July 1, 2007
Wasted weekend
I either picked up the flu or food poisoning yesterday, so all my plans for the day went out the window because I felt like crap. On the plus side, I watched a lot of TV and got a lot of extra sleep :)
Molly and I went for a walk yesterday, and a short run this morning. We didn't go too very far either time, since yesterday I felt like death warmed over (I was hoping fresh air and activity would make me feel better) and while I feel much better today, I'm always a little cautious the day after being sick.
The funniest thing happened with Molly yesterday. The Engineer let her out in the backyard and then watched to make sure she did her business. She was out sniffing and then all of a sudden she looked up and then started running full speed, terrified, back and forth alongside the fence. (If it weren't for the fence, she probably would've gotten miles away). The Engineer then heard other dogs bark, and then noticed a kid in another yard pointing at the sky. So he opened the door, and heard a hot air balloon above our house making a loud "WHOOSH!" noise. He then called me over. Once the fence blocked Molly's view, she darted up the stairs and barreled into the house. I'd never seen her in such a hurry to get in the house. We both cracked up, especially since we had no idea where she ran to in the house. We thought she might have run all the way into her kennel downstairs, but apparently she stopped at the top of the stairs. And thus ends another chapter in the story of the wuss dog.
April 28, 2007
A case of the giggles
After running with Molly yesterday. It was a beautiful day!
April 26, 2007
The tail doesn't lie
Is it sad that the highlight of my day was the 20 minutes or so I ran with Molly before she needed to poop?
March 16, 2007
Basketball
Molly is so not excited by all the basketball watching that has been going on here lately. Or maybe she's just mad that I put a t-shirt on her. Who knows?
This will end probably tonight, so I'm going to enjoy my temporary victory!
January 3, 2007
6 mile warm-up?
Molly and I ran 6 again today, but today was much nicer since it was in the 40s for most of the day and almost all of the snow and ice has melted. Funny thing about Molly, though ... I don't know, I think 6 miles is a decent mid-week distance. But for Molly's it's like it's just a warm-up. At my parents' house over Christmas, they laughed when I'd bring her back from a run and she'd still be bouncing and raring to go. "Aren't you supposed to be tiring her out on these runs?" they'd ask. Yesterday we got back home, and I let her loose in the yard. I got dizzy just watching her run around - she was running laps, but diving into the snow while running around.
1 | 8:41
2 | 9:04 | 17:46
3 | 9:06 | 26:52
4 | 8:50 | 35:42
5 | 9:07 | 44:49
6 | 9:19 | 54:08
--------------------------
6.1 miles | 55:05 | 9:02/mi.
January 1, 2007
Starting off the new year ...
in an annoying way!
October 15, 2006
Shameless Plug
If anyone has a dogster account, please vote for Molly at the 2nd Annual World's Coolest Dog and Cat Show!
These are the pictures I submitted:
October 12, 2006
Well ...
At least someone is happy that it is snowing on October 12.
July 12, 2006
Recovery 4
Had a surprisingly pleasant run today. It's kind of warm here (80-something while running), and it's supposed to be in the 90s when I run tomorrow. Yuck! I ran 2 miles with Molly, and then went back out for another 2 by myself. I wasn't expecting the run to be that great, since I went to lunch with the guys and had 2 slices of pizza ($2.97!) followed by a peanut butter cup sundae at TCBY. But I felt fine, aside from being sweaty. It's almost time to run shirtless. Apologies in advance to my neighbors who'll have to see my pasty belly.
June 26, 2006
Happy Birthday Molly!
There is no running content to this post, it's all about my puppy who is now a whole 1 year old!
April 27, 2006
Grass stains
The downside to having a white-legged dog that loves to slide while playing Frisbee?
Molly loves Frisbee, but she's still getting used to the warm weather. It's been in the 60s, but with her black coat it must feel super hot. After about 10 minutes or so, she plops down on the ground, and after getting the cue she willingly runs up the stairs and into the house. Normally she resists at least a little. After we get inside, she pants for a long time. I call this picture, "Mom, my tongue won't fit in my mouth!"
Here's a slightly cuter one of her drinking water:
I've kind of lost motivation to cross train. Molly and I walked on Tuesday, but we've mainly been playing Frisbee for her exercise. I haven't weight lifted for almost 2 weeks ... I get in a string of a few good months of lifting and then get all slackerly. Maybe I should lift in the morning and run after work instead. But then again, running before work is working out really well for me.
In terms of running, I'm having a decent week. I ran 5 miles today and Tuesday, and 4 miles yesterday. I think I might take off tomorrow morning and run Saturday and Sunday instead of Friday/Saturday. I'm having some soreness in my left hip (it's too high to be ITB-related, and it's different than the pains I had last summer), which is also why Molly and I haven't walked as much. The Engineer thinks the pain is related to how I sit (and lean) on the couch, which sounds pretty logical. I actually iced after running this morning and will probably ice again in a little bit.
