Um...Monday?

I feel torn about this Monday. On the one hand, we had an absolutely perfect weekend visiting friends in STL. On the other hand, it's nearing the end of the semester and I'm grumpy and stressed. So you're going to get both sides.

BIG BIG RUNNING ANNOUNCEMENT
I did it. I signed up for Marathon #4: Top of Utah marathon, September 2014 in Logan, UT. The first half of it is a 2% downhill grade as you run down a canyon. I've heard that the course is gorgeous and I'll get to stay with a dear friend and colleague who lives up there. Training is set to start in June!

Question: are the RW training plans worth the $30? I've used the sub-2 training schedule several times, each time successfully, but I tore it out of an issue of RW. I didn't actually pay for it separately.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS, I HATE GIGANTIC LUXURY SUVS
I absolutely adore my baby's daycare. His teachers are great. The directors are delightful. And some, some of the other parents make my days happier ones. But some of them are entitled a-holes. On any given day, morning or afternoon--take your pick, I am greeted by at least one gigantic luxury SUV parked in at least 2 of the following 3 things simultaneously:

• a space reserved for handicapped drivers
• a second parking space
• a striped-off loading area for the handicapped spaces

One day I had to put my son in his car seat through the opposite side of the car, because the gigantic luxury SUV parked next to me was, naturally, in their space and mine. The owner, who approached as I was doing this, stood on the sidewalk and waited for me to back out so they could comfortably get it. Then she put her hands to her face and started shrieking because she thought I might touch the side of her gigantic luxury SUV with my side mirror as I backed out. That was the last straw. I opened my door and calmly explained to her that neither my mirror nor my need to put a toddler in his car seat through the opposite side door would have been an issue had she parked in 1 parking space. Her response: it wasn't her fault. 

OUR COMPLETELY PERFECT WEEKEND

We spent this past weekend in STL, primarily for my hubba-love's company Christmas party, but also to see our friends. While flying with small children is not the easiest thing ever done, so many complete strangers were so incredibly kind to us, and helpful, along the way. 

I started out the weekend at a cupcake happy hour with some of my favorite people. 

That night we dropped the kids off with some friends and headed to the Christmas party in our fancy clothes. I think I enjoy the party more than the actual employees do. :)

At the Kemp Auto Museum for the party--keeping it classy!

Friday night Mr. Joanna's company put us up at Union Station. I'd never been in the hotel part of it before and have to say, it's completely gorgeous. The picture only sort of does it justice!

Atrium of the Union Station hotel

Saturday we enjoyed breakfast with another friend, then headed to Springfield, IL to visit the Lincoln Presidential Museum with my dear, dear friend (and our boys' Godmother) MJ and her kids. The museum impressed me. The displays were very well done, the building organized in a way that made sense, and they had just the right mix of kid and adult-oriented content. I'd always heard it was worth the visit and it is!

plus, the Lincolns had great taste in wallpaper

Saturday evening we enjoyed some gooooood local pizza (read: NOT Imo's!) with friends. Sunday morning we had breakfast with our old neighbors, then headed for the airport for the long flight home. Icing on the cake, and a sure sign of a great trip? The rental car had WV plates. 

HIT ME WITH A BOARD OF BROKEN NAILS

I guess we haven't really broadcast it too widely, but we are waist deep in a fairly large renovation project. Phase 1 involved gutting the kids' bathroom and remaking it and part of a useless hallway-to-nowhere into a nice bathroom and laundry room. It's mostly been a lot of fun to see the project come together. Not fun? Coming home to difficult-to-move BOARDS WITH NAILS STICKING OUT OF THEM sitting face up right in front of my younger son's bedroom door (did I mention that he's ONE?). Or coming home to find ladders left set up on the stairs to the upstairs, leaving no safe way whatsoever to get kids to bed without moving the contractor's stuff. Or, for variety, coming home to find building supplies strewn all over the front yard. The new space will be great when finished, but in the meantime, #Annoying.

Lemme hear it. What crazy contractor stories do you have? 

YOGA LOVE

This week is the last week of my semester-long yoga class. This class=huge blessing. The instructor is excellent, plus I have little doubt that going helped to minimize the hip pain I was experiencing while training for Raleigh. I'm trying to decide if I have enough time to get from the spring class to the academic class I will be teaching. If not, I'll have to find some alternative for next semester, which is fine; there are a million yoga studios in this earth-loving city. 

