yoga....

Today I ventured into the yoga studio. I signed up for a special series of group classes that LFT was offering. Since I have never taken Yoga before and I am officially still in recovery mode, I thought it would be a good chance to try something new and force me not to rush into running full force. As it turns out, I was the only one in the class so I got a one on one session with the Yoga instructor. I am not all that flexible so lets just say some of the poses were a challenge - nothing like Wii fit. I definitely did not break a sweat so it is not the kind of exercise I am used to doing but went in with an open mind. All in all, it was very interesting. I do feel like I had a work out of sorts, my muscles definitely were feeling the burn in certain poses. I was certainly relaxed.

I had to laugh when we did "the mountain" I thought. OK, I normally just call this standing in place. There was a simliar pose with a fancy name at the end where you are basically lying on the floor. I call it lying on the floor. I can't even remember what Yoga lady called it.



By the end of the class, I was proclaimed to have a beautiful warrior 2 pose. Who knew? The downside to the class is it is at 5:45 am and you leave there all mello yello in need of a nap. I have a few more sessions to go, in the meantime, I will be working on my warrior with a little help from Wii fit :)




HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMY :)


My younger sister had a birthday today :) Here she is with my adorable (and not shy) niece, Hollie.



and then Hunter (my super sporty and smart nephew) and my brother in law Chris (we think he might be super sporty and smart too...)

Why do you all have to be so inspiring??!!??....

After a day spent reading all your blogs, all your inspiring stories, all your great race reports, I did something le kuckoo today (that is French for freaking insane). I signed up for the Ironman 70.3 in Augusta next Fall. I.can.do.it. (I think!) Its on like Donkey Kong! Time to get back on the bike... I'm skeered.... :)

on gasoline and spaghetti sauce...

The gas issues here are crazy. I went to Publix this mornring, there was a huge line outside one station in our area that has gas. On the way back by there 2 hours later, they are completely out. They have gas station attendants serving as traffic cops trying to keep the peace and get people in and out of there somewhat efficiently. You know it is bad when you are calling people as you pass by gas stations to let them know which ones have gas. I have been lucky. The 2 times I have filled up, I went at 5:00ish in the morning and didn't have an issue.

Rick has been desperately in seach of premium today. He had planned a motorcycle road trip this week to Tennessee. At this point, not sure if he will go or not. The thought process at the momement seems to be that the smaller towns outside of Atlanta might have less of a gas shortage than we do but would hate to get out there and run out. Who knows... Is it just me or does everything seem to be coming to a screeching halt lately - gas, banking, ... sigh... Perhaps I would feel better if I didn't work in the banking industry!



Me: Did you hear Paul Newman died today?
Rick: No.
Me: I hope they don't stop making his spaghetti sauce. It is my favorite.
Rick: I hope they do stop making it. I prefer Ragu.
Me: What???? You know we have eaten Newman's Own for 18 years.
Rick: I know. I have always liked Ragu better.
Me: Wow... You think you know a person....

Sweat proof your hair...

or alternatively titled, "You cannot be serious..."

An article from the latest issue of Instyle gives tips on how to hit the gym without ruining your blow out. A few simple steps and your hair is good as new post-workout. Ummm, sure. "Place a headband beneath your hairline, flip hair upside down, twist and coil hair into a bun then anchor with bobby pins and secure with a soft scrunchie. Afterward, shake out hair and use the cool setting on your hair dryer to blast away perspiration."

I think one of my friends uses this when she cuts the grass only she uses a doo-rag and a sweatband. I am pretty sure she does not get the same results. I'll have to let her know she needs a scrunchie instead. Seriously, who sweats so little during a workout that they could simply pull the sweatband from their hair, give it a shake and go on about their day? Maybe it is dryer on the cool setting that I have been missing. Had I known, I could have skipped taking a shower altogether. Not.

I cannot predict the future...

I was certain I could. Oh well. On this occasion, it turned out to be a good thing! I no longer have to wear my oh so attractive "boot" provided by doctor dude and have been released to swim and bike now with running returning to my future in the next week. Wow. More details later...

