Yesterday to Tomorrow

Happy New Year!


The holidays sure came and went so quickly.  I wish I had the time to bask in the joy of the season, but I felt as if we rushed right through Christmas, then on to New Year's Eve, and here I am, just about a week into the new year and wondering where December went.   I thought I would do a lot more blogging during the holidays, but with everyone except me off from work and school, I had very little computer time, unless I could check e-mails and Facebook on my iPhone.  

What a difference a year makes.


Last year I was not a happy camper at my former place of employment.  It was unnecessarily stressful, brought on by a uber micro managing business owner/boss who encouraged throwing your fellow coworkers under the bus.  I was constantly sick and dropped a solid 10 pounds, 15 if I count the week my weight dropped to a number I haven't seen in years.  It was not a healthy weight loss and I did not have 15 pounds to lose.  10 was OK, but losing weight without wanting to is scary, especially when I was eating high calorie foods (on purpose) to maintain weight.  I was constantly stressed working in a toxic environment - not only people toxic, but something (physically) there made me ill.  From Monday through Friday my eyes would feel dry and puffy, my head felt fuzzy,  and I always felt lethargic.  Saturday and Sunday (my days off) I felt clear-minded and healthy.  Monday it would start all over again. Running was my true refuge, no matter how crummy I felt. Running gave me clarity of mind and I could feel grounded again.  I don't know what I would have done without running since it kept me sane. I remember the few days after I left that office, sitting on the couch watching TV and realizing how amazingly good I felt for the first time in months.   

This year I am a very happy camper at my current place of employment, where I began working about a month after I left the toxic office. It may not be the fanciest or most up-to-date technical wonder of an office, we still use a DOS based program, but  it's great when your employer always says things like "thanks for being here today, " and means it.  We all share in each other's accomplishments and look out for each other when needed.  My only gripe about my current job is that I'm not working enough hours.  Oh, and the weight came back.  That's not really a gripe, though.  I was hoping to at least hang on to a 5 pound weight loss, but I'll take the happy + 5 pounds over the miserable -15 pounds any day.  My running has stayed the same, though.  I wish I could say that a happier workplace has lead to better running, but that keeps changing, regardless of what's going on in my professional/personal life. 


Other Stuff...


My son's band actually played a show at the House of Blues, Downtown, San Diego -- and got paid.

UNDEAD GARDEN performing "Grilled Cheese."  My son is on the drums.

Not bad for an iPhone/Facebook photo taken by a parent (me) trying to look inconspicuous. 

After the gig, and back at home with is band mates & friends, Hubs felt the need to make a few grilled cheese sandwiches for the band. 

 My son started out as a lead guitar player, and is quite talented with his guitar playing abilities, but there were always issues finding a reliable drummer.  They would find a drummer who would seem consistent for a few weeks, then suddenly be late, not show up, or move out of town without notice to anyone.  My son took a few drumming classes at the community college, and took it upon himself to sharpen his skills.  Now that he's THE drummer, the band has consistent practices with complete sets and are now booking gigs.  I'm floored.  They still need to sharpen their sound a bit, but the fact that they already have a following and are booking gigs is amazing.  Their sound is sort of punk-metal. 

New Year's Resolutions?

I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but I have been known to do some goal setting.  Once I am finished with prior race commitments, I'm going to take a break.  I have a few races planned up until June, and after that I'm going to just cruise and run without a particular race in mind.  I'll continue to run, but running won't be the sole focus. There's so much more out there, and maybe I need to refocus on my other passions that have been left in the dust.  

My current agenda includes the Carlsbad Half Marathon, which is taking place in a couple of weeks.  As much as I would love to say that I'm 100% prepared for this race, I'm not.  Regardless of how ill prepared I am, this is one of my favorite races.  Even though it starts off at a shopping mall, most of the half marathon is along the coast, and it's beautiful.  This is a race for the mind.  The two times I've run it I've been sick, and just ever so lucky to finish.  I'd say running along the coast kept me going.  My game plan for this time is to (again) just finish and I'm OK with that.  I don't need a PR to enjoy the ride. 

Song from Thursday, December 22, 2011:

(There's No Place) Like Home for the Holidays - Perry Como

PEACE

(There's No Place) Like Home for the Holidays

December brought a slew of non-stop busy-ness.  It's been party, party, party... sort of.  I can't remember the last time Hubs and I were invited to a grown up party together until this year.  After Las Vegas, we had four holiday parties last week, plus our wedding anniversary of 29 years on December 11th.  This week was a little calmer but busy with baking and trying to remember what we did with certain Christmas decorations.  I went old school this year and used most of the Christmas decorations from the years when my kids were in grade school.   We also put up the tree in the living room this year. 

The dining room where the tree usually goes is, uh, having issues...  

