Friday, November 15, 2013

Patience is a ......What? What is it already? Tell me!!!

It is a virtue that I apparently no longer have! I am currently 4 days past my due date and I would like to meet this little bugger now! I am doing everything I can to get this party started but I am the only one ready to party it seems.

In work our world, I am happy to say that after pulling a muscle while walking up a hill, I am at least able to add some walking back into my regimen, which is honestly a godsend. I spend about an hour each day on the treadmill just walking and reading which I think is keeping me sane.

I have also been spending some time thinking about the 2014 racing season and how I am going to approach it. I know that I would like to complete at least 1 marathon like I do every year and I am thinking with this bambino nursing a for the first part of he year, a later marathon might be the answer. Which has me focusing on possibly Chicago. That location also allows for me to visit with a ton of college friends so it is a win, win.

Other than the marathon, I am not sure what I will do. I am in a totally new racing circuit, but also a totally new racing scenario, of training with someone else to think about and take care of. I figured I will just play this all by ear and see what I am capable of.

But first thing is first, I gotta have this baby!!!

Monday, October 28, 2013

Where have I been you ask? Or did you?

Ok, so you probably didn't ask, maybe didn't even notice, but lately I have been feeling bad about just dropping off the face of the earth, so here goes! Where have I been? Well.....let's go back to my last post in March (yes it was that long ago, sigh), right around that time, I was feeling a bit tired and cranky. Ok, that is an understatement, super tired and just really mean, but only to my husband (sorry Nick!). Well it was about 4 or 5 days before that post that we found out, we were pregnant! Yup, we had thought that 2013 was the year to try and boy it didn't take very long, about 1.5 months later that "trying" paid off! So that explains being so damn tired!

So now I am 9 months pregnant, about 2 weeks out from my due date and the heir to the throne is baked and ready to enter our world! We do not know what we are having, we decided to make keep that a surprise, but we are excited to meet this little one! Here is some photographic evidence of what I have been up to. A nice round triathlete reporting for duty!


So since this is a triathlon blog, let's talk about that. My original plan was to continue to race and train up until the end of month 6. Well right towards the end of my first trimester I got in a  nice half marathon in Central Park. I ended up with a PR for the Central Park course, which was nice and I felt great doing it.

My next race was to be an Olympic Triathlon in the beginning of June. I ran into a little snag on that one. I was trained and ready to go, but I had no one to go to the race with. It was down at the beach and I was down there hanging out, but I since I didn't have any support crew, I just wasn't feeling comfortable doing it on my own, in the event that I didn't feel my best. So instead I spent the weekend at the beach and did some nice long runs instead.

Now, if I said that was all I was doing, you might think, well then what is your excuse for not blogging? You were training and racing....were you just lazy? NO! There is more!

In 2012, Nick has started to interview with companies to look for a possible new opportunity. Well one of the companies was located in Charlotte, NC. As it turned out, his company was not ready to give him up, so they made it worth his while to stick around in NYC a bit a longer. Well in February 2013 we get a call from the company in Charlotte and they tell Nick they are going to create a position for him and they want him to reconsider. So we talked it through and thought, there was no harm in considering.

Enter the pregnancy, and we started thinking that now with a child on the way, we may need to start thinking about the future and where we plan on "settling down" when we have a family since we were in the process of making one. Well in May, on mother's day, we let our parents know that they were going to be grandparents and then let them know, that we were going down to Charlotte to consider moving. At the end of May we headed down to Charlotte and fell in love. The job was good, the city was beautiful and we were sold!

At the end of June, we packed up our newly renovated apartment, and moved down to Charlotte and here we are! It was a bit of an adjustment, moving from the high paced New York City life, to a bit of a slower more relaxed culture, but we have welcomed it with open arms. We are living right near one of the big lakes down here and have spent our time taking advantage of the sunny weather and lake activities and as of right now, we believe we have found the place to start our family and create our home.

So there you have it! I have been busy! A lot has changed but all for the best. On the training front, with the big climate change that came with the move, I decided to take a hiatus from my team in July and have been getting in about an hour of cardio a day. I was able to run up until month 6 and now I have replaced running with the elliptical. The baby bouncing on your bladder can make anyone not want to run more than 3 steps without peeing in your pants! But I have remained active for sure.

I plan on entering back into training in January (as long as I am cleared by my doc) and heading into the 2014 completely renewed and refreshed. It has honestly been quite nice to retire the HR monitor for a few months and have less of a stringent plan. I think the break was needed and I am excited to come back fresh and try out this new racing circuit that I moved into!

I also plan on keeping up with this little site as much as I can in the next few months, but want back on full time in January.