That's it for this week's installment of Mondays. This week I'm going to try to find a running route clear enough of ice and snow to attempt. I'm pretty sure most of the country is in that quest with me this week. Stay warm, stay safe, and run strong my friends!

Messages for Runners

This week you get a message I love and a message that clearly need to be put on notice. The first is from this month's Runner's World and really inspired me. The second, complete with its actual grammatical errors, is something I received at work. I can't make sense of either of these "handy tips" we got. Can you??

Mondays on Notice: The Plague

People on fb might be tired of hearing about it, and somehow it's not even news here except it its ridiculous, never-ending magnitude: my household has had the plague.

It's true. For 10 long days we were ravaged by upset stomachs, fever, pink eye, and exhaustion. As proof of how bad things got, here's my normally very smiley, happy baby after he was well past the worst of it. (if you don't see a picture it's because I've removed it--I'm only planning to leave it up for a few days)

My heart breaks a little every time I see this picture. 

I'm about 90% now, but guess who has zero miles to show for the past week? I think this means that I need to start working on upping that long run mileage to balance things out for the month.

What say you? Make up miles for sick time, or ease up and let it go?

Mondays in Love AND On Notice

I've got a two-fer for you today--Mondays in Love and Mondays on Notice.

Mondays in Love: Anniversary Edition

It's been a lot of things:

It's been 7 years, 3 states, 1 PhD, 2 houses, and 2 babies. 

It's been his support of me through fundraising, watching kids, and cheering me on through 

3 marathons, 6 half-marathons, and thousands of miles.

It's been me and my hubby creating a crazy, chaotic life that we love. <3

Mondays on Notice: Running Gear

I have not one, but two pieces of running gear I need to put on Notice today. I'm hoping someone can give me some insight on the first. 

That's right, my Garmin has died again. And this time, I can't get it to turn back on. WTH?!? I only got my Garmin two years ago and this one is already a manufacturer replacement for the first, which stopped recording maps. With this one, I could never get it to stop trying to find satellites, and I think it just finally killed the battery beyond what I can charge. Or not. I don't know. I'm going to call Garmin Support tomorrow, but does anyone have ideas of what I could do? I REALLY don't want to have to replace it.

Second, it took me a mere embarrassing two years to completely clear this spot of floor once we moved in. And once I got everything picked up and put away, I still had one stubborn pile left...my pile of Runner's Worlds. Am I the only person who doesn't get every page of them read and ends up with a pile? At what point do you commit an afternoon to reading through them or just pitching them? 

Run strong my friends! 

Mondays on Notice: Found Not Guilty

Blogger admission of truth: when I read (or write) posts about being too busy to run/train/exercise, I almost always (almost!) think the same thing--excuses. So it is with great hesitation (seriously, it's taken me all day to feel ok about this post) that I'm about to say this:

I have just been too exhausted to find the early hours to run more than about twice a week. 

Since this time last night, here's what my day has looked like:

• From 10-11pm I fed the baby, washed baby things and dishes, straightened up the bedroom, packed baby things for daycare today, and went to bed. 
• Woke up at 2am to feed the baby, take Big Brother to the bathroom.
• Woke up at 4:30 to soothe the baby and coax him back to sleep, then eventually feed him
• Woke up at 6:30 to soothe & feed baby
• 7-7:45, breakfast and being a mommy to my two boys, getting everyone out of the house
• 7:45-9:15, cleaning up the kitchen, packing up all my stuff, iron pants, shower, dress, out the door (how in the WORLD does it take so long?!?)
• 9:30-5:30, work, stopping 3 times to, um...prepare baby food (sorry dudes!) and once to run home and back because I forgot lids for the bottles
• 5:30-8, dinner, playing with Big Brother, and his bedtime
• evening, paying bills, writing blog post, and, believe it or not, working--I'm up against a deadline
• rinse and repeat, except tomorrow I have a work meeting that starts at 7:30am. 

As Kdot says, you can't work, have a little tiny baby, and keep up a serious hobby. Pick two of the three. That's the limit. 

Babies generally start sleeping through the night around 3 months. Some start a little earlier, some take well over a year. But until baby is on a somewhat predictable schedule, it's very hard for parents to be on a very predictable schedule. And we're exhausted. Exhausted. 

When I take a hard look at myself and ask if I'm making excuses, I have to find myself Not Guilty. I was a lot harder on myself when Big Brother was little tiny, and I learned the hard way not to be. So this is me saying heck yeah for starting back, however slowly. Saying heck yeah for fun runs, slow runs, and sleeping when I can. This is me putting guilt On Notice. 