Like last year, the Kiddo was my decorating buddy and helped me with the majority of the decorating.  Hubs put one ornament on, and and my son put a few up high were I couldn't reach, and my daughter was oblivious to other life around her while busy with studying for finals.  

Living room fireplace.  

I would so love to have a warm fire, but this fireplace needs to be repaired or torn down and rebuilt.  I put candles in it but there's no damper, and the air coming in through the top blows out my candles. *sigh*    The kiddo pointed out that since we can't burn anything in this fireplace that Santa won't get burned when he comes down our chimney.

The Kiddo

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas because I got this surprise delivered today:

Nothing says Merry Christmas more than socks, holiday peppermint Gu's, and Stingers from  blogger Tara - Colorado Runner!   Yay! 

The packages were shipped from REI.  When UPS delivered the boxes I was wracking my head trying to remember what I had ordered from REI.  Then it clicked that these were from my Secret Santa from the Bloggie Gift Exchange.  One box contained the great pair of Smartwool running socks, and the other box contained the Gu's and Stingers.  The timing is perfect because I'm out of any type of gel/goo electrolyte and I just might have to save a couple for the Carlsbad half marathon next month.  The socks are on my feet right now:

Warm and cushy!  I can't wait to run in these! Thanks so much, Tara!

On the running front, not a lot of running has been happening.  Somewhere between the parties and work, I caught a cold.  It's not a bad cold, but just enough to mess up the flow of day-to-day life.   I know I had the cold before I had to deal with the bratty snot-nosed kid patient and his clueless mother.* Gross. I hope to do a slow, longish run this Saturday morning, which happens to be Christmas Eve.

In other news, for the first time in YEARS (2000?) I received a cash bonus at work.  I honestly wasn't expecting much of anything, maybe a box of candy, but since I'm part-time right now I felt the bonus was rather generous.  I had plans for new Ugg boots and have change left over for an outfit, BUT one of my cats became rather ill yesterday and my bonus went towards paying the vet bill. Merry Christmas to my vet. Oh well.   At least I had that cash to help lessen the blow of that hefty vet bill, and for that I am grateful.    FYI, it was my little girl cat, Luna, the little bitty 8 pound cat who can beat up our 75 pound dog.  The vet thinks it's a thyroid issue.  She's doing much better now and will be on meds for a week.  Good times.

This year we didn't send out Christmas cards.  I suppose we could have, we just didn't.  I'm thinking of New Year's cards.   Just in case, consider this picture of the Kiddo and me your Christmas card from me:

Wishing you all lots of Christmas cheer!

Song from Thursday, December 8, 2011:  

Good Intentions - Toad the Wet Sprocket

 PEACE

*On the scale of one to ten in snotty-nosed grossness, this kid was a 10, plus he sneezed all over everything.  It was so gross that I felt the need to wipe everything down with rubbing alcohol when he and his mother left the building.  I'm not a germophobe, but felt gross dealing with this obnoxious kid.  I just don't understand parents who let their kids run a muck in a medical office, or any professional office.  Sheesh.

Good Intentions

You know what they say about good intentions?


I'm sure the race coordinators at Competitor had really good intentions when planning the new night race for the Las Vegas Rock N Roll marathon and half marathon. I'm sure it all looked good on paper. The reality was another story.


The expo was pretty straight forward and the same as any other race expo, such as retrieving  race numbers, d-tags, swag bag, t-shirt and freebies (mostly food) at the expo, plus peruse the expo for the latest and greatest gear.  Hubs and I attended the expo on the Friday before the marathon/half marathon, so it wasn't too bad as far as crowds and getting out of there with in a reasonable amount of time.


