02 May 2008

Doh!!!

I whined this morning about not being able to run cause my knee hurt. Irene commented that I should try some essential fatty acids and I went DOH!!! About 3 weeks ago I ran out and forgot to get more. I'm also out of glucosamine!! I bet that's what's wrong with me. DOH!!! Sometimes I can be so dense......

Dogs and Signs

I've mentioned before that once in a while I get things for free to review and write about on my blog. Well, I got a very cool review product this past week.

When it arrived earlier this week, Nala had to check it out:
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Then Rocco had to see what was up:
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Once it was out of the packaging it was not near as fun:
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Once hung up though, Nala had to show they mean business:
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Anyway, these signs are nice!! The are metal signs and they come with mounting hardware, brass screws if you have a wood fence or plastic zip ties for chain link, like mine. This company is pretty cool too. They have a good Karma policy. They do not accept credit cards, but they will ship out your order and you pay after you receive it. In this day and age it's amazing to find a company that does business like this. The signs are very reasonable and a great value. I got the cobalt blue one that says 'dogs.' You can also get it so it says 'dog' depending on how many dogs you have. So if you have a dog and you have a yard, you need to get your own beware of dog signs for your fence.

No run for you!!

I felt like the soup nazi this morning with myself. I woke up with every intention of running this morning, but yesterday my ankle and knee had been bothering me and this morning it literally felt like my knee was bone on bone. Now I have no cartilidge in my right knee, and that technically is what's happening, but I usually don't feel it. Since I don't want to damage my knee anymore than it is, I wisely ordered myself not to run. There is something going on with my right leg/back. I may have to go to the chiro next week if it doesn't clear up.

So I really don't have that much to say this morning. We have a law here in Hawaii where you can not smoke inside any public building and you have to stand at least 20' away from any door when smoking. One of the folks that work next door smoke and he goes and stands in the middle of the driveway to be away from buildings on both sides. I was just watching him and I don't understand why people still smoke. I just don't get it. With all the information we have now, and with just the general knowledge that taking anything into your body is going to effect it, I don't know why people smoke. By the same token, I don't know why people eat crap food and wonder why they are heavy/unhealthy. I guess I just don't understand people sometimes :)

So Hubby started a new job about 3 weeks ago, maybe 4, and now they want a resume from him. Huh???? They didn't want a resume initially as they had their own application forms. Now they say they need a resume for his file. Ugh!!! I'm hoping I can find some resume templates online because I'm not going to put a lot of effort into it. I know, bad attitude, but why do they want it now???? Stupid.

Well, that's all that's falling out of my brain. I am very excited, we are going to the outlet center tomorrow. There's an Old Navy and Sport Authority there. I'll probably be spending some money. But that's good for the economy, right???

01 May 2008

Today was better

Though still not as good as last week. Or even earlier this week. But it was better than yesterday. I have now completed 2 weeks of a 30 day program. I'm pleased with myself. I like this program, I love the workouts. I can't wait to see what happens at the end.

As I was doing some push-up or something this morning, I glanced over at my arm and thought, 'hmm... that arm looks puffy.' I looked at the other arm and saw the same thing. This is my forearms which never gets puffy. So as I'm torturing myself with some push-ups I wondering why my forearms would be puffy. Then I started thinking about my diet. The past week or so my diet has crept out of control. I have been eating way too many carbs. I have found that carbs (rice, cereal, pasta, bread, etc) eaten after my work out doesn't bother me at all. But carbs eaten later in the day can get ugly. I've been eating carbs at every meal lately. Pasta for lunch, rice for dinner, cookies for dessert. Not good at all. I wonder if they have carb rehab, kind of like drug rehab :) So I'm back to my regular eating and hopefully the puffy arms will go away. I figure they are related because lots of carbs makes me retain water and feel puffy all over.

Tomorrow I'm going to try a faster pace running. I'm going to set my Garmin to a pace and try to maintain it the whole time. I'm going to shoot for 12 min/mile. I figure since my HR was just over 120 for 11 min/mile, I should be able to do 12 easy. Let's hope so.

30 April 2008

Wednesday thoughts

Lots of people participate in Wordless Wednesday. Not me. I generally have too much to say :)

First, I was to note on a commenter. Amy commented on my post about my HR when running. She has a website, Runners Lounge, which looks pretty darn cool. It's a place for runner's to go and hook up with other runners. It seems that all the stuff on the site is user generated. There are forums where you can talk with other runners, links to training programs, and a blog. There's lots of other stuff you all should go and check it out. I love finding new sites about running, triathlon, etc.

So today was strength training. Actually yesterday was but I took off :) So strength training. I have had fantastic workouts for 2 1/2 weeks and have been feeling fantastic after my workouts. Today?? Not so much. I know that all workouts can't be perfect but today was tough. My heart was not in it and I just couldn't get into it. But I did complete it and did the best I could so I guess that's all I can ask for. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

I probably should get back to work. It's the end of the month and we have a ton of samples. Why does everyone wait till the end of the month to send their samples in??? They could at least send gift baskets to make up for it :)

Michelle, I have a Garmin 305 and it totally rocks :)

29 April 2008

Not so great today

I had to take Rocco to the vet last night and basically he's approaching the end of his life. We are giving him steroids but it's nothing that can be cured only managed :( The details are over at Feather, Fur, and Fins if you're interested. I just hope he's not on the steroids long enough to need drug rehabilitation, that would be bad.

