New Toys-OCD packing-Florida or BUST!

I'm running out of ideas to entertain you all so I'll make this SHORT and SWEET so you can move
on to  much more riveting  blogs...
Check out my fueling supply.I am locked and loaded with First Endurance products. I will be completely honest as I test out each and every product as the season progresses.  This evening I am starting off with PreRace  before my spin class tonight then I will again try it out before The Ocala 1/2 marathon I will be trotting through on Sunday in (hopefully) sunny Florida.

Here's the OCD part: I prepacked on Sunday for a Friday departure to Florida: pink Trakkers visor, Garmin GPS for car travel,sunscreen, and  more importantly some CAN DO mental stimulus somewhere in that pile in that I can actually manage a 1/2 marathon at this point. I'm still WHINING about that damn 4.5 road race I did up in Belgrade Lakes with the mile long hills. eeks.  No hills in Florida, right??   :-)

MARTHA OR SCOTT???

This will NOT be a political blog post but I'm pretty sure I know the country has one eye on the hellish carnage in Haiti and the other eye ball fixed on who will take the Massachusetts senate seat today. Am I right? You non Massachusetts residents will have to tell me if we've made the headlines in your town.


In other not so exciting news, I attempted a 4.5 mile road race this past weekend and if I could capture the experience in a screen print from my training peaks, I would, but I can't so here's a LINK if you really want to see where a heart rate should probably never go during an very early season TRAINING run.

Here are a few thoughts and lessons learned from this:

If my pace wasn't steady, my heart rate sure was. RED LINED even on the steep
down hill section. Hey, and I didn't even let it crash mid run. Kudos for me. (barf)

I am an idiot for signing up for a "training run" that had absolutely no flat sections except for the floor of the middle school girl's bathroom and the parking lot/finish line area where you actually STOP running.

I was trashed on Saturday after the race but was still in shock to really notice the amount.

I was trashed on Sunday (see above)

I was trashed on Monday (see above)

It's Tuesday and there is hope.

Prosaic

Yawn...

January just puts me to sleep. I'm glad we are almost at the 1/2 way mark. I couldn't bear going out in 16 degrees today even if it was just a measly short recovery run so now I will do it in the dark tonight minus a few more degrees darting patches of ice I likely won't see. Dummy me....

I did get an unexpected package last night and here's what was inside:

PINK TRAKKERS HATS! HELLLOOO! All the sudden January is looking FINE!

Happy New Year!

Winter in New England

Ahhhhh January...

My LEAST favorite month of the year followed by February. My skin is pasty white, I'm ready to go to bed by 7 due to the darkness and the thought of yummy greasy overloaded carbs consumes me. You know, stuff like mac and cheese and cookies. Any kind of cookies, you name it. (Drool)

Now as active I am I trying to stay these days, I have to admit, it's not making me feel refreshed and chipper, sleek and fit. Maybe it's the cookies. Ya think??

Today I feel like I've been steamrolled, tossed in a wood chipper and finally, put through one of those peanut grinders at Whole Foods that makes fresh peanut butter. Even my eye sockets hurt. Yesterday I completed the 100x100's swim challenge. Eeeeks. It was tough. I was in a lane with 2 others and the idea was to switch off the lead every 10 repeats and move a little stone from one cup to another to keep track. Besides my lane mate from MIT Masters, I swam with this other guy Mike who I did not know and really, he should have been in a 1:25 BASE lane (not kidding) but that wasn't an option since he was the fastest swimmer there and we only had a 2 minute, 1:55, 1:45 and 1:40 lane. He literally BLASTED out each and every 100 on a 1:10-1:15 effort and just hung at the wall for 25-30 seconds looking bored.
Consequently, he ended up leading most of the swim and Bob and I just stayed with 1:20ish effort having plenty of time to grab a gel and keep hydrated between repeats. At the 1/2 way mark I was thinking.. "no way.. I don't think I can last another set let alone 5000 more yards of these" but the thought of actually getting out of the lane in the middle of a set with my tail between my legs would have seemed more painful and embarrassing so instead, I dreamed of
the bubbly goodness of freshly baked mac and cheese and Orange Milano cookies and life was again worth living.

If I am mentally impaired enough to sign up for this again, I have a few tips I will remember and share with you.
A. Bring TWO PAIRS of goggles. Having the same pair on for 2hours and 45 minutes, made my eyes/sockets very uncomfortable no matter how much adjusting I did.

B. Bring SALT TABLETS AGAIN. Phew... thank god I remembered these. Only after 20 repeats, my feet started to cramp and they were a LIFESAVER even though I was using Power Gel with 2x sodium. I'm figuring the cramping is from the 11 mile New Years Day run the day before and my lack of proper post run re-hydrating.


And now for your viewing pleasure, I will go off on a tangent and share some holiday photos TGP style taken with my new Nikon D5000.

Christmas Eve at Dusk



Christmas Table

Parker

mini cheesecakes