So, uh... hi

Hi, everyone.

Yes, I know it has been just over 2 months since I have posted anything besides an absurd number of tweets and DailyMile posts. I've lost count of the number of times I have thought, "OK, today's the day--I will dust off the blog and get back to it," and then found myself otherwise distracted. (And, if it is another 2 months before you see another post from me, blame Angry Birds Chrome. Eeeegad is that addicting.)

So... what has gone down in the last 2 months and change here?

For one, a couple of awesome races:

The top one is the Goldy's Run 10 miler in Minneapolis, MN on April 9. Brandon and I were in the Cities for the 2011 College Hockey Frozen Four, and this was my little way of making sure I still got my run in while I was there. I also treated it as a tempo run, trying to see if I could hang at an 8:30 pace. I did that and then some--my official chip time was 1:22:44. I was just a bit happy. :) The finish was awesome--they brought you around TCF Bank Stadium (Home of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers), and you crossed the finish line at the 50 yard line, with your finish shown up on the JumboTron and your name announced. So, awesome... even if my finish line shot got blocked by some lady.
The bottom one is me coming down the home stretch for the Bayshore Half. If you remember, my goal was to take 10 minutes off my Marquette time, so 1:52:55. I DESTROYED that--1:48:51. The best part of that race? Running with my mom for the first 8 miles. If you would have told me a year ago that would have happened, I wouldn't have believed it. Despite being wet and slightly cold, it was an absolutely amazing morning.

Oh, and the awesome singlet I'm wearing in those photos? Well, the store I work at has a all-inclusive racing team, and the staff is included on this team (the main objective is to be represented by people who reflect the sport positively by being active and a positive presence at racing events.) . :) So, I'm on a racing team.

And, that job at the store? Well, I had my first review after about 2 months (usually that happens at 3, but they wanted to get mine taken care of). The long and short of it: I nailed the training and probationary period. Now, I'm in the process of being trained to be an assistant manager, taking over that around 8/1. I'll be taking on a lot of new roles, including employee training, community outreach and marketing, coordinating clinics and "spike nights" with local high school teams, among other things. Pretty excited? You bet. :)

And, to close--the numbers:
March mileage total: 103 miles
April mileage total: 110.4 miles
May mileage total: 102.4 miles

Yeah, my first 3 triple-digit months. :)
2011 mileage total to date: 435.7 miles. Yes, I am 15 miles shy of matching my 2010 total.

So, if there's anyone who still is following this little bloggy-guy... what's new and good with you?

The Week That Was

Hello!

I swear, every day this week after my run, I sat down and meant to blog. Then, I would get sucked in to Facebook, or the USCHO forums, or any one of the 329042570498 blogs I've been reading.
So, time to recap!
This was "The Week That Was..."

1. Deadly
That is, if you were any of the pieces of technology I owned. In a 48 hour span, my iPod, my laptop, and my cell phone all went to the big electronics store in the sky. :( The iPod was a casualty in a massive tea spill, the laptop has been trying to die for months and finally succeeded, but the phone? No idea. It went from working fine, to giving me weird error messages, to not working at all. I wound up getting a $15 go-phone at Wal-Mart that is straight out of 2002, but it's better than no phone at all, right?

2. Culinary
I think part of the reason I didn't post was because I spent so much time in the freaking kitchen this week! This week, I've made: my own chicken tenders (success!), vanilla pudding from scratch (super success!), focaccia (sort of--it was premade pizza crust that I added other stuff to, but still, I tried!), the most amazing chocolate chip cookies (from this recipe), and candied oranges (modified from this recipe... jury is still out on these...) (side note: I've been reading Jenna's blog for ages, and I love it. Love love love what she does.) And, I've made dinner almost every night this week. I am really finding my groove in the kitchen, and I'm having an absolute blast doing it! Now, I just need more Duluthian friends to come over and eat this stuff!!

3. Warmer!
The temperatures FINALLY picked up this week! There were still some killer winds off the lake (especially Tuesday! I was shivering so much on my walk home--it felt worse than when I walked to the post office when it was below 0 last Friday!) but it was overall much nicer this week. I even saw 31 degrees on a downtown thermometer Friday! That's a 57 degree difference from the week before. All without breaking the freezing mark... the weather in this state is unreal. Maybe that's why Minnesotans talk about the weather so much. (Or, so I've heard from my Minnesotan friends. I talk about the weather all the time, too, so maybe I was born to be a Minnesotan!)

4. High (for me) Mileage!
I feel silly saying this, because I know some of you out there have run more miles in a single day than I put in during a whole week, but for this little runner, this was a pretty big week in terms of mileage. I had a chat via Facebook with Coach Mom about my training plan, and she said I still have a couple weeks to go before I start, but reminded me that I need to be running 4-5 times a week, 3-5 miles each time. This week, I put in 4 good runs (so far, I still have tomorrow!) and I'm at 18. Breakdown looks like this:

Monday: 4 miles
Tuesday: 5 miles
Wednesday: rest (crazy headaches... boo!)
Thursday: 4 miles (originally planned 3, but I felt good, so I kept going!) + some Bob Harper. That core thing is KILLER.
Friday: 5 miles
Saturday: little bit of Yoga
Week to date: 18 miles
Month to date: 36.9 miles

I'm getting there--2 days to get that number a bit higher!