Back to Doctor Dude Tomorrow...

I can call him dude because he is young. Definitely not a bow tied, Orville Reddenbacher type of doctor :)

Last week I was hopeful that the visit tomorrow would be a non-event. My vision was that I would pop in, he would say I am good to go and I would be off and running. I my vision I might even leave the car in the parking lot and jog back to work. OK, maybe not since it is 15 miles away but it sounded good. I am pretty sure this is not the way it is going to go down tomorrow. Oddly enough after strictly following the rest and swimming only edict, my foot seems to bother me more now than it did initially. How is that possible...

I tried to do some deep water jogging this morning. It actually turned out to be more shallow water walking than anything. Although Lifetime has three gi-normous pools, none of them have what would be considered deep water. There are 2 indoor pools, one is your traditional gym sized lap pool which is about 3 feet deep all the way across. The other pool is a pretty big recreational pool, maybe 50 m by 25 m with 2 big water slides at one end. I had never ventured over to the water slide pool as I am typically pretty content with lap swimming. I wasn't sure how deep the pool was over there. I assumed it had to be somewhat deep for the kids to rocket out of the two story water slide into the pool without cracking their skulls open but clearly I was wrong. As it turns out, you don't need much water to avoid a head injury when you rocket out of those slides.

I was all prepared to run like madwoman (in water of course). I trotted past the lap pool, no goggles, no cap. I didn't need them I was going to run! I walk up to the deep end of the pool - 3 feet 9 inches - you cannot be serious! hmmm.... at this point I was committed. No cap, no goggles, I can't lap swim so I might as well just go ahead and throw caution to the wind and run "as is". Yes, it was not the deep water run I had envisioned. My feet obviously were running on the pool bottom. Oh well. I had good intentions and was committed to a work out. I am certain Doctor Dude would not approve.

After about 1,500 meters of running, as you soothsayers might guess, my foot was hurting and I had to get out. During all this "running" I had plenty of time to figure out plan B especially since I, being a soothsayer myself, can see a lot of swimming and nothing else in my immediate future. My plan was to give the running another try but at another facility that had deep water. I wanted to make sure it was even doable first before I showed up at one of the local parks to test out my new found water jogging skills so I decided to head to the outdoor pool at LFT. At this point it was 6:30 am, still dark out and oh, 65 degrees or so. Yes, some might call that cold, and I would agree - especially if you are walking out there wet to begin with. The water was pretty cold as well! As luck would have it the outdoor pool did have some water deep enough to try the jogging thing - a whole 5 feet and 1 inch deep - wow. I guess they really don't want anyone diving. It must be an insurance thing.

After hopping in with my jogger belt, I was able to give it the Girl Scout try. It was not fast jogging, if you can even call it jogging. It probably resembled more of a dog paddle. I am certain anyone who saw me probably thought they might need to throw me a life preserver. I gave it about 6 laps and called it a day. I definitely need some practice and some music to keep me entertained but will give it another try if doctor dude tells me tomorrow that I am still on the bench. I'll let you know.

I have five words....

Red.velvet.cake.ice.cream.

Oh my goodness, why did Publix have to go there???? Soooooo good.

So you think you like to read....

I borrowed this from Marathon Bird , one of the blogs I like to stalk. It is kind of off my quest to complete a marathon but since that has been sidelined, why not try something new?

I love to read although admittedly I do not read nearly as much now as I used to "back in the day". I can remember growing up spending entire weekends devouring books. I easily have 50+ books on my bookshelf waiting for me to pick them up and read. I started accumulating them towards the end of graduate school when I wasn't sure how I would fill my time with no papers to write or textbooks to study. Imagine that. As it turns out, I filled my life with most everything except all those books begging to be read. Sad but true....

The Big Read is a National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.

Here’s what you are supposed to do:
*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE .Share this list in your blog, too, if you like.

