Updates and random thoughts

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

I’m back to a regular training week this week. It was nice to take a break from my long run last week and, even without a long run, I got in about 85 miles and almost 3 hours of elliptical time. Back to business this week, though. I got my hill repeats in yesterday morning, 20 x Damn It Hill. A neighbor walking her dogs saw me finishing up and asked how many times I had run up “the big hill.” When I told her twenty times she asked me, “Why?” Awkward moment. We stood there staring at each other for a moment until I finally shrugged and said something stupid like, oh I don’t know. I guess I should file that one away with the secret long runs lesson.

I’ll run my long run tomorrow and I plan to up it to 60K. Hubby goes in early tomorrow so he gets up at 4:00am and leaves by 5:00am. Perfect. I can start my run by 6:00am and finish in time to take a shower, eat lunch, get some life-saving coffee, and have been hard at work for hours when he gets home. I can’t repeat this lesson enough times: the family loves your long runs when they don’t realize how much time a long run takes! The post-long-run coffee infusion helps tremendously with maintaining the facade of running ease. And, again, I can’t say this one enough either – it’s a good idea to suggest that take-out be picked up on his/her way home to help with the facade!

Saturday will be another tempo run. I’m not sure yet what the distance will be. I’ll wait to see how I recover from the 60K to decide. If I stick with the rotating schedule, it should be 10K. I’ll wait, though.

So, now I find myself at the random thoughts section of this post.

The amount of spam comments that I get bombarded with here is just ridiculous! Most of them are embedded with links for drugs, especially v1agra (mispelled on purpose). Oh yeah, of course that matches up so well with a blog on diabetes and running.

Next week is going to be a busy but really cool week. I have a guest runner for the week. Tommy Neal, who just became the second ever diabetic runner to compete in Olympic Marathon Trials, is visiting for the week. It’s a “training camp” sort of week so it’s full of work. So far the weather forecast is looking great. Hooray for NC’s usual lack of winter wonderland! Sorry, I can’t tell you the workouts, though. When the paycheck depends on outrunning the competition, Tommy’s workouts don’t get published. I would say that it’s not rocket science, but … it is! I’ll be getting up early all week to get my running in before Tommy even rolls out of bed, but he’s on a two hour time difference so it doesn’t require much of a schedule change for me.

I have my winter garden started. In NC, it’s possible to start some lettuce this early and cover the seedlings on nights when the temps will drop into the 20s. I got my peas started and a few of them are already coming up. It’s going to be a while before they need stringing up, though. I’ve also found that starting carrots in the fall and keeping them protected during the winter makes for some great carrots early in the spring. But, I never got the carrots started this year. Oh well. I have an area that I’ve been working on to make a little cottage garden and I hope I can carve out enough time to complete that by spring, but it’s looking doubtful because of the amount of work I’m inundated with lately. I have four raised planting beds edged with stacked stones (from going around collecting rocks from everywhere I run and see piles of big rocks in the woods). I’ve made a cobble stone sidewalk that curves through it with cobble stones that my hubby got from the Habitat for Humanity Restore. We also found some cast iron yard furniture at an estate auction and I’m making a slate patio for the chairs. I’ve planted 10 Knock-Out Roses (5 pink and 5 red) in two of the raised beds. And I’ve planted a couple camelia bushes. Okay, the rest of it, though, is a mud pit right now. And, I have to get the picket fence panels up to keep the deranged deer out of there. And, I still haven’t finished painting the panels, fixed the broken pickets, or dug holes for the fence posts yet either. But, I can look out my office window and see what has been done and imagine how good it will look when the rest of it’s done!

I had a stupid low the other evening. These are the kind of lows that hit you like a bat and make you look like a rambling idiot and which make you feel like you tied on a big drunk or something. I have no idea why it hit me like that; actually, I rarely figure them out. I was downstairs and my meter, my open bottle of dex tabs, my bottle of water, and my husband were all upstairs. We have a bell, by the way, for emergencies – I’m supposed to slam my hand down on the bell to ring it. The bell was in the bedroom, though, and all the things I wanted were upstairs. I was in the kitchen. Yes, yes, I know – isn’t there food right there in the kitchen? Remember: this was a stupid low. I had enough sense about me to know that I needed my meter so that I could write down the exact time, what I ate, and what my blood sugar was. Stupid lows make me lose any sense of time and make it difficult to remember what I just did seconds ago. I’ve found that the best way to prevent overcorrecting the low is to write it down and wait. So, I bounded upstairs, ran around the corner to my office, grabbed my meter and dextabs off the desk, flew back around the corner (slamming my office door shut behind me), dove into the chair, and tried to mumble to my husband that I had a bad low. I sort of knew what I was doing and saying, but he sat there and looked at me like I was crazy. I tried again – I’th b-loooow, wud time idit???? Usually after one of these stupid lows, I get asked about the whereabouts of the bell, the glucagon, etc. Shouldn’t those things be checked on prior to a stupid low? Sheesh!

I’ve been fighting off the wicked cold that my husband had. Somehow, I’ve managed to fend it off … barely. I’m downing astragalus and vitamin C. I have some sinus stuff and that “I might be getting sick” fatigue, but so far it hasn’t hit me full strength. Fingers crossed. He was sick! Fingers crossed for sure! I decided to cancel on a talk on campus last night that I really wanted to hear because I didn’t want to be out late in the cold rain with an almost cold and then get up early this morning to run in the cold rain with an almost cold.

Well, I could keep going on with random thoughts, but I now have to return to my work – break time has expired. I’ll take some pictures and try to get some short video snippets next week with the flip cam. I’ll also try to get an informal interview with Tommy for the blog. Let me know if you have any questions you want me to ask him for the informal interview!

Happy Trails!
Missy