So I hope you can forgive me for taking a bit of a break. Life in our family got a bit hectic but we have been enjoying it. Now we wait for Baby G to get here and then figure out what our new normal is. Then it is back to being a slave to the sport!

So now you are all caught up! Have a great week!

Friday, March 22, 2013

Energy Rollercoaster...You Must be This Tall to Ride

Welcome to my energy rollercoaster. Want a ride? It is a totally unexplainable and unpredictable approach to training! What fun!

I woke up yesterday, on the wrong side of the bed, wait make that the wrong side of the world. I pity anyone who entered into my path yesterday, since I was a force to be reckoned with. I had my grumpy pants on, high and tight.  I got up, started work and was absolutely beat. I was not in the mood to do really anything. So I did nothing. By the end of the work day a friend stopped by to try to change my mood. It took a while, but it finally worked and we headed out to dinner and I started to get out of my funk.

After a nice dinner, of steamed artichoke, eggplant rollantini and portobello mushrooms in balsamic and goat cheese, we headed back home to call it a day. It was when I got home that it hit. Energy, from nowhere! I had intended on just going to bed, and instead I sat up and watched tv for a few hours and finally my body gave up the fight and let me fall asleep.

I woke up this morning and jumped right out of bed. I got productive as soon as I got up, did some laundry, had some egg whites and hopped on the bike for an hour. Then it was lunch and an hour run and I am still going strong. I mean hey, I even got on here and am posting. What is going on!?

This weekend, as I mentioned I supposed to have a 5k, but since I will be at a bridal shower for most of my weekend and I can't seem to find a race, I will be doing 4 x 1 mile repeats instead on Sunday, barring I have energy, I guess? I seem to be in an every other day pattern, so if I stick to the pattern, I should be good to go on Sunday.

Then finally next week I go back to a normal work schedule with no late nights or anything crazy, so let's hope my energy levels go back to normal then!

I hope everyone has some fun plans for this weekend! Now I am off to watch Indiana in the NCAA tournament. HOO HOO HOO HOOSIERS!!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Zapped

Where did my energy go this week? Last week I was all over the place after working nights for the entire weekend, I came out of the gate and 100 mph and this week I could just curl up and sleep my way through it.

This past weekend I got in a good two days of rest, movie watching and workouts. I trashed my legs a bit, but no more than any other normal training weekend and felt great. Well I got up on Monday for spin and I was beat! I never "cheat" when I teach because I feel guilty, but man did I cheat on Monday. Then I came home and went right back to bed. I got up a second time for work and then managed to get in 2 more solid workouts.

Then yesterday, I crashed again! I slept until I absolutely had to get up and start working, skipping my original plan of an early morning workout, and then worked until after lunch. Then I attempted a pretty easy ride and about half way through I felt shaky and wanted to pass out. So I gave up and hit the couch. By my 7pm spin I was ready to go and I ended up teaching a pretty hard class with no cheating this time and came home wired. But now again, I am exhausted! What gives???

This week is a somewhat rest week because I am supposed to race another 5k this weekend, which I guess is good considering how I am feeling. But I mean seriously! I am hoping to snap out of this today, but I doubt it since I have been up since 4am working on an event. As for the 5k, I haven't found one yet, so it might just be race simulation for this girl!

Ok so now I need to focus on getting some food and coffee into my belly so I can fuel through today's workouts. Wish me luck!

Friday, March 15, 2013

Time Flies....

Well this past month just seemed to have flown by. With training and working no stop, my writing has been at an all time low! So let's get caught up here....

My training has picked up and I am spending a lot more time on my bike and treadmill. Coach P's rule is that if I ride on the trainer, I can divide the ride time by 1.2 since I will be at constant resistance for the entire ride. So far this year I have decided to just stick to the actual times and skip the dividing, so I am have been logging some long hours on the bike for sure.

My run fitness seems to be improving the last few months, which is also encouraging. As always it is nice to see improvement. I ran my first 5k a few weeks ago and I really kicked some ass! To be honest, going into it, I was not sure how I would do. I haven't just run a race in a long time. My runs usually come right after a nice swim and bike, so it was hard to gauge how my run would be. So I decided since it was just 3.1 miles, that I would run as hard as possible and see how far I could push my limits. And push my limits, I did. The race went like so:

Mile 1 7:19
Mile 2: 7:46
Mile 3: 7:47

I crossed the finish line and was like "WHAT?!?!" This was my fastest 5k yet and I maintained three, under 8 minute miles. I am not sure who I thought I was that day, but I would like that girl to show up to all races from here on out!

As for swimming, I have successfully forced myself to get back into it. I have  been in the pool at least twice a week for the past few weeks and I need to get that number up to three times a week, but come on, baby steps here!