Mondays on Notice: Garmin FAIL

You guys know I love some Garmin. We've been through so much together. The triumph of Lewis & Clark, the disaster that was Cleveland. We've spent many, many hours together smiling in the sunshine and celebrating new interval paces and long runs. But a little over a year ago she stopped recording map data. Last spring I spent several hours on the phone with Garmin support, eventually arriving at the decision that they should just send me a replacement. The replacement was a refurbished unit which for the most part has been fine.

So what's the issue? Every now and then right after I download data or come in from a run, it just freezes. Like this. No amount of button mashing will make the screen change.

It's looked like this since last night. And the worst part is that I have to let the battery die completely before it will reset itself. That's gonna take a few days. Has anyone else ever had this problem? Any ideas what I should do about it? 

Mondays...Tuesdays on Notice: Overwhelmed

It's Tuesday. I know. It's not that I forgot yesterday, or that I absolutely couldn't have found the time to post this. I'm just gonna lay it out there for you: it was that I am completely overwhelmed in virtually all arenas of life and struggled with what to say. I need to ask for a little grace around here. When in doubt, I'll stick to running! That is, after, what this blog's about.

On Running: I went out Sunday afternoon to get in a weekend run. I think I totally made some dude's day when he passed me, looked over (I get looked at a lot these days when I run!), and I said, "Some day I'll be fast again!" He just laughed like, is she for real?? He was probably about 50 and was only running a 9:30-9:40 pace. Needless to say, my run was not my fastest, which was fine. But what wasn't cool--my tailbone did NOT respond well. It felt ok during the run but hurt afterwards. So, back to run/walk for me for a few more days.

On all other things: I am completely overwhelmed. I have a huge work deadline looming in mid-January and a whole series of smaller (but mandatory) deadlines on separate projects between now and then. And beyond those deadlines, work has been bat shit crazy (and stressful) with some non-project things. On the home front: our house is not ready for Christmas. Cleaning up for this has meant getting everything ready to move out of my office into the guest room so we can turn my office into a nursery. We're not there yet. Christmas itself is complicated by family stuff that I don't understand.

There is some beauty in this mess though. Some of my time recently has been absorbed in finishing not 1, not 2, but three Christmas stockings. They are all different color combos, but generally along these lines:

My little boy makes us smile every.single.day. Here's a glimpse of life with a three-year-old:

And just this past weekend we got to celebrate the marriage of our friends Chris and Kayla. Their wedding was beautiful and the reception was absolutely the most fun I've ever had at a wedding reception. Uhhuh. I brought my own ball. :) And bowled in a floor-length gown (thank you, Kdot!!). 

That's what I've got, peeps. Needless to say, I am waaaaaay behind on reading blogs. There is no break in sight, but I will keep chipping away at the Reader list as I can. I promise! 

The Weekend Update

This just in:

1. My Mondays....on Notice? post is officially going down as the most controversial thing I've ever posted, which surprised me. In response to a reader inquiry on the etiquette of 26.2 stickers, y'all covered the gamut of possible responses. One felt put off that the runner community might snicker at the sticker rather than celebrate the accomplishment. A few were indignant about questionable 26.2 claims. The majority were in the middle though, feeling like it was a bit questionable, but it didn't detract from your accomplishments, so let it be. I think this is a pretty reasoned response. 
2. My maternity running top (that I scored a great Cyber Monday deal on--cha-ching!) came. I was super skeptical when I took it out of the package. I was sure they'd sent me a regular top. I should never have doubted. It's wonderful! Also, my new Nathan Handheld came and I got to try it out. Pictures and reviews to come. 
3. Said review was to come over the weekend, but...that may have to wait. Today started with me falling down basically an entire flight of steps in our house, then spending the next ~3 hours in the pregnant women's version of an ER getting checked out (by doctor's orders). I am fine and the baby is fine, thank goodness (seriously, God is good). But my tailbone does hurt quite a bit and pregnant running already puts more pressure than normal on that spot. So I think I need to let it heal for a few days before I get back outside. On the plus side, my hubby met me for lunch afterward and brought me a donut to cheer me up. Because he's wonderful. 

Mondays.....on Notice?

Recently a question of running etiquette was brought to me and I want to turn it over to you. So today's theme is up to you, is it Mondays in Love, or Mondays on Notice? Here's the question:

Dear JoannaRuns,
I know someone who recently participated in a 24-hour walking relay event for charity. After the fact, he realized that he'd walked more than the distance of a marathon, so he bought a 26.2 sticker and put it on his car. 

