The Answer, My Friends...

I cannot tell you how many answers and ideas I normally find on a run. Today, however, the answers were definitely blowing in the wind! Our way out to the turnaround point (I had the whole entourage with me) went just fine, but right after I turned around--smack! Turns out it was rather windy. It dawned on me then that the reason the first half of the run had felt so good was that the wind had been at my back. Humph. I knew it would be a bit of a battle on the way back.

You know you are really "sucking wind," as my husband would say, when you are huffing and puffing to push your baby jogger uphill, trying to keep forward on your toes and keep your pace up, when you look to your left, and there are your two dogs (tethered to you) just casually walking along, meandering really, because you are going so slowly that they do not need to run or even walk briskly to keep up. Sigh.

It turns out I made decent time, averaging about a 13-minute mile (and this still includes my 10-minute walking warm-up). For those keeping score, I am now up to run/walk reps of 3.5 & 1.


Here's one of my favorite pictures. Jillsie & Kiki share notes from their literary adventures.

Fun Friday

I've decided I'm going to love Fridays. Why? Because they are my weigh-in days. This means two good things: (1) I get to record some weight loss and (2) whatever eating sins I have committed during the week get wiped clean, and I get to start all over. I love this.

Three marvelous things happened yesterday.

(1) I had a truly inspirational conversation with my sister-in-law. She is working on her certification to be a life coach, and I can tell you she is going to be amazing at it. I always feel 100% like myself when I speak with her, and that is truly a wonderful thing.

(2) My boys (the Boston Red Sox) had a spring training game on TV! This was a great sign. I put that thing on in the background while making dinner, and it was almost as if I was in the States.

(3) My hubby came home for the night! Now, granted, he was here for only ten hours (10pm to 8am), but it was so marvelous to see him. I told him he could stop by this Bed & Breakfast any time.

This morning, I weighed in to discover I had lost one and a half pounds this week. Not too much, but not too little. If I can continue to lose at that rate, I know I will be happy. At some point I'll have the guts to post my numbers, and perhaps some before and after pics. Did I just say guts? Dang. I've got guts. I'm the Gutsy Mom. I can see I'm going to have to put those numbers up pretty soon, or I'll lose my street cred.

I'll do it next Friday.

An Editor's Nightmare

Why are there no spaces between my paragraphs in "Jillsie's New Ride?" WHY WHY WHY?

For the Love of Shoes

My neighbor just came back from the States, and he brought me my new running shoes, the Asics 2120s. Aren't they pretty?

I would love to try them out today, but I'll have to check road conditions. The snow is mostly melted, but if it is super wet and muddy out there, I am going to wear my Salomons, which I also heart to death. They are fully GoreTex and they have lace protectors, a convenience feature I love almost as much as the little velcro patches that hold the straps of my daughter's carseat to the side so that they stay out of the way when you are getting the kid in and out. But I digress. Here's my other ride:

And finally, who's cuter than Jillson? NO-BODY!

Spring Showers

Today, of all days, it is snowing. What's up with that? Here we are so close to the Alps, and up until now we have had only one good dumping of snow during the entire winter. Two days ago, we were in short-sleeved shirts, and I was digging out sun hats for Jillsie. Now, here we are, three days from Spring, we've all planted our flowers, and it is snowing. Thick, thick snow. I must get to the store before it starts caking up on the roads. And then, it's tax time. Oh, and my sweetie is 38 years old today. Happy Birthday, Honey!

Jillsie's New Ride

How cute is that?

My daughter recently hit the weight limit on her infant car seat, so it was off to the stores here to try to purchase a new seat for her. I say "try" since the kindly German salesman actually refused a 300Euro sale, insisting Jillsie was perfectly safe in her infant seat. Here's the problem: Germans don't use the convertible seats. They use larger infant seats that have a higher weight limit and last (rear-facing) until the child is 1 year old. Then they purchase a front-facing seat for the child to use from the 1-year mark onward. Jillsie cannot use one of the German forward-facing seats yet, since she is only 8 months old. She has to face backwards. So, I could either buy a larger German infant seat to use for 4 months and then buy a German forward-facing seat (for about 600Euro total), or I could leave her in her current infant seat, even though she is over the weight limit. The salesguy insisted she would be perfectly safe this way, and part of me believed him.

BUT. The other part of me, the part that is extremely paranoid when it comes to my child's safety, won out. So, after talking with a German friend who swears by the Britax brand (and not the German ones) I decided to go with my gut and order online the convertible carseat I had researched long long ago to be the safest anyway: The Britax Roundabout. Jillsie can ride in it rear-facing till she is a year, and then forward-facing until she is 40 pounds or so. Hooray!