After yesterday's awesome run my ankle hurt all day. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. It didn't hurt during the run. I didn't do anything to it. Finally it hit me. I wore heels, high heels, on Saturday night for the Chicago concert. I never wear heels. Never!!! I live in slippahs (flip flops) and running shoes (I use my old running shoes for work). I think the heels strained my ankles and lower legs, which were also sore, and then running was the capper. So, between Rocco and my ankle, I decided to take today off. The ankle feels pretty good today though my plantar is acting up a little - I'm pretty sure it's all related :)

So that's it for today. I'm off to do my work and be very sad.

28 April 2008

My run today

This is the HR data from Garmin from my run today. Now granted, I haven't run in about 3 weeks and definitely decided to take it slow but what's going on??



That center line is a HR of 114. If you look most of my run was below that line. Huh?? I only went over, and got my HR up there, when my speed increased significantly. Ignore the first mile of data, my HR is never steady that first mile and always looks weird. But look at mile 2.5, I was doing close to an 11 minute mile and my HR was only slightly above 120??? Huh??? Could that possibly be right?? Could my aerobic capacity have gotten that much better from consistent training?? Or do you think my HRM is broken?? I honestly don't know what to think about this. I was not breathing incredibly hard during my run. In fact, I breath much harder during my strength sessions. Could the interval sessions I use for strength training have helped that much?? Wow!!! I think it may be time to step up my speed and see what happens. Next run, on Thursday, will be with Garmin set to a pace and me attempting to keep up with it. We'll see how it goes.

27 April 2008

Running

I've decided that I need to get back into the running regularly as soon as possible. That means tomorrow morning I run. I've been thinking about these marathons all day, heck, all weekend. I've been waffling between, what have I done, and whoo hoo, this will be awesome. I've decided to focus on the awesome part. I really think it will be a lot of fun. But I also have a goal time. I've had a goal time for the Honolulu Marathon for over a year now (I didn't do the marathon last year because of plantar) and I fully intend to meet it this year. Well, now I have a goal for the Maui Marathon too. Yikes!!! I'm not going to post them yet. Oh, what the heck, yes I am.. For the Honolulu Marathon I want to do it under 5 hours. The Maui Marathon I want to do in 4:45. Now this might seem crazy and it probably is, but I have reasoning for it. Honolulu can be brutally hot with no wind due to where the course goes. Also, there's the dreaded Diamond Head out and back. My nemesis. Maui is flat, flat, flat and runs along the ocean so you'll have cooling breezes. Of course, if it's raining and nasty there's nothing I can do about that. So there you have it. I have a lot of work ahead of me and 8 months to get ready... I should be able to do this. I wonder if I should join the wine of the month club to get me through??

Business Cards

I've been toying with the idea of getting business cards for quite a while now. I have 4 blogs and I make money from some of them, I've thought that business cards would be a great way to market outside the internet. Also, I'm trying to get some outside businesses going so I don't have to work for a living and a business card would be kind of important. One of the things that has held me back from doing that is that I don't want just a generic card. I want something that is unique and brands me, but I can't afford to pay someone to design a logo and I can't think of any.....

My point here, and I do have one, is that I found this great website that will let you make a logo. They have a bunch of different styles and industry categories you can choose form. You can pick the font style, size, color. It's really great. Once you chose a logo you can then have it put on business cards. This is the whole idea behind branding, putting your logo on everything you do so people recognize it. So I designed a logo and made some business cards. What do you think??



I love the bird cause I'm into animals and of course it would have to be pink :) Anyway, I'm thinking about doing this. It's super simple to do, their website walks you through the whole thing. So, if you've been thinking about logo design you might want to check them out.

6 weeks between marathons

I think that's doable. I do need to up my running though, I've been slacking on that lately. I'm debating whether to start today or tomorrow. I wonder if I can run more than 3 days a week?? Maybe if I did an easy run and maybe some hills or speed back to back that would be okay. Isolate my long runs and my hard runs??I will have to see if I can work that out. I think I'll work out a schedule today.

Right now I'm focusing on strength training. I want to see that through for the entire 30 days and see what happens. In a week I've already noticed changes and that is awesome. I'm on my second week so there's really only 2 more weeks to go. Maybe I'll keep the running light until this is over. We'll see. This program has me strength training 4 days a week for about an hour. That uses up the vast majority of my exercise time, but also this workout kicks my butt and getting a second workout in is hard. Super hard. Once this program is over and I scale back to 3 days a week about 45 minutes at a time, I think it will be easier to get more running in.

I started this program the week before my triathlon. That week it really worked me over. I was sore and tired - it felt great :) Then the week after my tri I took off completely and did nothing. So a week ago I picked up the program again and decided to start at the beginning since I had taken a week off. Last week's workouts were killer but not near as hard as the first time I did them. I thought, great, I'm getting stronger. Then yesterday I started week 2. Ummmm..... Stronger??? ...... Yeah.....not so much. Yesterday I thought I was going to die. It was great :) Anyway, I'll just keep at it and see where it all takes me.

Okay, speaking of exercise, I'd better get my butt moving before I lose interest completely.

Conversation with Hubby

 So yesterday morning I presented my idea of working out at home to the Hubby. Once I presented it to him, he said he was in. I told him I h...