On one hand, he did cover the distance. On the other, he didn't train, didn't have a distance goal, and took many more hours than a marathon would allow before closing the course. Does this count?
Best,
Not a Canadian


I feel like slapping the ol' 26.2 on the car in this situation is a bit of a disrespect for the race. Finishing a marathon is about finishing a marathon, not about finishing some distance that happens to include a marathon. The marathon is about crossing that finish line, usually with a time goal, and a strategy. Or am I being too uptight here?

What's your take? Mondays in Love with the 26.2, or A Not-So-26.2 on Notice?

Mondays on Notice: Iron Deficiency

I have struggled from time to time in my adult life with brief periods of iron deficiency. Only once before can I remember it really being a problem. In the summer of 2009 for a while I was bruising like an over-ripe peach, the palms of my hands hurt all the time, and my muscles felt weak. With some focus on my diet, it passed.

Iron deficiency during pregnancy is common, particularly in the second and third trimesters (I'm currently second trimester). You can read all about it here if you're curious. I didn't realize until I traveled how closely I was walking the line on keeping my nutrition in check.

Two days ago while in Florida I noticed an odd bruise on my leg. Then Saturday I saw a similar one on my left arm. Suspicious. Then yesterday my legs felt like they had no strength in them at all. With a few other symptoms happening too, I'm pretty sure the signs add up to borderline iron deficiency. The second night I was in FL I woke up in the night with foot & leg cramps (low on potassium?). It only took 2 days of being away from bananas and iron-rich breakfast cereals for this to happen. Crazy.

The plan was to do about 6 miles yesterday. But I knew almost as soon as I woke up that I needed to take a break. So, I'm taking a break. RW says that all runners, regardless of consistent running volume, need to take a break every now and then. So, this is mine. This past week was very low mileage, and I'll continue to take it easy until I can bring my diet and symptoms into balance. I'm mainlining spinach, Mini-Wheats and bananas to get back in check. Wish me luck!

Mondays on Notice: Everything that isn't these socks

In my last post I mentioned that I was trying out a pair of extra-cushion socks and that I liked them. Since then two things happened:

1. One of my TNT buddies from Central Illinois asked for the deets about the socks. (everything you need to know is in the picture)
2. I wore them again and fell even more in love. 

So today's Monday on Notice is brought to you out of the sheer LOVE I have for these socks. All other socks, on notice!

So why do I love them so much? Consider this a totally unsolicited review. And, I'm over-worked right now, so you're getting not one, but two lists in this post. 

1. The tops are vented (a thinner layer)
2. The bottoms are cushioned. The Brooks Adrenaline is not a cushy shoe. This helps. 
3. They are low cut, but have a tab on the back to protect from heel rub. 
4. They don't bunch up.

Go! Buy! LOVE!

Mondays on Notice: The Death of The Burger King

This week's Mondays on Notice has nothing to do with running. It's about my total lack of patience for most TV commercials. More often than not, I feel like the product is completely unnecessary (does anyone need air freshener that touts its new found ability to combine two tropical island scents into one jar??) or the style of the ad borders on being offensively trite. When commercials break the mold, I cherish them just a little bit. Yesterday I learned of the death of one such trendsetter--The King. As in, BK's King.

This mascot that has been cracking me up for years. I'm not sure if they ever even ran this ad, but it makes me laugh every single time I see it. I understand that some of their more recent commercials have been more contentious. I guess I haven't seen those so I can't really judge. But creepy? Really? Not even a little bit.

I'm gonna miss that guy. One thing I've had to distract me from my tears though has been a new commercial from Black Hawk Casino. Apparently some people find this distasteful toward cyclists, and I suppose if I had my pants bunched up far enough I might agree, but I still think it's hilarious.


Ok ok, one more. I freaking love this. And yes, there are a lot of casinos near me. 

So today, I want to put the prim and trite ads On Notice. I want to mourn the loss of The King (or at least his less offensive moments). And I want to say a great big THANK YOU to the ads that continue to make me laugh.

Mondays on Notice: Dwindling Days of Summer

Dear Dwindling Days of Summer,

Please don't go. Please stay around for another month or so. While at first I was just relieved that the heat let up a little, and I'm still really enjoying these temps, I can't help but notice that fall is quickly approaching. Can't you please just stick around a little while longer?

