Nothing At All

It's taper week. I had every intention to run the hill yesterday but I woke up feeling like I was beat up. No, I wasn't beat up, but I came down with a flu bug/cold/something. I suppose it started on Saturday night, but I chalked up feeling fatigued to just being tired -- after all, it was about 10:00 PM when the incredible urge to fall asleep set in, but keep in mind I'm usually up until around midnight on weekends. Homemade chicken soup with brown rice was comforting, and I'm guessing all the OTC drugs helped too. I'm feeling like this is a short-lived illness because I'm already starting to feel better. I might put on a workout DVD and attempt some sort of workout today, and see how the rest of the week goes, where running is concerned.

We know where Luna the cat is. She was in the work shed at the far end of the yard, but my husband thought it would be a good idea to run the Shop-Vac just to make enough noise to scare her out. That sort of worked, but she's hiding now under the house. The main thing is that she's safe and we can at least leave food and water for her.

I also did a lot of blog reading this weekend. I need get in the habit of at least saying "hi" in the comment section when I visit. There's a lot of great people out there.

Peace

Good Day

Activity: Run
Date: 10/12/07 11:03 AM
Distance: 11.13 miles
Time: 1:57:23
Speed: 5.7 mph
Pace: 10' 32 min/mile
Calories: 1053

I had intended to do only 10 miles, but to get back to my car I had to put in the extra 1.13 mile. Today's run was much easier than last Friday's battle with the wind. Today I didn't push so hard and still got in a decent average mile, and that's something to feel good about. It's also gorgeous outside with big puffy clouds, a mild sea breeze, and just the usual small groups of parents and their toddlers at the playgrounds, the occasional runner, a roller blader, and a few bike riders. I also passed a couple of women playing guitars and harmonizing, and that was a nice "pick-me-up" to run past.

Last night was date night with my husband. I pretty much planned out my clean meal, which was chicken and shrimp fajitas, leaving the tortillas out of the equation. I ended up sending my meal back because the chicken was over cooked and the shrimp was like rubber . Basically, I ended up with nothing, and the waitress took my meal off of our bill. We've eaten at this place before, and the food is usually OK, with the standard, touristy take on Mexican cuisine. Maybe the chef was having a bad night. I don't know. I really wasn't that hungry after that, so I pretty much chugged on water the rest of the evening.

I'm not sure what's planned for this weekend, yet. It might involve some shopping for my daughter's birthday on 10/16.

My little girl cat, Luna, is missing. I'm not too worried yet, because the first week we lived in this house my tabby boy kitty (Lumpy) was gone for over a week, then one night he was up in the pine tree in the front yard, wailing. I had to coax him down with smelly canned cat food. I kind of think Luna will do something similar.
















Peace

Hard To Say I'm Sorry

Today's workout - Rodney Yee's Yoga DVD

Before I completely forget, this is a picture of my brother-in-law, George, participating in the Nautica Malibu Triathlon last month, running to the finish! Congratulatons, George!

By now, I'm sure everyone has heard about the Chicago Marathon. Since others have discussed it much better than I ever could, I won't write much about it here, but you can check out this article/opinion over at CRN, which conveys everything I'm thinking, and then some. I did call my sister who lives just outside of Chicago to hear her take on it. She agreed that it was quite ridiculous that the event organizers ran out of water and electrolyte drinks, and blaming it on the runners was rather irresponsible. She mentioned that her son, who works on Michigan Avenue, said that the streets resembled a war zone after the event was called off. I'm only hoping that the event organizers formally apologize to the runners they may have offended (if they haven't already) and learn from this event debacle so it never happens again.

There are 10 more days until my half marathon. I still want to fit in one more long run, probably tomorrow morning. For all practical purposes, I'm ready. My goal is to run the entire way, even with the hills, which I know I can do (and have done several times before.) I'm hoping that not walking will give me better finish time than my last half marathon, even with those hills. Aside from the event, I am looking forward to seeing fellow bloggers Leslie and Dori, and from the Yahoo Running group, Denise.

I *think* our internet connection is finally fixed. The electrician came back out yesterday and did more re-wiring.


Peace

Orange Crush

I've been sans-internet for a couple of days. My very handy husband accidentally drilled through the internet wiring while working on something else. Our electrician came by last night and re-wired what he could, so now I do have internet access, but it's slow. The electrician will return sometimes this week to get everything back to normal.

This past weekend was spent working on tending to several of the fruit trees in our yard, such as pruning, fertilizing, organic spraying, watering, and so on. One orange tree needed to have the ripe fruit taken off before we sprayed. The outsides of the oranges weren't that pretty but the insides were a deep orange, juicy, and perfect for juice. The activity of juicing was not lost on my grandson. He had a blast. I wish I could have snapped a photo, but I had my hands in the juicing process as well. We made about 5 quarts of juice, and there's still a whole large bowl-full of oranges waiting to be juiced. Oh, and by the way, the juice was SWEET! I love fresh juice. The only problem is figuring out what to do with the plethora of oranges we're going to have with in the next month or two, AND avocados.

I haven't run since my run in the wind last Friday. I plan to fit in a couple of small runs this week, plus the usual low weights/high reps workouts. I'm also winding down in regards to the Nike Women's Half Marathon. I should be in taper mode right now but I want to fit in at least one more long run of at least 10 miles.

Peace