Dare You To Run

I woke up this morning to absolutely pouring rain and began my usual Saturday morning routine of eating breakfast, catching up on TV shows and reading some blogs. All of a sudden I just had this overwhelming desire to start up running again. My knee has been feeling significantly better (I haven't even been wearing my strap all the time anymore) and I can go for hours without any pain at all. When pain is there, it's almost not even noticeable except that I am paying attention.

I immediately jumped in crazy Kelly mode of looking at 5k races that I could still do this fall, and I did find a few for the last few weeks of October and early November. Plus there are always Thanksgiving day races (although Eric will have a football game I may want to watch as well). I have no idea if I'll really be able to do another 5k this year, but I'd like to ate least TRY to get back into running before the winter. Enter: Couch to 5k. I LOVE this training plan for beginning running, and although I'm not a running beginner I definitely need to start up VERY slow so I do not bother my knee again. And if I do bother it again (even taking it slow), I am going to stop. Because it's not worth it.

Since it's pouring rain outside, I decided to start with the treadmill (plus I think I'll stick to as much treadmill work as possible to help the knees). I broke out my old sheets I had typed up which said when to switch from walking to running. The first week of the Couch to 5k has me warming up for five minutes and then alternating 1 minute jogging with 90 seconds of walking. I have it all typed up before hand because otherwise while I'm running I'll be wondering "what time did I start running?" and "when do I switch again." I taped it back up next to my treadmill.
Up close...
My promise to myself as I start up running again (besides stopping if it hurts) is that I am going to be very serious about foam rolling, stretching and doing all of my PT exercises every other day like I am supposed to be doing. This is no time to be a slacker. I was off to a good start today with foam rolling and stretching and I'll do my PT exercises tomorrow morning (I just did them yesterday).
After I was all foam rolled out, I started up my walk/run combination.
I LOVED doing this. First of all, the beginning of the Couch to 5k goes by so fast because it's only 25 minutes and you are constantly switching from running to walking so I barely had a chance to look at my magazine at all because I was so focused on switching the speed. I did get a chance to watch Samantha's Browns Passport to Great Weekends Chicago that I DVRed. It was fun to watch and it convinced me that I had the most fantastic tour guide on my trip to Chicago last fall..

Ash! She took Eric and I to basically all the same places that Samantha Brown went to. Except, she added our all time favorite Chicago Restaurant, Rosebuds on Rush into the mix. Yum. I want to go back to Chicago now.

Anyway, back to running. My plan for the next week involves a mix of 3 days of running, plus some strength training and other cardio. Hopefully I'll be able to make it through with no knee issues.

Sunday- Shred and PT exercises
Monday- Spinning
Tuesday- Couch to 5k Walk/Run
Wednesday- Kettlebell Class
Thursday- Couch to 5k Walk/Run
Friday- Off
Saturday- Couch to 5k Walk/Run

Tonight I have a Bachelorette party and tomorrow a Bridal Shower (for two different girls, both very good friends of mine from high school). It's going to be a weekend of preparing for tomorrow's shower, going out tonight for the bachelorette and preparing/going to the shower tomorrow. Good thing my master's classes are all over now and I can have weekends like this guilt free :)

Open Water Attempt

It's finally like a normal Massachusetts summer and I am back in triathlon training mode. I got down the Cape yesterday and found a new way to enjoy PT exercises. Or should I say for the first time I actually didn't mind doing them. Here we go leg lifts on a beach towel!
The strap around my knee is my new best friend the knee strap that holds my pataella in place. I also have my nice five pound weights around my ankle. You can see them even better in this picture:
Haha, it totally looks like I am leading one of those crazy work out videos or something. Oh well it prepared me well for my triathlon training today.

This morning my mom and I went down to look at some bridesmaid dresses and they even forced me to try on a wedding gown. I really do NOT like wedding gowns. #1- I am not a fan of white, but I really don't like when people don't wear white because then I have no idea who the bride is haha. #2- I also am not a huge fan of long dresses, especially not ridiculously heavy ones. #3- I am going to have to pee during my wedding and I really don't know how that is going to work with these massive dresses on. I did enjoy trying on bridesmaid dresses though. Alfred Angelo has this AWESOME fushia color that I love. Of course the sample dress was eggplant, but I could see the fushia and I swear I am going to be wanting to wear my own bridesmaid dress if I end up ordering them. I'll give someone else the bridal gown, any takers?

Anyway, after the "fun" of dress trying I went to the beach to try my first open water swim. I know it looks beautiful but looks can be deceiving.