My next race is going to be the More Half Marathon in April. I have run this one before and the hills are the thing that I find a bit daunting, but hey, been there, done that. I have also completed my race schedule for this year, but I think I am going to end up having to do some tweaking as I go. I would like to get in a few more running races and I am considering doing a few tri relays with a some people from my gym.

As for life in general, we are heading in out hibernation period in our household. It is usually around this time of year that we decide to stay in the house on the weekend and just lounge and keep warm. All of our renovations from the storm are complete and the last thing we need to do is buy a kitchen table and we are all set. Which would have meant the project was done, but then we decided, since everything but the tile in our guest bath got upgraded after the storm, that we are just going to take the plunge and get that done as well, then we will have an absolutely brand new home.

Today I decided to take a rest day because I am feeling a little under the weather, but tomorrow I will be on the trainer for a good 2.5 hours. Then is off to the tile store for what I hope to be the last time!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Friday, February 15, 2013

Finally Back to "Normal"

OK, so where have I been? Well, I thought just moving back into our I could hit the ground running, but it turns out that unpacking and reorganizing an entire apartment can take some time! But I can thankfully say that I am now back on track and we are starting to feel a bit normal. We are in and all construction is complete, and the house is back to just me and the dog during the day!

On the training front, I have been back at it since Jan 21st and I am starting to feel the effects. I have some races picked out and I am currently working towards a half marathon in April. Originally I wanted to go for the Ocean Drive Marathon in March, but much like the rest of the US, I got attacked by the flu and it has taken a good 4 weeks to get my body back to normal. So I am going to just keep it to one marathon this year, The NYC Marathon. After my half, I will be gearing up for May and June triathlons. But first I will focus on the half.

So there you have it, two months in two paragraphs! Now I have to head out for a quick run before I get ready for a fun girls night in NYC with three amazing ladies!

Friday, January 4, 2013

Ok So It's Been a While, But I'm Back!

So...hrmmm.........um......HI! Yup, I have resurfaced! I have been big time off the grid for the past two months and with good reason.

Ok, so let me give you a quick recap. So I mentioned that back on the weekend of October 15th, we had a little hot water heater issue, and we had to move into a hotel. Well on October 28th we were set to move out of the hotel into temporary housing, but first we had something to deal with at our house, Hurricane Sandy prep.

We slept at my friends house in our complex on Sunday night because her fiance was stuck in Atlanta and we didn't want her to be alone for the storm since the ground floors had been evacuated and on Monday we hunkered down for Sandy. Well Sandy was a sneaky little bitch. By 7pm it was hardly raining and we went outside to check on the streets. And that was when the surge showed up from the Hudson. Within about 15 minutes the courtyard was full and we gave up and headed for higher ground. We then lived in a friends 1 bedroom apartment, 5 people, 2 dogs and a cat, for the next 4 days.  While cramped, we did manage to walk away with some fun stories and two more great friends.

This is what we woke up to on Tuesday morning. This is an aerial view of my backyard (yes there is a pool under that water):


 
This is the corner of my street(photo credit to hoboken411.com):
 
 
 My condo after the water was gone:
 
 
Look who survived!!!
 

Well needless to say, Sandy extended our stay in temporary housing and changed my fitness schedule quite a bit. First off, as everyone knows by now the NY Marathon was cancelled, which I have to say was the best decision ever. I must say I was a bit turned off by reading other bloggers, whom I had previously enjoyed reading about, complain that the race had been cancelled. I mean come on, some people lost everything in this storm, you lost a race. Can you even compare? If anything you gained 4 months of great training, use it for something else, not for being a negative selfish person. (climbs off her soapbox)

Now we are still living in the city next to ours while our entire apartment gets rebuilt. We are hoping to be back in at the end of January, if things go as planned.

And I must say through all of this, it wasn't all Sandy destruction. Nick and I also spent the first two weeks of December in Costa Rica, following by a week of working and then another week in upstate NY with Nick's family. And I must say it was a much needed break.

During all of this fun, I have been trying to get in as much "training" as possible. I have been running when I can, and I salvaged by bike and trainer from the flood, and after a nice scrubbing we were back in business, so I have been getting in about an hour on the bike daily. There has really been no swimming, outside of paddling while surfing, but I have been enjoying some barre classes and hot yoga.

But now that the 2013 season is upon us, it is time to get serious. I need to create a 2013 plan and get started on losing some lbs and getting in the pool. I don't really do resolutions, so this year I am going to try to modify my behaviors a bit and slow down. Nothing in particular but just take more time to breathe it all in.

And with that, I am off to barre class. I promise, barring no other natural disasters, I will be sticking around for a while!