April 9, 2006
Stretching partner
Molly's idea of helping me stretch is to plunk herself down either in my lap or on my leg, like she did today. It's not easy to stretch with a 40 pound dog in the way. Good thing she's so cute.
March 23, 2006
Cold Feet
Today's title comes from my walk with Molly this afternoon. I didn't think things through enough, and we walked out too far. So as not to make the walk too long, I decided we would cut back across a field, cutting off about 1/2 mile. This was a bad idea, because the snow has been melting over the last few days. So not only was the ground muddy/mushy, there were puddles everywhere - which I discovered when I stepped into the middle of an icy puddle. So the last 1/2 mile or so of our walk today was kind of miserable since my feet were soaked and cold. Even worse, Molly got even muddier and she made the whole downstairs smell like wet dog.
I say even muddier because yesterday I took her out to the lake, where she got pretty muddy. She preferred to walk alongside the bike path, where the ground was kind of mushy. And the sidewalk right at the end was basically all mud. So her white parts are a little tan right now. I don't think Molly was a big of a fan of the lake, mainly because of the geese. She sees geese fly over the house all the time, but when she saw them on the ground she refused to move. I expect that at some point, her herding instinct will kick in and she'll become more interested in them, but for now they are scary. Luckily, the geese really only hang out on one side of the lake, or our walk would've completely sucked.
I've run 4 miles the last 2 mornings, but since it is on the treadmill it hasn't been too interesting.
Wednesday
AM - treadmill @ 1% | 4.08 miles | 38:00 | 9:19/mi.
PM - walk w/Molly | 1.75 miles | 27:15
Thursday
AM - treadmill @ 1% | 4.03 miles | 37:00 | 9:11/mi.
PM - walk w/Molly | 2.01 miles | 30:43
upper + lower body weights | 50:00
March 5, 2006
Escape artist
Last night, we had another 10PM scare with Molly. (I wasn't blogging at the time, but we had a horrible, terrifying incident after her spay). She's gotten pretty good lately about being let out into the backyard, taking care of business and then running back up onto the deck. Last night, the Engineer let her out, and a few minutes passed without her coming back onto the deck. That usually means she's found something to play with or is digging in the yard, so I asked the Engineer to call her up. He opened the door and called her, but no response. We tried squeaking one of her toys, because sometimes that gets her attention more than being called. I got a little nervous when I realized we couldn't hear her tags ... when she doesn't want to come in, we can still identify where in the yard she is by the tags. I threw shoes on, ran down the stairs and over to the edge of the house where I found that the gate was swinging wide open. I yelled to the Engineer that the gate was open, and then tore to the front yard while yelling Molly's name. It's pretty dark at 10, and I realized with a sinking feeling that she could've gotten pretty far and I had no idea which way to start looking. Luckily, after a few calls, Molly came bounding from the south and followed me back into the yard. So good ending, but I can't tell you how awful it felt to see that gate just swinging in the breeze.
Today, I thought I would take her for a walk and take some pictures of the misleading hill. But it's been snowing all day (damn snow! go away!) so I didn't feel like going for that long of a walk outside. Instead, I ellipticalled for 45 minutes, weight lifted for 48, and the treadmill walked for 30. Nice, long XT session! My shins are a little sore today, which is kind of odd. I think I'm going to take tomorrow off, and I probably should start doing my drills again. (For track and cross country, we always did 4 types of drills after warmup: high knees, butt kicks, walking on heels, and walking on toes. I used to also do heels and toes following practice, and those are the 2 drills I should be doing now).
We went mattress shopping yesterday, which has to be up there on a list of least fun shopping ever. One of the stores was set up super poorly - the mattresses were lined up with maybe 3-5" in between. It's kind of hard to test mattresses out when you can barely climb on them! That store also had a saleslady that was kind of annoying. Luckily, I guess, they didn't have anything we'd want. I still haven't cleaned the office, so the Engineer doesn't want to buy anything yet. We also have to settle what size: king or queen. We currently have a queen, but I would love the space of a king. But it'd be a tighter fit and we'd have to get new sheets. We keep flip flopping on what to do.
elliptical | 40:00 HR Cardio/5:00 CD | 36:39 in zone | 3.12 miles
upper+ lower body weights | 48:00
treadmill @ 1% | 2.08 miles | 30:00
February 19, 2006
Long day ... short day
My original idea for a title was "Baby, it's cold outside!" after the song. After a fairly mild winter, it has been absolutely frigid the last few days. Friday, it never got above 0 and the windchills were in the -30s. Yesterday it creeped just above 0 in the afternoon, with windchills in the -10s to -20s.
My poor puppy was miserable Friday morning. She normally loves to go outside in the snow; she loves to dive into it and run around and just generally be crazy. But Friday morning, she was having issues with squatting in the snow, and then she started limping around on only 3 paws. She repeated the limping (alternating which paw she would lift up) for the Engineer, so he suggested we get her some boots.