Well also, this picture was from a few weeks ago when the water was calm and beautiful. Today it was beautiful, but not calm. My mom even commented on how she hasn't seen it this rough in a long time. GREAT day for my first open water swim. I should start by saying I am a little afraid of the ocean. I love it and I've been scuba diving before, but I do have a small fear of it. Not really of big issues like sharks or rip tides, but more like jelly fish and other smaller issues. I rarely swim at the Cape because normally there is a nice breeze and I'm not that hot. But I forced myself to get in (and Eric was a fantastic sport and came in with me). It was a little chilly but I got used to it. I started swimming and the water was going in my goggles and my mouth and I started to panic and tell Eric FORGET IT I CAN'T DO IT! Fortunately, he is a calm (normal) person and talked me down from my minor panic attack. I kept trying to convince myself that next week was not going to be so rough and he was like "WHAT IF IT'S ROUGHER? NOW SWIM!" So I fixed my goggles, stopped trying to swim INTO the waves (which I do realize may not be an option next week) and things got better. I still doubt I came close to swim 1/3 of a mile but I got over the mental obstacle so that is what is important.

The second thing I did today was go for a walk/run. It was 3.32 miles total, and I ran about 1.7 miles of it. My knee seems to be okay with it AND I am happy that I was able to run 1.7 miles without any running for over a month. I know that doesn't sound like much but I could not even run 1.7 miles in February of this year so I thought I'd be back to my pre-running self with all this running rest. Apparently not though. I could've gone farther also but I did not want to push the knee, so I am happy. Hopefully I'll have some more productive triathlon training (with no over doing it!) this week and be ready for next Sunday. I hope everyone is having great weather and enjoying the weekend!

Run for Ice Cream

On Friday, my boss sent out an e-mail reminding us to tell our class about the significance of Memorial Day before our Memorial Day assembly. Okay, I thought...
1. the OFFICIAL start of summer
2. cookouts!
3. the start of the Cape season (even though the Cape season for Eric and I is clearly year round).
Maybe not what she had in mind?
My Memorial Day weekend began on Thursday night (even though I clearly had work on Friday) at the Red Sox Game!!! It was my first of the season. Usually at my first game I am wearing 18 layers and freezing, not at this game. You can tell by the pictures I am sweating in the 90 degree weather!!!

And slightly more disgusting in this one...Oh well, maybe not the best photos but an amazing time :)

This morning I was in total wedding planning mode. I met with a great photographer, so now I have multiple that I like. I love the younger fun women, but I also have a slightly ridiculous, but slightly justified paranoia that whoever I choose will get pregnant and not be able to attend my wedding because she will be having the baby (okay, mostly psycho since that would be really bad luck that anyone would happen to be having a baby THAT particular day/week!).

After that I went on my FIRST dress shopping trip, woo! Here are some pictures of me in dresses. I can post them because I am positive I am not going to purchase either one. The first one makes my hips look HUGE (and this is not a problem I usually have because I have a pretty large waist). The second is more flattering but I don't like the lace very much.

Caroline and Tiff also joined the fun so we tried some bridesmaid dresses as well. This one is a contender:
It would be in pink though, not that peachy color. However, I'm not nearly as big of a fan of it in pictures so...probably not. Good first trip though.

And finally, in case you have not had enough pictures for the night. We went to a delicious restaurant in Hyannis Center tonight called Colombo's. Here is my delicious salmon dinner:
It had this delicious soy sauce vinegarette on the side. It was amazing. The only thing that was not amazing was that I waited all winter for the ice cream place next door to this restaurant to open because they have unbelievable soy soft serve that both my taste buds and my stomach LOVES. I was so excited about this that throughout my over 4 mile run today I kept saying to myself, "Run for ice cream! Run for ice cream!" and yet...they don't have the soy anymore :( They said not enough people were lactose intolerant. In fact, this is not true, tons of people are lactose intolerant but stupid lactate has allowed people to eat regular ice cream. BOO! Why is there no lactate for IBS? (just kidding I really don't want people who are lactose intolerant to suffer!). Anyway, I just ended up eating regular soft serve, so I feel kind of icky now but it's not the end of the world since everyone who reads this blog knows I clearly eat regular ice cream all of the time! Usually I feel kind of blah after but no excessive bloating so I figure it's worth it for my favorite food. But let me tell you, I used to feel perfect after that soy soft serve and I am very bummed about it being discontinued.

Quick Training Update: Did a 4.23 mile run today. Everything felt amazing except for my darling knee which hurt and hurts even more now that I am not running. I am going to call for physical therapy this week. I wasn't going to go but I think the pain is getting worse so I might as well see what they can do. I still find it so unbelievable that in March I could barely run for more then 3 minutes at a time and now I can do over 4 miles! I love that Couch to 5k Plan :)

Alright, early to bed for me tonight. I am exhausted!

