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