B&A Trail Map, Image Credit BikeWashington.org
Yesterday’s long run along the B&A Trail and a few of its side streets is the farthest I’ve gone yet, a solid 18.13 miles and it was a fantastic run for a lot of reasons. The first being that the weather couldn’t have been better. All the bitter cold runs this winter were worth it for a day like yesterday averaging 56 degrees during the first day of February. I realize we’re not in the clear yet with cold temps, but it was nice to have a break from the chill. I started off down the trail from the Annapolis end with a huge smile on my face until I got to my first patch of ice. As I approached the first shaded stretch of the trail I realized I would be encountering a good chunk of areas where the snow and ice would not be melted away quite yet. There were only about a half dozen icy patches ranging from about 10 to 20 yards long and my first instinct was to slow my pace, though I refused to walk. I thought about trying to stay in the footsteps of people before me, but they were too far apart (darn men’s strides) and already iced in. I also tried to stay in a few bike tracks, also glazed with ice. Wanting to get through the ice patches as quickly as possible without falling I found myself engaging my core, focusing on my breathing, and thanking my Pilates training as I made slow and steady progress through each patch. Good old core strengthening came to the rescue.
Once I made it through the first patch I figured I’d be able to survive the rest and hoped the ice patches would have time to melt before I hit them again on the way back; most of them did and I have the wet shoes and muddy pants to prove it. Read More »
I believe very strongly in the saying “young at heart.” No matter your age, you really are only as old as you want to be and I think it’s very healthy to be able to flip on the “kid switch” whenever adult life just becomes too much. If you take life too seriously it will pass you by and you’ll never know what you missed. There are a great number of things I enjoy that always make me feel young and let my kid self shine through. Having a dance party all by myself with the last dance scene in Footloose playing, for example, is a blast, makes me laugh, gets my adrenalin going, and if you saw it happening it would just look plain goofy.
I’m also a huge fan of singing at the top of my lungs in the car, music blaring, seat dancing to my heart’s content, and I do not care who can hear me at the stoplight. During many road trips growing up, my sister, mom, and I would sing oldies, soundtracks, Michael Jackson, it was always a fantastic way to pass the time and continues to be. Sure, a little NPR on any road trip is a great distraction for long stretches of I-95 but it can’t beat a good old-fashioned sing along. Read More »
Posted in Life in General | Tagged Friends |
The problem with running a lot is that when you get to the point in your week where it’s the “off day,” you just don’t feel quite right. At least I don’t. Friday is my day off from running but my day on for squats, lunges, and other strength workouts that I hate. My head is not clear, I am not focused, and I am not relaxed. There could be any number of contributing factors to these things but right now I’d like to blame it on the fact that today was not a running day. I can’t even make today a running day because my body would hate me on Sunday’s pre-Super Bowl 18 miler. I guess that’s training for you.
Perhaps the off day is an opportunity to find other ways to center. I will work on my breathing, my posture, my handwriting, anything that can get me to focus. Work should also be a good distraction, but it is Friday after all which is its own distractor factor (yes, I just made that up). It might also be helpful to know how others spend their off days. What do you do?
Every now and then when I go to put on earrings in the morning I do a quick sweep through my pile to see if my fake pearl-like earrings that I bought two years ago from Anthropologie might magically have reappeared. Alas, they continue to be missing and I have no idea when I actually lost them. This is a unique case for me because usually I just mysteriously lose one earring whose match goes in the lonely “misfit earring” drawer in the hopes that its partner will one day return.
I like to think that I am a very organized person and I honestly don’t lose things all that often. Around the house, almost everything has its place from the coffee mugs to the dog’s collars (she has 10 of them so they can’t hang on just any hook) to the miscellaneous candles, magazines, and my keys. My keys go on the hook by the door; my husband’s keys go wherever they land when he’s emptying out his pockets for the day. Although things don’t always make it to their assigned home, I at least know where to look when something turns up missing. The problem ensues when it takes me a while to realize I’ve lost something because it becomes that much harder to find. Read More »
I have had many treadmill phases in my running life and it’s hard to remember whether or not I truly ever enjoyed running on the treadmill. Since training for the B&A Marathon started, it makes sense to run outside as often as possible to be best prepared for whatever weather comes my way March 1. I’ve now survived running in single digit temperatures (though not often) and happily ran through snow, but there are some circumstances I am just not ready to endure. Pouring down rain is one of them and roads that resemble ice skating rinks are another. What are you willing to run through?
There is a Monday night Pilates class at the gym that I love and I recently started going a tad earlier to put in a quick three miles on the treadmill before class. Other than simply running, I’ve never done much in the way of sprint or interval training so I thought treadmill running would be a good way to introduce those controlled runs to my workout. The first time I did it, I ran at the pace I wanted but definitely did not enjoy it. I was utterly distracted by the seven TV screens at just the wrong angle to be watched comfortably, felt slightly self-conscious about the heavy thump my shoes seemed to make on the treadmill platform, and simply missed the solitude of the road.
