6 more sleeps!!!

To be more specific- Michelle and I leave for Vermont in 6 days!!! Ever since we were little girls we counted down by 'sleeps'. I know this blog is primarily to journal my running and riding but honestly, it's all I can think of these days. I am so beside myself with excitement as the day grows near that I think I pee myself just a little every time I think of it!! To give you a bit of background, a co-worker and her husband took a bicycle tour with this company about 17 years ago. When she got back and I saw her pictures I knew at that very moment it was something I MUST DO. Well as we all know, life gets in the way. I was a single mother with 2 small children- this was not something I was going to be doing anytime soon.... fast forward 15 years -sister and I are now riding our bicycles thru southern Vermont and thoroughly enjoying EVERY SINGLE MOMENT. I knew then that I'd be back... which brings us to now, 2 years later, we are counting down the days till we leave again. This time we will be riding thru Northern Vermont, one day we will ride into Canada, one day into New York and we will also be doing some Kayaking... hold on while I go change my pants.... Ok I'm back. As if that wasn't enough, we met some of the nicest people on our last tour and I've kept in touch with one of the couples who live in Austin, Tx. They are going to be meeting us there and joining us on our tour!! And.... I've also kept in touch with the tour leaders we had the last time and have requested them, they have also told their office that they would love to be tour leaders on this tour so there's a good chance we will see them also!!!

A whole lotta walking goin' on...

I set out to do 5 miles this morning and my intent was to get up and be out of the house at 7am. I ended up getting up at around 7:15 and had some coffee and whole wheat toast w/ a little peanut butter. I decided to take my new water bottle with me so I filled that and put it in the freezer so it would be extra cold. It all seemed like a fabulous plan before I left the house...
Notes to self:

• cold water bottle= cold hands
• you know you need at least 1 hour between eating and running- don't try to fool yourself
• 8:30 is just too late to start a summer run
• the food you eat before a long run WILL affect the way you feel the next day

to say the least my run this morning was disappointing. When I started out I felt like I had put on my 83 year old grandmother's legs, I kept telling myself to push thru the first 2 miles, that the 'groove' would come but I had to take a walk break after 1.5 miles, another at 3.0 miles and the last 2 miles I think I walked every half mile, I never did 'find my groove' and merely traded my grandmothers legs for my mothers, they loosened a bit but never really got to feeling good... BUT on a positive note, I did learn some stuff that will help me in my Half Marathon training that we will be starting next month. Some of this I already knew but will need to make sure I pay closer attention in the future, like the time between eating and running and starting earlier to do a long run when it's hot. But the last note was something I had often wondered about. I wondered how much my diet actually affects my running. Now I know, it matters ALOT! Yesterday in the first half of the day my food was right on track- clean healthy food. But around 2:30 I ate 1/2 of a chocolate bar, had some more coffee, didn't drink enough water and to top it off I got home and ate 3/4 of ANOTHER chocolate bar and then for dinner I made bacon, eggs and toast and ate way tooooooo much bacon. Geez when I fall off the wagon I fall hard!!! It makes me sick just typing it, how on earth did I let myself eat that crap?! But that proves what I've know all along, I know NO MODERATION, I am better off not having a piece of chocolate because before you know it I've had 1 1/4 candy bars. I'm going to try to to this same 5 miles next week but am going to make a conscious effort to stay on track with a good mix of carbs and protein and LOTS of water the day before. We'll see.

I'm so excited to start Half Marathon training next month, Michelle is totally on board and we're going to try and do our long runs together so that should be fun. She runs a little slower than I do and I think that will be really good for me because I'm not a fast runner but seem to only have one speed, and will need to run a little slower for my long runs so her pace should fit just perfectly... I have printed out about 3-4 different training plans so we are going to talk about them on the airplane to Vermont-we leave 2 weeks from today (squeel!!!) and we will decide on one. Then we will start when we get back. We will do some cycling for cross training also since we will be doing the Tour de Palm Springs again this February. We are determined to finish that 100 miles this year (god help us). I will be blogging my way thru it, I hope you enjoy my journey.

Well, I'm off to shower the dried sweat off and enjoy my weekend.

Chain Reaction

I tell two friends, they tell two friends.... so the story goes. This morning we ran our September 5k, it was a memorial run at Mile Square Park. Michelle's friend Connie (pink stripes) ran with us. This was her very first 5k and she did amazing!!! She finished in something like 31 minutes! Woot Woot! It was blazing hot and started at 8:30, which as you know from previous posts, is just too late to start a summer run (in my opinion!!!). Anyway, I got to thinking after the race, how my crazy idea to 'become a runner' which came from another crazy idea 'to do a triathlon' has affected the people around me. I mean when I think about it, I knew going into it I'd drag Michelle along.... but then Josh started running, and then Jessica, and then Makenna...and now Connie. Who'da thunk it???