran 29 minutes last night, 2.9 miles. My feet had swollen two sizes by the time we were done. And somehow, I managed to sweat away every last bit of hydration I have taken in since the marathon.

H-Bomb ran with us. He actually ran ahead of us, behind us, around us, up hills next to us, further than us, and still managed to beat us to the end. It's good to be 14.

He just told me he wants to do a marathon with me next year. He wants to qualify for Boston. It almost brought a tear to my eye, but I had no body fluid left.

I think he can qualify for Boston if he sticks to his training. Even if he wants to qualify just for the trip.

I love my son.

Damage Assessment

The good news is that we feel much better than we anticipated after our first marathon.

The bad news is that further inspection of my Fred-Flintstone-Feet revealed another grey toenail this morning.

No, it is not a fungus. It is the result of my freakishly-fat-feet pounding into the toe of my running shoes for 26 miles.

My left foot took the beating on the tank trails:

It doesn't look too bad, but that second toenail is just floating on a blister right now.

My right foot looks pretty good:

The purple toenail is from a training run.

My feet are nothing compared to the Pacemaker's foot. She has a purple blister the size of a small lime.

Ouch.

Pedicure, anyone?