It’s not like I’ve never run on a treadmill before. In fact, it recently dawned on me that we had a treadmill in our house growing up. I was trying to remember how long I’ve been running and all of a sudden I had a vague memory of running on a treadmill in my parent’s bedroom and always being amazed at how it never fell through the floor. Read More »
Everyone I know anyone during any stage of life can admit that they have been a clock watcher at one point or another. I personally, am obsessed with time though I couldn’t tell you why. I have two clocks in my bedroom, eight if you count the cell phone and watches. The kitchen has two and immediately around the corner are another two. Of course, none of these clocks read the same time. Some are set faster to prevent being late; some are set to match the cell phone which I think might be the most accurate, and some are at least an hour off because they’ve never been reset from the last Daylight Savings time change. I even continued wearing a watch after the battery died just for the sake of having a watch on hand (pardon the pun).
During school, clock watching was absolutely a way to pass the time, always looking up to see how much longer until class would be over. I think it’s probably safe to say that plenty of people carried this habit into the career world and are all too cognizant of what time it is at any given point in their day. I usually feel torn between wishing it were earlier or later; very rarely do I find myself pleased with exactly the time that it is. Read More »
I experienced running in snow for the first time today. The forecast had predicted only a 30 percent chance of snow for the morning hours and as much as I do love looking at the weather forecast, it doesn’t mean I always believe what I read. So when I flipped the porch light on to go outside, I was giggle inside happy at the sight of snow. An adult voice in my head quickly piped up over my little girl excitement and said “slippery, hope you don’t fall.” (I’m pleased to report that no slipping or sliding occurred.)
As I turned around my first corner I was thinking about how I’ve always wanted to run in the snow and realized at that moment how much I wanted to enjoy it and pay attention to what I was experiencing. I was surprised how many flakes seemed to fly directly into my eye and I wondered for a minute if it would have made sense to have been wearing my ski goggles. I decided it wasn’t that big of a deal and started to notice how the flakes felt on my cheeks…wet. I hoped I wouldn’t be soaking by the time I got home, but soon I didn’t mind that feeling of a little drip now and then. Read More »
Going to the grocery store is one of my favorite things to do. I’m a very list and task-oriented person so the entire grocery getting experience almost always satisfies my personality. I start with trying to find new recipes that I want to make (double checking that my husband will eat them), list out ingredients I’ll need for the recipes and then make sure I add on the list anything else we’re out of or that we want. Good chances are that if something is not on the list, I will not remember to get it.
One of the things I appreciate about where I live is that I have a number of grocery options within a very small radius. There’s the Super Fresh, aka Sucky Fresh to all who’ve ever shopped there, that is about 2 miles away but that I really only go to if I’m desperate for a basic ingredient. We also have a brand new Safeway with a coffee shop in it, underground parking, and two different size carts about 4 miles away. While this Safeway was being built I got more and more excited to shop there as the days drew nearer to its grand opening. First chance I had, I gave the store a shot. And then another. And then one more last chance. I really wanted to be a Safeway shopper. The store does have a lot of “new store” pluses to it, but for me, the aisles are too narrow; the Asian aisle was quite limited; customer service was weak at best; and I personally had two less than impressive deli counter experiences.
Fortunately, only another few miles away is the recently renovated Giant, my safe haven of a grocery store. The store itself is awesome in my mind—it’s big, has lots of brand selections, plenty of self-checkout as well as staffed checkout lanes, good two-fer sales (that’s two for one in my grocery slang)—yep, the store works for me. Sometimes though, it’s my fellow Giant shoppers who I question. Read More »
It has been on my calendar for a few weeks now to attend what I believe is the 13th annual Polar Bear Plunge held at Sandy Point State Park to raise money for Maryland’s Special Olympics. A girlfriend of mine had a team with her Rams Head co-workers and I had agreed to be her dry buddy at the event standing by with warm clothing, jackets, and of course, the Flip to capture it all on film. (Check out our brief home movie of the experience: Polar Bear Plunge 2009) Knowing full well that the event was to draw around 13,000 people, another girlfriend and I planned to drive into the park around noon, an hour before the first plunge was to take place.
Ever the optimists, we proceeded along the back road, past all the other Plungers parking on the side of the road and continued to the gate of the park only to be told by a rather gruff police officer that we needed a permit to enter the park. “Are you attending the Plunge” he asked. This was one of those moments where we could have said any number of things followed in a redneck accent by “here’s yur sign,” but we kept the sarcastic comments to ourselves. We did not have the necessary permit to enter the park and turned back around to hightail it to a shuttle location so we could get back to the park in time to watch our friend plunge into icy Bay water on a day with a 27 degree wind chill factor.
By the time we got back to the park we had 10 minutes to spare and nowhere in the sea of Plungers could we find our friend. Read More »
Posted in Life in General | Tagged Friends |
Every now and then we seem to experience a “heat wave” during the winter. I wouldn’t describe today’s forecast as being beach weather, but it certainly has been a nice day and from the looks of Facebook posts, today has given lots of folks spring fever. I decided to take a mini-outdoor break myself to enjoy a moment of fresh air, let the dogs run for a minute, and play with the Flip. I really do think it’s a great invention. I think the USB port is an even greater invention which is part of what makes the Flip so awesome. So here’s a link to a super short clip taken by my not-so-steady hand of the beautiful day outside and the carefree life that dogs lead: A Game Called Chase
Posted in Dogs | Tagged Dogs, Friends |