Now, let me make one thing clear: I DO NOT dress up my dog. She doesn't own any "outfits" and I refuse to let her have bows at the groomers. The only thing she wears is her (orange) collar and (blue) tags (hmmm ... what are her owners' school colors?). Until I found the orange collar, she had a blue collar and leash, so people always assumed we had a boy puppy. (And as a sidenote, I hate gender color stereotyping, so my hypothetical future kids will probably wear a lot of green and yellow until they are old enough to pick out their own clothes). So anyway, I went off to PetCo after work to locate some boots for my poor puppy. She wasn't too happy about the boots, but she was able to tolerate the cold snow better.
That was kind of a long lead up just to have an excuse to post some puppy pictures.
I think she's actually scowling at me!
Outside with boots. The ground was bare two days prior.
Two days prior: Molly with her most favorite toy. She's staring at me, hoping to will me to put away the camera and get back to playing.
So onto my post title. Yesterday, I had a good workout. I refused to go outside because of the cold, so I ran on the 'mill. Aside from accidentally stopping my watch (which meant having to run at the same speed for awhile so I could figure out my final time), it was a pretty uneventful 'mill run. I actually made a halfway decent playlist prior to running, and managed to only skip a few songs. I did drop the speed towards the end because I felt a little tired (and my left ankle had done something weird at 2.5 miles) but overall I felt okay. I decided to call it a day at 6.5 miles instead of pushing to 7 because I didn't need the extra distance. I ran for just over an hour - my longest run in a very long time.
Today, however, wasn't as good. I just didn't want to do anything. I did the elliptical for a total of 45 minutes; I had HRM malfunction issues again. I stopped and went to soak the strap (apparently the electrode gel isn't working for me anymore), which helped some. I still got some erratic readings, but I don't know if that was the HRM or if I was just having trouble getting my heart rate up and staying up. I started to weight lift after that. Bleh. I ended up skipping my last 4 exercise because I just didn't want to do them. Two of the exercises were for shoulders, and I had already had my left shoulder repeatedly pop during tricep extensions. I had intended to walk after lifting, but I skipped that, too. I don't feel too bad about cutting my workout short, though. I figure if I really don't want to XT, there isn't much point in forcing it. Extra rest isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Saturday:
1 | 9:19
2 | 9:19 | 18:38
3 | 9:19 | 27:57
4 | 9:19 | 37:16
5 | 9:27 | 46:43
6 | 9:27 | 56:10
---------------------------
treadmill @ 1% | 6.5 miles | 1:00:53 | 9:22/mi.
treadmill @ 1 % | walk CD | 0.50 miles | 7:32
Sunday:
elliptical | 5:00 | 0.31 miles (HRM malfunction)
elliptical | 35:00 HR Cardio/5:00 CD | 29:06 in zone | 2.71 miles
lower + upper body weights | 28:00
January 28, 2006
Cold 5
Yesterday was my rest day, and I spent the afternoon being fairly productive. I went to the Post Office to get some new 39 cent stamps along with some 2 cent stamps so I could finish off our supply of 37 cent stamps. Unfortunately, I vastly underestimated the number of stamps we had left, so another trip will be in order at some point. (And what really sucks is that you have to go to the counter to buy 2 cent stamps, as opposed to using the self-service machine that is available 24 hours). I then played a long round of Frisbee with Molly while also cleaning up the yard. (Our yard looks pretty good now, after another round of Frisbee/cleaning this morning). Unfortunately, with the warm weather our yard was getting a little mushy. After 45 minutes or so of running around, Molly's legs were covered in mud and her undercoat was soaked and dirty. So I got the fun job of trying to bathe her (by myself since the Engineer was still at work) in the laundry tub. Luckily, I only needed to get the undercoat and legs because she is now too big for a full bath in the laundry tub. My last real accomplishment of the day was filing away the 3-4 months of bills/statements/pay stubs/car paperwork/etc that have been cluttering up the kitchen.
The warm weather disappeared over night, and there was frost on the deck and grass this morning. It was also only in the low 30s, with windchill in the upper 20s. I went downstairs for weight lifting, but didn't really feel like doing my longer run on the treadmill. (I wanted to run at least 4, but maybe a little extra over that). So I changed into winter clothes and headed outside. I ran a fairly non-interesting route. I did decide to go over 4 since I was feeling pretty good, and ended my day at 5.
upper + lower body weights | 3 sets | 35:00
34 degrees | felt like 27 | SSE 8 MPH | 89% humidity
1 | 9:22
2 | 9:21 | 18:43
3 | 9:09 | 27:52
4 | 8:58 | 36:51
5 | 9:14 | 46:06
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5.04 miles | 46:27 | 9:13/mi.
January 19, 2006
Bad dog!
Today Molly decided to show me her real feelings for the laundry room:
So instead of running and lifting, I spent some time vacuuming.