This year the race was a night race. It sounds kind of fun to run the strip at night with all the lights, right? The marathoners started around 4:00 PM and the half marathoners started around 5:30 PM. With the wave starts, I think we stared around 6:15PM-ish.  The corrals were rather tight, and it was hard to get into our appropriate corrals.  I was supposed to be in corral 9 and ended up being good with starting in corral 13. I've started other races that were quite crowded and just started in the wrong (higher numbered) corrals because I couldn't  move due to crowds, so I really wasn't too surprised that this was the case.  I figured it would ease up and become less congested once the race started.  It did ease up a little, but, due to the fact people couldn't get into their appropriate corrals, there were walkers in front of runners, which made for slow going in some parts of the race where I felt good enough to kick things in gear.  After the sun went down the temps dropped down to the low 30s and the wind kicked up in spots. It's also really dry in the high desert and you tend to get thirstier. With about 44,000 people running total, they did not prepare for running out of electrolyte, gels, and water cups. I carry a 20 ounce water bottle with me, and might need to refill it once. I refilled it 4 times at water stations. There was one stretch of the course where they ran out of cups and there was no water for 3.5 miles. The marathoners were mixed in with the runners at a several points, which screwed up those marathoners who were trying for a BQ or PRs.  There were about 20,000 MORE  people this year.* I was unintentionally elbowed and bumped several times, and have a pretty good bruise on my arm from someone's elbow. I was often stuck behind groups of people who were much slower, and it was hard to get around them.  As much as I tried, I couldn't speed up at the end, because I just could not navigate around people.   After the finish line the water seemed like long ways away, and I had to ask someone where she got her water. I know there were tables with bagels, bananas, fruit, bars, etc, but it was so crowded I never made it to those tables. It also took me a while to get a mylar blanket. I was FREEZING. When I ran I was mostly fine. Stopping was another story. I was shivering while I waited for Hubs, who was about 10 minutes behind me, and that seemed like an eternity. My gloves got wet at the water stations and my fingers were freezing.  I really wanted a hot beverage like hot tea or hot apple cider. Even hot chocolate would have sufficed, and I'm allergic to dairy. Heck, a cup of hot water would have been great. We didn't stick around for our post race beer, we just wanted to get our gear, use a restroom, and go back to our room, but that took about two hours total. Mandalay Bay, where the race ended, is connected to two other hotels and an overpass walkway to the hotel we stayed at.  We thought we could walk through the hotels and overpass to get to our hotel room at New York, New York, which should have taken 10 to 15 minutes.  We never made it out of Mandalay Bay.  We got stuck in a cluster f*** of people trying to do the same thing.  People were getting sick and passing out around us.  The EMTs had a hard time getting to people in need. It looked like a war zone.  It turns out part of that walkway area was blocked off for some Las Vegas premier for a Michael Jackson tribute show.  Talk about bad timing! It took us well over an hour to get back to our room, which was less than a mile from the finish.

Edit - Check out this article as to why so many people got sick!
http://www.lvrj.com/news/marathon-runners-say-they-were-sickened-135233493.html


We missed the after parties because it was so late when we got back to our room, but we were too tired to go anywhere. While I showered, hubs went into the hotel lobby area to get food and bring it back to our room.  The hotel restaurants were OVERWHELMED with post run people just trying to get something to eat. A couple of places told hubs that they were no longer seating people or placing to go orders.  He managed to find a place that had pasta, which turned out to be fantastic, but maybe because I was so hungry by the time he made it back up to our room at midnight. 


The next morning we didn't have time for much more than packing and catching the shuttle to the airport.  While at the airport we heard stories from other runners who had the same experience.   I'm sure Competitor has heard an ear-full by now. I'm also sure they saw everything that happened from their heated and catered VIP viewing section... I guess they were initially too busy paying attention to their bottom line and not the finish line.


There were some high points.  They actually had women's sized t-shirts this year, finally, and it FITS.  Hubs and I attended a pre race carb load dinner at the condo one of our track club buddies, and we saw a lot of friends there. I also met up with my blogger friend Dawn (Dawn on the Run) from Canada at a Tweet-up. I also met Mary (The Running Green Girl), Carrie (Family Fitness Food) and a few other bloggers (who I can't for the life of me remember their names, but they are wonderful people!!!) I also did better than I anticipated. My mile splits weren't that great, but I was happy to see the finish time of 2:36:48 because it felt more like a 3 hour run running at night, plus it was hard to pace myself with so many people.  I'm generally happy with my run.  I did  chat with a few (a very few) people who enjoyed every aspect of the race, and I'm glad to know it was enjoyable for those people.  I'm guessing they were either uber fast and got out of the race area before the chaos hit, or they were walkers who were at the back of the pack and missed the bulk of the chaos.

The medal is pretty nice. It even glows in the dark. 

The skyline is actually a sparkly green, but it didn't photograph that way.  I didn't know it glowed in the dark medal until someone mentioned it to me once I returned home.  Of course I tested the medal for it's glow in the dark capabilities.  All the yellow coloring on the medal does glow in the dark, and even though it's a novelty, it's still pretty cool.  


Besides the race, hubs and I did enjoy a night out.  We caught a show, Zumanity, and had a fabulous dinner and drinks on Friday night.  Sure, we could easily have a nice dinner out in our hometown, but sometimes a change of pace can do a relationship some good, and being in Las Vegas for some time with hubs was worth the effort of being there. 


I'm not sure why, but I have DOMS in both forearms. I'm guessing I was tensing up after the race while trying to keep warm.  I dunno. 


Now it's back to normal and continue training for my next race (my favorite) The Carlsbad Half Marathon in mid January.


Song from Monday, November 28, 2011
Monday Morning - No Doubt - Run-DMZ

PEACE

*The 2010 Las Vegas Rock 'n' Roll Marathon/Half Marathon event had 24,403 participants listed as finishers.

PS...  Any one else having issues with Blogger?  I'm having issues with comments and showing my full list of  followers.

Sunday Morning

I went walking along the coast with Hubs on Sunday and took the grown-up camera.

It's hard to believe this is November with weather so warm.

Song from Wednesday, November 16, 2011:

Human - The Killers

PEACE