Retrenching

So there's this scene in Persuasion that sets up the whole premise of book/movie wherein Sir Walter Elliot is made to pack it off to Bath and rent the family estate to an admiral for the sake of saving money. They call it retrenching...which is exactly what we're faced with here in Team Gold's household. I've been unemployed for longer than I expected, Bergen County hasn't paid me for work I did in 2009 and Himself's thesis keeps getting sent back for rewrites. This should be the last round of rewrites, but we won't see the financial benefit until the fall when the credits and degree are registered with his new contract.

Sigh...Retrenching sucks...

I've canceled the gym membership and am going it alone. I'm committing myself to running with the group on Saturdays and on my own 2 other days a week. The two days are easy to come by if I don't mind being the mom always showing up to school in running clothes. The problem is going to be cross training and how/where to do it.

Restart 2.0 or is that 3.0?

Ah...yeah...Well, summer happened and since Himself is a school teacher (and an art teacher at that) I really had two toddlers at home.  Plus an over training injury that would not heal.  Now I'm 17 days out from the ATM and wondering what is possessing me to still try and go through with it.

Stubbornness, I suppose.  But that's always been a problem of mine.  A weekend away with just my parents too.  No baby, no husband.  Guaranteed minimum of 2 hours of alone time, despite being surrounded by 15,000 other runners.

Here's what I'm hoping for.  Running slow.  Running the first 3 miles and see how I'm feeling, run the next mile and check-in with the body again...if we're OK run the next mile.  Then I'm switching to run walk on the 5:1 ratio.  The ultimate goal is to make the time cut off and not get rerouted.  I want to finish the whole 10.  That's all.  

So this week I've logged 20 miles - mostly cycling, some run/walking and one elliptical workout.  I'm resting tomorrow (casual walk 'round town while TDMN is at "On My Own"), run/walking on Saturday and doing my usual yoga on Sunday.

I really promise I'm back this time.

Quick n dirty...

Here's my proposed training plan. I'm going to clean it up in the next few days when I take a harder look at my schedule (and Himself and TDMN's schedules too).

Wherein I restart my training...AGAIN...

My blog posting seems to be going much like my running - fits and starts. This month's excuse is a recurring hamstring (maybe a tendon?) injury. I'm somehow beginning to link it to my new(ish) trainers but I know it has its roots in speed training (pushed myself too hard to keep up with faster folk) and the habit I have of keeping my legs crossed. That last one is pure speculation on my part, but it always hurts the most after I've spent long hours with my right leg (the injured party) crossed over my left. Oh, and I need to flat out stretch. I'm wickedly lazy about stretching. Ever...

Anyway, at first I thought it was the sciatica from my pregnancy revisiting - but while it hurts its a totally different hurt than that.

Looming in my face is the Army Ten Miler (hereafter A10M), and my limited attempts at running since early June (Zooma Annapolis Half Marathon), have been sloppy and mostly painful. Not excruciating, but definitely uncomfortable. Yoga - no probs. Biking, not fond of stationary which is all I have access to at the moment, but again no probs. Walking...meh...too much (over 3 miles) or an extended hill and we have problems. But if I'm going to even attempt the A10M I need to get out there, so I'm revising my training plan (AGAIN, sigh...) to a mostly walking plan with strength training and stretching and see how we go. If I can figure out how to do it, I'll post the plan in a few days.

How come 730 sq ft seems small until you're mopping the floors?

Does housecleaning count as strength training? No? How about when it involves standing on a step-ladder holding a 25lb vacuum trying to clean a ceiling fan that you've only just realized is so covered in fuzzy dust it could be a Muppet?



Dusted, vacuumed, mopped, swept, scrubbed the toilet, cleaned the stove hood and still the place feels like a pig-sty.

Sigh...

I'm in.

The website only crashed on me once, but I'm in.



I got closed out last year because the registration date slipped my mind and then the race filled in something like 2-weeks. I've been running it for a few years and that was super-fast closure.

I unintentionally exaggerated my best 10K time...not so much I'll end up seeded up front, but I'm sure I'll end up with a bib colored something other than purple this time.

...and Dancing

The cool thing about hardwood floors is that when your naked, fresh from the bath, daughter pees and then dances in it in shear abandonment its really easy to clean up the mess.

My own little Gene Kelly splashing in pee puddles. :)

OK. Now that The Divine Miss N is 1 and walking, the weather is getting (slightly) better and I've joined up with NYSC and the Elysianettes, lets try this again.

In TDMN's first year I've learned how amazingly sticky both boogers and poop are and a child cutting her last 4 teeth is perhaps the crankiest thing ever created. There's other stuff in there but as she's in the middle of teething and a cold these are the things that are sticking out in my mind at the moment.

I've also managed to run a few 5Ks in the last year, but none of them at a pace that I'm too pleased with. On the calendar this year are two weddings (one at a resort and the other in TX in July) and my 40th birthday. I'm feeling the need to be in good shape for all of the above.

Oh, and I'm a stay-at-home Mom for the time being. That story is complicated and Himself is clamoring for the laptop so we'll leave it for the moment.