Running

What a difference a day makes

1 Comment

Did I ever show you these pictures?

IMG_1900

This was my meal from Home Wine Kitchen last weekend.  I took the picture because a) I’m a blogger and b) it looked like my meal was smiling at me.  It was delicious:  Arctic Char (try saying that three times fast…or once) with broccolini (no, spell-check, I do not wish to correct that to broccoli, it is different) and olives.  I would eat it again, but probably won’t get the chance because they change their menu weekly.  The restaurant was definitely an excellent choice—good food, good service, and nice ambiance.  No, I’m not a restaurant reviewer so that’s all you get.

IMG_1902

She would have enjoyed the fish as well.  She’s sitting on a wicker laundry basket that was a wedding gift, one of the few we’ve started using yet.  We need to do some work on the house but right now Chris is just too incredibly busy and stressed out to deal with it.  Honestly, we just need a bigger place, and we’ll be looking for one come this summer.

Today: 8 mile run at Forest Park.  It was good.  I was tired, yes, and it was hot, but the run went decently, albeit slow.  Today turned into a no-shirt day for me…I wasn’t planning on it, but it is just so much cooler to run without a shirt!  Naturally my tan lines are reappearing more quickly than I would have thought possible (rare occasion I wish I were a guy and could truly run shirtless). I’ve decided I’m glad about that because (I’ve said this before) it makes me look more hard core.  I don’t feel hard core so looking the part will have to do.   

This is my spring break.  Between now and a week from now, I will teach FIVE students.  FIVE.  Rather than five hours of students a day.  I’m looking forward to relaxing a bit, practicing a ton, and catching up on stuff around the house (taxes, cleaning??).  Then life gets pretty darned busy until June, so I’d better relax while I can.

Random thoughts

Hannah and her sisters

1 Comment

I probably posted this before but tonight I’ve been doing a bit of interneting (while listening to the SLSO concert and waiting to go out with Chris and our friends Jon and Laura (in the home stretch before baby Ray-Ray comes!). 

catpictures

I will say that my sisters are like, almost the smartest people I know!  After myself, of course.  And maybe our brother? 

We had a conversation on facebook the other night on one of Leslie’s status updates.  If you are facebook friends with us you should check it out.  Much like my conversations with my friend Sarah, rest assured that all comments are meaningful, thoughtful, and very likely are making fun of somebody or something from our past.  It’s a lot of pressure to be funny all the time, but the pressure is well worth the pay off. 

prokofiev

That’s how it started…

cobbler

pbegg

veganshoes

Comic gold, people.  Or…maybe you had to be there? I appreciate how quick everybody’s responses were.  Well done, girls and Carrie, well done!

I mean, really, it got so FUNNY on facebook…

Deep Thoughts, Running

Happy St Patrick’s Day

4 Comments

I’m in a bit of a mood, and I’m just not going to go much into the horrific details of today’s St Patrick’s Day race.  Suffice it to say that I am not good at learning lessons or learning from my mistakes, and I continually forget that I cannot do deadlifts in a workout and then run two days later.  I can’t, I just can’t.  My hamstrings just won’t cooperate.  I tried.  I ran as much as I could without wanting to die, but the up hills were the worst.

IMAG0626

A promising start.  I’d been worried about my ability to run since the day before when my hamstrings started being sore.  I foam rolled, I stretched, I took copious amounts of Advil (well, that’s just par for the course, unrelated.). I woke up, ready to go, and had a wonderful outfit picked out—that is some serious green happening.

IMAG0623

IMAG0627

It was pretty foggy.  And, I told Jen if she wanted to make that face for THE BLOG then that was her right.  I felt that Steve and Jen failed at being remotely festive.  I’m thinking of uninviting them to the 80’s 5k if that’s the best that can do.  A themed race has two parts:  one is running, the other is dressing awesome.  I’m pretty disappointed in my friends on part 2.  They kicked my butt on part 1, but like I said, two parts.  I expect more in the future from everybody.

Why did Steve have a different colored tag?  We’re assuming somebody made a mistake.  While he is an excellent runner in his own right, he is probably not fast enough to be considered an elite runner.  The orange tags were for the people who were starting in the very front and most likely to win.  Steve decided to start back with the common folk anyway.