(I just bolded the ones I have read to see if I had at least the six books covered. As it turns out, I have 30. Not too bad. Obviously, I have missed out on some classics! I think my Dad read Lord of the Rings but that doesn't count for my list, does it??)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen




2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee




6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell



22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas



66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray


80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams



95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


**Will you do this post too?
How many of these books have you read?
Which ones are your favorites?**

still doing nothing...

I guess this is how the other half lives. It is so odd not having any activities after work these days. I am trying my best not to go mental! Are we tired of hearing about my foot yet? Me too! I will say it is a strange injury. One day it feels fine and I think I am on the road to recovery and the next it hurts again. Go figure. I did borrow Rick's bone activator from his broken leg to see if I can get this healing process moving along. I figure it can't hurt... I go see my doctor on Tuesday. We'll see what he thinks about things. I don't have a good feeling.

Side note, I have discovered that they could package just about anything in a "100 calorie" bundle and I would buy it. My all time favorite right now are Brach's gummy bears in the 100 calorie packet. Cheez-its, lorna doones, nuts, you name it, as long as it says 100 calories on the label, it is the best thing ever. Yes, I am their target consumer. Yes, I know I could just portion out the regular kind out of a bag or box and put them in little baggies and make my own 100 calories packs for half the price but.... They could package celery in a 100 calorie bag and I would not be able to get enough. Sad but true.

I'm back...

My trip started out with an unusual number of things going wrong that made me wonder if someone was trying to keep me from making the trip in the first place. As I was loading my suitcase into the car, I noticed a tear in the zipper. Not a big enough tear to worry about if you were making a car trip but a big enough one to be worried about if your bag is going to be thrown about by baggage handlers (insert visual of the old Samsonite commercial with the Chimpanzee jumping around on the luggage). I decided it would be best to swap out suitcases.

I get to the airport on time, light traffic, light security line, perfect. I sit down at the gate and wait for the boarding announcement. At about the time I should ahve been boarding they announce that the flight had been cancelled and everyone had been rebooked on the next flight which was 2 hours later. Bummer. I trudge over to the next concourse get my new boarding pass, decide to eat lunch and wait. This time I did get to board! Since I was re-booked, I was put in one of the only available seats. You guessed it - MIDDLE! I have nothing against the middle, I am the middle of three girls, but on a plane it can be uncomfortable. Luckily my two seat mates were unusally small so there were no foreign body parts pressed against mine the whole way there. (I still have nightmares about my red-eye home from Las Vegas where an unusually large woman occupied her seat, half of mine and then sat on my leg the whole way home to Atlanta - ugh. That trip got me 15,000 sky miles for my trouble). So, anyhooo... we all get seated and the captain announces that we can't push back for one hour due to weather in Philadelphia and they opted to leave us on the plane instead of go back to the gate. sigh....

I got into Philadelphia around 4:00. I made a mad dash for the rental car and then headed to the historical district. I managed to get into a tour of Independence Hall and then walked around to see the rest on my own. Most of the museums and displays closed at 5:00 so I only got to see the Liberty Bell through the glass from the sidewalk but got to see plenty of other cool buildings. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE historical things so this was all really cool to me.

Tomb of the unknown Revolutionary War soldier


A view of Independence Hall from the back


One of the side buildings of the Independence Hall Park area


Meeting Room in Independence Hall (the chair in the back is the original chair that George Washington sat in. It is called the Rising Sun chair. The individual tables in the foreground were for the representatives from each of the colonies). When you step inside it is so exciting to realize that all the people you have studied about all these years were actually in that building at one time. Really cool.


Another View inside Independence Hall (this was the room where people would stand trial)


More of the Independence Hall area




I wanted to walk through Christchurch Cemetary but got there after the gates had closed. This is the cemetary where Benjamin Franklin is buried. I was able to see his tomb as he is buried right next to the gate.