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

I have a tradition in my kindergarten classroom every year. 26 days from the last day of school, we count down using the alphabet. Each day is a new letter. Tomorrow is Letter C day and we celebrate- Career Day. All the kids have to dress up like what they want to be when they grow up. In the past I never dressed up, after all- I am already grown up (though I don't like to admit it). However, this year I'm motivated to pick something else to be- just for fun (or to fall back on when I really can't stand teaching anymore). At first I thought I'd be a retired person, maybe dress up like I was going to play golf :) Even though I really don't like golf, but no one has to know that. Then I started to think about what the ideal job would be. It's hard though because every job has it's ups and downs. For example I'd love to be a travel writer, get paid to travel around and tell people about it. But then again I'm kind of a homebody, would I really want to spend my whole life traveling? When I was younger I wanted to be a writer in general. I still think this would be an amazing job. But then again I like stability and a dependable paycheck, so maybe I should just stick to teaching. If only kids could be slightly less annoying...
I don't know what I will dress like tomorrow, perhaps just myself. If I come up with anything good I'll let you know.

I'm off to a good start with my Yoga Challenge. I did a 10 minute Yoga for Runners this morning after my 2 mile run on the treadmill. I will post my results from the challenge on Fridays and if you are doing it to, comment back and tell us how you are doing!

I was actually pretty happy with myself for getting through the 2 mile run. For some reason lately I've been having more trouble with my short runs. I think because I tell myself, "Kelly it's just two miles, no big deal" and then as I'm doing it, it's still hard! Where as, with the longer runs I get myself pumped up and tell myself this is going to be long. Weird I know but oh well, today I tried to get myself pumped for the two miles. I told myself it was going to be hard because it was going to be on the horribly boring treadmill (which is not much of a stretch) so I did it. My knee wasn't too bad after, and I'm going to the doctor tomorrow so I'll know more about the knee then. I had some extra time tonight so I tried to convince myself to go for a bike ride, but it didn't happen. I need a biking buddy, it's just too boring on my own. Hopefully I'll get some motivation to either bike or swim tomorrow. For some reason I just don't feel like I get as good of a work out when I do these two sports, even though they are both incredibly hard.

I am all over the place tonight (so much for being a writer) but I was craving pizza again after my creation last week. I used basically the same ingredients (tomato sauce, summer squash, zucchini, mushrooms and black beans), but this time I decided to use Panera Sour Dough bread instead of pizza crust, yum.
Delicious. Probably going to be lunch or dinner for the next few days :)

Conquered the Hill!

This morning I went for a run outside. It was a bit chilly but it still beats the treadmill. However, I think I need to turn around my attitude towards the treadmill because I think my knees and shins definitely prefer it. My run in itself was pretty uneventful. For some reason I seem to be a lot better on weekends and really struggled through a 2.5 mile run today. However, the major accomplishment for this run was that I made it up my HILL!!! If you haven't been reading my blog for now, I basically live on one giant hill. It is a real problem with working out because I cannot run or bike up it. For the past few months I've been thinking that I have to do flat running courses only because I stink at hills. When I found out my 5k had some small hills I was SO scared. Turns out, normal hills I can handle- my hill is not horrible. It's crazy. The same is true with biking. I can bike up the hill my parents live on and other normal hills, but my hill I can't do (partly because it begins at a really busy intersection so there is almost no way to get any momentum going). Today since my run wasn't going amazingly and I had to stop to walk after about 2 miles I decided my goal would be to make it up my hill running the whole time. I DID IT! Although I think I have probably strengthened my leg muscles in the past few months, I think a lot of it (like running always is) was very mental. Even though I was breathing REALLY heavy, I was determined. Luckily at the end of it I get to stop, I have no idea how people do Heartbreak Hill!
Last night for night I made a nice mix of haddock, Trader Joe's Harvest Grain Mix, carrots, zucchini, and Teriyaki sauce. It tastes delicious. It doesn't look so fancy because I just stick it in a bowl and mix it all together but this meal wasn't about presentation (most of mine are not actually haha).
Speaking of yummy food, I tried something new today for the first time. I have been into Almond Butter for the past couple of years but today I tried Trader Joe's Raw Almond Butter for the first time.
I really enjoyed it actually. It tasted pretty different from regular almond butter, but I think for some odd reason my stomach may have liked it better, which in itself is a reason to never have regular almond butter again (if it continues to be true). For those of you who have never tasted any kind of almond butter, you really should! I got into it like I got into it like almost everything else in the past few years, looking for something easier on my stomach than peanut butter (of course peanut butter is a major obsession of mine- like if I could eat nothing else for my entire life I would eat bread with peanut butter, that big of an obsession). I've found that I really love it and it's a welcome change from peanut butter sometimes. If you just want to try it, you can buy fresh almond butter in small quantities at Whole Foods. It's a bit pricey so just buy a small amount to try it. Yum.
I am trying to motivate myself to go to a yoga class at the gym tonight. I want to give yoga at the gym at least one more chance before I swear it off forever. However, American Idol is on tonight so it's definitely possible that I will end up lounging around instead. Plus I think I might be getting a cold. I think I need a break from kids so I don't have to work so hard at fighting all the germs!