IMAG0629

IMAG0630

IMAG0633

The Non-competitive start.  And the Old Courthouse.  It was really foggy!

Anyway, the race sucked.  I was in so much pain, at one point I considered giving up and finding the short way home.  That seemed really lame though, so I figured I’d finish.  58:34.  I felt like I walked the whole damn race.  Boo.

After the race I was super grumpy and nearly had a meltdown at Rue Lafayette (our first idea for brunch)—I had some trouble figuring out what was happening on the menu and was just really thirsty and wanted eggs.  Luckily I have nice friends and then we made our way to Uncle Bill’s.  I whined the whole way there too, and then we came up with the ever so most brilliant idea that maybe I should be doing my deadlifts earlier in the week, so they stop interfering with my runs.  I wrote Mike a note to that effect in my food diary (right next to the bacon, sausage, one pancake and eggs entry) so I won’t be complaining again.  See!  I can learn!

(I just searched my blog for hamstrings and found way too many posts with me complaining how I couldn’t run because of my sore hamstrings, including the one where I had a mini breakdown and ended up yelling at Mike later for laughing at me for complaining. Oops.  What’s especially funny is that that is the day I referenced in my previous post bragging about how awesome my recent deadlifts were… )

Okay, I’m back to practicing.  Or not, actually.  I need to watch it, I’ve already put in a whole hour today and I’m not feeling very pain-free.

Must be my March/April depression time…hmmm…just like last year.  What is the common thread??

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” –J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

(link goes to a blog post I wrote about a year ago, somehow it feels promising and relevant right now, minus the bits about wedding planning.)

Random thoughts

Acceptance

2 Comments

Okay, so my morning post was a WEE bit overdramatic.  Couple that with reading an awful story on NPR about a photographer who was taking pictures of a little bunny and ended up CRUSHING the bunny by accident (I am not linking to the story, and I had to block it from my newsfeed because I kept crying)…and I was a bit of a drama queen. 

My wrist hurting is more than a first world problem, since it continues to plague me throughout my career.  That being said, I had the signs leading up to it all week. I am taking today off, and as I tell my students, if for some reason you can’t practice, LISTEN.  I’ll be doing that.

It’s just that I woke up early to practice all morning and then my schedule was off.  Those who know me well know I like having my schedule set, I like knowing what’s going to happen and where I’m going to be, who I’m going to see, that sort of thing.  Sometimes I get a little bit anal about that sort of thing, and I don’t adapt well to change.  Once change happens, I have a mini freak out, and then I am usually okay.  (Well, as long as large groups aren’t involved.  The older I’ve gotten, the more I just cannot handle large groups.) 

But I’m very resilient, I am okay NOT practicing today, really. At least I’ve gotten some good practice in this week, right?

See, aren’t I doing well?  Aren’t we all proud of me? 

Today’s workout was heavy on the deadlifts.  I was awesome and deadlifted an amount that my trainer reminded me, just a few months ago, made me cry and say "I can’t, I just can’t."  I took that to me I was getting stronger, he took it to mean that sometimes I tell myself I can’t do things that I actually can.  Agree to disagree.

Practicing

Frustration

Leave a comment

 

Like, not practicing the violin regularly, then practicing again regularly, and I suppose not building to that (though I feel I have), and invariably your damn right shoulder starts tingling, and you sort of stretch it out, but not really, because you are lousy at remembering to stretch.  And then a couple days later your right wrist hurts.  Not tingling, but the sort of aching, mildly nauseating pains as you attempt to play spiccato.  And you feel like you really are doing a lot of things right.  You’re standing up straight when you play, you’re working out so your arm and shoulder muscles are strong, your back could not be stronger than it is.  Everything should be going in your favor.

And of course it’s not.  Because your right wrist is always going to conspire against you and hold you back.  And you don’t know what to do, other than cry (a little, only a little bit), step away from the violin, and just try to relax.  Always it’s the right wrist, ever since you first starting having problems, at the age of 12.

This of course the day after you thought, damn, I just might be in the best shape of my life.

That’s what you get for being proud.

Insanity:  expecting that I can play the violin at some sort of high level without my body conspiring against me. 

Only a little bit of crying, right?  That’s okay, isn’t it? 

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.