A view through the gate of the cemetary


Benjamin Franklin's Grave Marker


Some historical businesses that have since been renovated




Betsy Ross' House


Quaker Meeting House (they still hold services there several times a week)


I was actually in the area for training which I attended on Wednesday and Thursday in Wilmington, DE. I stayed in Chadds Ford, PA - that area and where I was in Delaware was really lovely. The weather was Fall-like although the leaves had not turned yet. Where I was did not seem particularly overdeveloped. There were lots of trees, land, rolling hills. Of course, I loved all the older homes and historical sites. I flew home on September 11th. The airport itself seemed pretty light although the plane was completely full. There was some sort of ceremony at the airport to commemorate the date while I was there.

As far as the workout schedule goes, I am still on the "boot" plan. Until today, I had not done any type of workout at all for the past 2 weeks. My foot is feeling better, the rest obviously helped it. I can still occasionally tell there is an issue but nothing like a week ago. I was feeling like a couch potato so I went to LFT today for a swim. It was kind of a now or never thing. I very rarely go on Saturday so I must have been desperate for a workout to go today. I ended up swimming 3,000 meters which is more than I have been when I go in the mornings. You know you are feeling good when you double the core workout "just cuz". I kept it simple: 600 warmup, 1000 pull, 200 free, 1000 kick, 200 IM. The long distances are risky because I get bored just counting off laps but today it felt good. Normally I have to go with short sets just to keep my interest. I guess today it didn't matter because it had been so long since I swam I was just happy to be in the pool!

Tomorrow: I am off to watch my team play our first match of the Fall season! hopefully in 2 weeks I can play too!

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

don't know when I'll be back again. OK, corny I know... I'm headed out for Wilmington, DE this morning. I am kind of excited as I have never been there before. Most of my training trips seem to involve Dallas, Oakland, or Omaha so it is a nice change of pace. I should get there early enough this afternoon to do a whirlwind tour of the historical district of Philadelphia and see Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, that sort of thing. I am pretty excited!

I have not worked out in any way shape or form for a week now. So this is how the other half lives... I don't like it... I do find I am getting lots of sleep which is a bonus. My foot does feel better so maybe I am on to something by following the doctor's orders.

To my seatmates on the plane: I think I am getting a cold. I will not be coughing in your ear for 2 hours but do have a sore throat. I have left little packets of airborne on your seat as a parting gift. No need to thank me.

I am flying back in on September 11th. I am not completely phobic about it but it is one of those things that makes you consider another departure date. My friend Theresa said she would not think twice about it. In retrospect she has A LOT of unusual incidents and accidents happen to her so maybe she wasn't the one to ask. Just a thought...

I got nothin...

No workouts, nothing... The foot is getting on my freaking nerves. It probably hurts more today than it has in a while. Right now, it really feels more like my ankle and kind of shooting up to my knee. BIG SIGH. I opted not to swim tody just to rest. Might not swim tomorrow either. Not sure what to do other than just sit and take a load off. Odd that it is hurting more now than it did initially. I guess the rest and then diving back into running and then back to rest didn't help it.

On the sunny side, my younger sister got a house in Loganville which is about 15 miles away. Pretty cool to have her back from Florida and in shouting distance!

Weekend Update

My weekend pretty much involved a lot of tennis. Some winning, some losing. My foot is paying the price today. I actually withdrew from the last match of my doubles tournament and then decided to forfeit my last match before my official rest period tomorrow night. The pain is still on the fifth metacarpal but now also feels achy in my ankle area which I suppose could just be radiating up from the cuboid area. Riveting stuff, eh?

I am in the midst of a mental breakdown of sorts for no apparent reason. I think the foot thing is starting to become less of a novelty and more of an annoyance to me. I am anxious to get this thing over with. Today I decided to back out of a singles tennis league that is beginning in three weeks just to give it more rest from tennis and then may back out of the entire ALTA season instead of just the three weeks that I promised my MD. The thoery being that when I am cleared to run I can start out with just the running instead of throwing myself back into everything all at once.

Not much else happening, the weekend went too fast as usual. Bummer! Back to work tomorrow to enjoy further complaints and commentary on the states of the new dress code. JOY!