How do you know when to rest?

So last night we had some friends over. Eric was in charge of dinner but I did make some chocolate dipped strawberries and bananas, yum.


Looking at the pictures again I kind of wish some were left this morning. But nope, we ate them all last night :)
Anyways, I ended up not getting a lot of sleep and I have that miserable teacher test this afternoon so I hope I don't fall asleep during it. This morning I woke up and I debated for awhile about whether I was going to go for a run or not. On one hand, I had only 4 hours of sleep and it seems smart to conserve my energy for the test. On the other hand, I am training so I really need to keep on top of things. Back on the first hand, my legs are absolutely killing me. But on the second hand, I took a day off yesterday so I probably do not deserve another one. I finally decided to run around the reservoir because at least it is dirt instead of hard pavement. As I was running around I started to realize how I maybe should've waited until a little later in the morning. There was literally not a single other person there, which kind of freaks me out since I clearly watch way too many kidnapping shows. Then I thought, maybe I'll see Tiff (my best friend from high school who happens to live on the other side of the res) because she often walks her dog around there in the mornings. Two minutes later, who do I see? TIFF! Yay! This made my run significantly better (and not just because I got to stop to talk to her haha). In the end I think I ran about 2 miles, which is not great but considering it's better than nothing. According to the pedometer that Eric brought me from his work it was only 1.5 miles but I don't get how that is possible since the res has marks all over that say it is .9 miles around and I ran around it twice.
My problem right now is I really don't understand why my legs hurt so much. Even during this training I have rarely worked out for more than 30 minutes, which I would say is bordering on EASIER than what I was doing before. So what is the DEAL? I am all for a little, "it's sore but it feels good" but most of this does not feel good. Also, I am probably reading too much and everything is like, "don't do too much too soon!", "rest if it gets too hard!" etc. That makes sense and all, but at some point you have to push yourself or it's not a triathlon! Hopefully once I get some sleep I'll be able to do some serious training tomorrow and feel better about it. My legs will get some rest this afternoon while I tell the crazy MTEL company all that I know about being a Reading Specialist.
By the way, I am going to draw the winner of the giveaway when Eric is awake because I want him to take pictures of the process haha so we will either do it when I get back from my test tonight or tomorrow at some point. If you still want to enter, I'll continue to take entries until I actually draw the winner so go for it!

Baby We Were Born to Run...

It was back to running this morning for me. It was a little rough but I think it was a combination of the absolute BOREDOM of the treadmill and the fact that it was really hot in my house. I felt a little sick by the end of what should've been a really simple 2 mile run...but that's okay, sometimes runs just don't quite work out the way you want them to.
On Wednesday nights I usually go to my parents house for dinner so this week I decided that since it's less than 4 miles away, I would rollerblade there. It was a great idea and a lot of fun. I talked to Katie on the phone the whole way there and listened to my ipod the whole way home. The only problem was my ever dreaded hill I live on. I was going to just hope my brake would work well and rollerblade straight down it but in the process I decide going barrelling into the busiest street in my town probably wasn't the best idea. The problem with rollerblading is, you can't just stop and walk. So I had to take off my rollerblades and walk down the hill in my socks- RIDICULOUS! When we bought our house I was concerned about living up in the hills because of the winter roads...turns out my car can handle it fine, it's me who cannot! However, I did discover that although I cannot run or bike up the hill- I CAN rollerblade up it, yay! (thank goodness because if I had to walk in my socks again I would've really not been happy).
My first official 5K race is in two days! I'm so excited. Even though I have gotten a bit distracted by my triathlon training, this 5k training has been something I've been working on since February and I'm 100 percent confident in my ability to do it. However, I would like some new good running music on my IPOD and I need your help! What is your all time BEST song to run/workout to?