Alas, though the seat was on sale on many sites, none of those sites would mail it to me. But I finally found one who would (http://www.elitecarseats.com/) though the seat was not on sale and the shipping was outrageous. However, less than a week later, it arrived at my mailbox, and after reading the manual for 30 minutes, I was able to install it quite easily in less than ten minutes.

Go, Gutsy Mom!

I am going to look at the success of the carseat purchase and installation as the counterbalance to the fact that one of my beloved dogs has peed on the downstairs carpet for the third time since my husband left for his trip. I know they miss him, too, but this is not helping...

I'm off to steam clean.

The Good & The Bad

Bad Things:

I miss my husband terribly.

The dogs peed on the rug yesterday while I was out on a run. (This is particularly vexing since they had just just been out for a one-hour walk with Lydia.)

Everyone else is enjoying a 4-day weekend, but because my husband is out of town, I am enjoying 4 more days of being a married-single mom.

I still need to do my taxes.

My daughter is teething.

Good Things:

I ran 2.7 miles yesterday on a new route, which I loved. Felt a huge rush afterwards. Hooray for runner's high!

I finally planted the flowers and lavendar my mother bought when she was visiting, and they are thriving.

I installed my daughter's new carseat and I love it, puma print and all.

The weather is quite gorgeous.

I finally got the moving company to come back and pick up all of our empty boxes and packing paper, 5 months after moving here!

My daughter is so stinking cute, that not much else really matters.

Make a New Plan, Stan!

Well, my deadline is here. My husband has left for a 30-day business trip, and in order not to get completely derailed taking care of the baby and the dogs by myself, I am going to launch my new plan.

What is that plan? In the running department, I am going to follow Hal Higdon's 5-K training program for novices. It should be easy to adapt: 3 days of running a week, starting off with 1.5 miles per run, which I already exceed. More on this another day.

I'm afraid that the time has also come for some attention to my nutrition. After two months of working out 3 to 6 times a week, that number on the scale has budged nary half a pound. And so, the Gutsy Mom sucks in her gut and sucks it up and re-enrolls in Weight Watchers online. I'm headed to the store in the morning to stock up on points-friendly foods. This makes me terribly sad, as I love food so. But I know it is the only way I can get ME back. Tis time. My daughter is 8 months old. In 4 months, I will have to refer to my excess as simply fat, not baby fat. I don't want to have to do that.

So here we go. Here I go. I'm going.

My 30th Run

Well, it wasn't my best or my prettiest, but I did it. Thirty runs in 60 days. This morning's run was completely anti-climactic and practically comical. For starters, I was running at 7:30 in the morning so I could take advantage of the fact that my hubby was going in late to work so I could run solo. I don't think I was awake until about 5 strides before the end. Next, I took my meds before the run, but didn't have anything to eat or drink, so about ten minutes into the run I had an overwhelming urge to vomit. I spent the rest of the run fighting this urge. I was having all sorts of first trimester flashbacks. Lastly, my legs were ridiculously stiff, since I ran for two days in a row (basically a no-no for me).

Nevertheless, I have completed my first training goal: 30 runs in 60 days, from January 8th to March 7th (actually only 59 days). My total annual mileage is now 65.7 miles (or roughly 2.19 miles per run). Only 3 runs ended up being shorter than 2 miles, with most of the runs being 2.2 or 2.4 miles a piece.

Slowest pace: 17:10 (January 24, in the snow)
Fastest pace: 12:24 (March 6)

As running segments increase, my pace automatically improves. And yes, those 10 minutes of walking at the beginning are included in my pace calculations. Eventually, I'll kick them out of the figures, and they won't even count towards total workout minutes, but that's not for a while yet.

Reward: New running shoes. I can't wait!!! Thanks to a friend who is going back to the States to visit his wife who works at Fleet Feet, I should have some new kicks hand-delivered to my door in a few weeks. YEE HAW!

Run on, Gutsy Mom!

Rewards

Oh, how I believe in rewards. Because I recently hit my 50 mile mark, I have ordered the ultimate nursing mother's running reward: The Bra of Last Resort. I cannot wait to try it out. My weight gain and nursing-ness have resulted in boobs the size of Montana. My husband doesn't seem to mind, but let me tell you I do when I am running. I can actually feel the breast tissue stretching downward with every stride. Well, after mucho research, I discovered the Last Resort Bra at Title 9 Sports. It ain't pretty, but it should keep my girls in.