So, that was my week! How was yours?

In Other News...

Hello!
So, yesterday's post was about what has happened in my life over the last month that I didn't post.
However, this is a running blog, and I didn't mention one darned thing about running during that entire post!

So, here is how THAT has been going lately:

I'm actually kind of pleased with how running went during our 2 1/2 week road trip. When we were in Wisconsin seeing the fiance's family, I made it out on two wonderful, long (for me) runs of 5.1 and 7.8 miles. OK, so it was pretty much back and forth on the road he lives on, but it worked well enough for me.
Going home to Michigan, I got some great runs in. I also got a few new toys:

YES! New shoes! (I needed those badly! They're the same type I had before [Asics Foundation], just different colors.) I love them, so much.
And, look--no more soup can weight workouts for me, because I have actual weights! Thanks, Assistant Coach Little Sister! The red ones are 3's, the red ones are 5's. She also got me a Yoga mat, which I badly needed, too.
So, even with taking days off because I was sick, on the road, or had other things going on, I still had an AWESOME December mileage total: 56.93 miles. That was my 3rd highest month in 2010, and my highest non-half-training month of the year! :D
January started off great, it really did. I got in a few good treadmill runs at home, including one at 6am the day we left to head up here, and one AWESOME one at the hotel on our apartment hunt. I got a nasty cold, though, right after that. So, between that and our one last Lake-Effect-Snowpocolypse before we left, that week dropped right off.
Once we got to Duluth, I re-met an old friend: fear of new things. It took me nearly a week to get the stones to go seek out a safe place to run and go for it. Not being familiar with this place at all, and it being SO much bigger than the 900 person village I'd been living in, I was completely terrified to go, and especially to go alone. I was doing Yoga, some Bob Harper videos, and skating to keep myself somewhat active, but I was getting frustrated. I knew I needed to run, but I was crippling myself with fear.
I finally got brave this past Monday, and I headed down to check out a trail I kept hearing about. It was great, actually--relatively clear considering the weather, right on the water, and varied enough to be interesting and a challenge at points. It's within walking distance of my apartment, too, so that's always nice.
Even with my new discovery and my fear conquered, I still wasn't able to get out as much as I wanted. This is why:

 Uh, yeah. It's cold here. (It barely broke 0 yesterday. I wish I was kidding.) Too cold for me to feel safe being outside for more than about 15 minutes, let alone the time it would take for me to do 3 miles or more. Money is SUPER tight right now, so a gym treadmill is sadly out of the question, so I've only ran twice this week. Again, I did a ton of Yoga and fitness videos, but it's just not the same. I know I need to be getting in the mileage to get ready to start training, and I know once training starts, I won't be able to slack off.  I'm either going to have to get brave and face the weather, or find a super cheap and/or free alternative option to run inside (maybe even doing laps at the nearby hockey rink, if they'll let me!)
So, that's where I'm at in terms of running and fitness of late. It looks like this nasty cold spell is going to break tomorrow, so next week I will hit the trail hard every chance I can to make up for my slacking.

All right, time to get off the computer and on with my day! Hope you all have a great one!

11/30/10--Out of the box...

Today's run: 3.08 miles
Week to date: 7.08 miles
Month to date: 40.68 miles

Another month complete! I thought it would be interesting to look at my monthly totals, so here they are:
January: 18.1
February: 16
March: 4 (Oh goodness...)
April: 37
May: 45.76
June: 26
July: 69.4
August: 70
September: 32.1
October: 35.1
November: 40.68

Yeah, I realize that most of those monthly totals are some people's WEEKLY totals, but that's OK. This is my journey, and even the smallest of those is better than what I had been doing before 2010. So, while they're not stellar compared to some, I'm proud, especially of from April on. It just shows how far I've come this year, and it makes me want to keep going.

Anyway, on to today's adventure!
The weather:

And the outfit: 

(Yup!! I decorated the apartment yesterday!)

And, it has made its triumphant seasonal return: the All-Star Toque! 

I had some fun while ransacking my winter clothes stash to find this hat:

First, I found my Grandpa's band jacket.

And then I found mine!

Then, I found something that is NOT mine, and that I do NOT approve of.

Eventually, I stopped playing with PhotoBooth and decided to, you know, actually go for a run.

I noticed on my drives to and from town yesterday and today that the shoulder of the highway was probably going to be my safest bet for running for a while. They were surprisingly clear, and it's not like it's a terribly busy stretch anyway. 

There was a bit of climb involved, too.

And boy, did I feel that coming back! It wasn't anything daunting, but just enough to feel.

I felt much safer today than I did yesterday. I don't think this will be a run I try right after a snowfall, but knowing HoCo, I think this will be safer than trying the streets in Houghton overall. Plus, the hills will only make me stronger in the end, right?

OK--time for breakfast! I had a basically empty peanut butter jar in the cupboard that I was saving just for some Oats-in-a-jar! :D

Have a great day, all!