See, while summer has been crazy and chaotic at work, the fall brings a different kind (no more, no less, just different kind) of crazy to my world of academia. People around me are starting to freak out. And by "around me" I don't mean physically around me (my family couldn't care less), I mean everyone I know in this industry nationally. Freaking out, thanks to you. Can I guilt you into staying?

We've had so much fun together, summer. I rediscovered my youth via a Dukes of Hazzard hat resurrected from my MIL's basement. 

I overcame my horrific fear of my sewing machine and made progress on the curtain situation in my house (true story--no two windows in my house are the same size. Intimacy with a sewing machine is absolutely necessary if window coverings are going to look reasonable).

My family and I frolicked in the sunshine.

I had my first brush with the city's judicial system. 

Sorry to get your hopes up about JoannaRuns on the Run 2011--it was just jury duty. 

Summer, it's been great, and I'd love it if you could stay around a while. So I'm putting your departure On Notice, officially. I'm watching you. 

Love,

Joanna

Mondays on Notice: Jif Reduced Fat Creamy

Dear Jif Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter,

You have been a staple of my life. I have loved you longer than I've known The Original Bestie (Jamie) and my husband combined. I've come to rely on you like Tiger Woods relied on that caddie who is now super pissed at him. We had a good thing going. So what is up with this?

I scoured two grocery stores in search of the giant vat of Reduced Fat Creamy I've cherished for decades, to no avail. Apparently now you only come in this itsy-bitsy, totally impractical size. Are you aware that there are still 3-year-olds who mass consume this stuff? And runners, who love some pb before or after a hard run? 

I hereby put you on Notice until you can come to your senses again and start selling a reasonably sized jar of peanut butter. 

Love,
Joanna

Mondays on Notice: Old Crap

It was 82 degrees with 90% humidity when I woke up this morning. I knew it was going to be beastly and had planned ahead to hit up the gym this morning. I rolled into work around 7:30 and very thankfully made my way to the rec center and hopped on the treadmill. I was settling into my groove just as this internal monologue started rolling through the otherwise still sleeping part of my brain:

Hmmmm....my left foot is kind of hurting. I wonder what's going on. 
[left, right, left, right]
How long have I had these shoes? Aren't these still my "new shoes"? 
[left, right, left, right]
No, you know, this definitely feels like old shoes syndrome. Thank goodness I have a blog! I can go back and check when I got these. Score!


Apparently I've had these since March--they have about 410 miles on them. Time to trade these bad boys in--they've been put on notice!

I'd like some input from y'all. This spring while training for Cleveland I had some foot issues on runs longer than about 10 miles. It felt like a bruise forming where my toes meet the main part of the foot. I considered getting shoes with more cushioning, but backed away from it because the pair pictured above was so new and because the others were so expensive. Now that it's time to replace them, I need to know--is the higher cushioning worth it? Have any of you ever tried them? What did you think? Input please!

Mondays on Notice: Runmares

Did you ever have that dream during college that you'd forgotten to drop a class and then all of a sudden it was the end of the semester and you had to take the final to pass? Or that you forgot or were hours late to a final? It's the classic college nightmare.

Well, a few nights ago I had the same nightmare but for running. I dreamed that I overslept on race day and was almost certainly going to miss the start gun. It was terrible! All these thoughts were going through my mind. Will they let me start late? Can I even get there soon enough to do that? Will my timing chip still work? Oddly, the race was in my hometown, possibly on our old cross country course (which was later totally blasphemed to build a baseball field).

Have any of you ever been late on race day? If so, what happened? Did you still race?

Mondays On Notice: Mobile Blogging Edition

Hello world! I feel like that's the proper greeting now that we're back from our trip, which involved several days completely off the grid (more on that below). I'm 100% ready to call it a day, but wanted to shout out my Monday on Notice before it's not Monday any more.

Today's Monday on Notice is brought to you by my attempt to blog via the Blogger App. As some of you know, I'm kinda new to the whole 21st-century-cell-phone, what with it's apps and so forth. I know, I was the last hold out on that campaign. Well, after posting twice with minimal intervention via a laptop, I decided I was ready to go all-mobile-app-blogging.

EPIC FAIL. 

I don't even know how to make a blog screw up its formatting the way my last post got screwed up. So, if you skipped over it because it was, well, illegible, give 'er another shot. She's all fixed up now, and man, was it an awesome run!! Mobile blogging has been put on Notice and the formatting is fixed!

So about the trip--it was awesome. It was exactly what I needed on so many levels. I'll tell you all about it in a bigger post tomorrow, but as a quick intro, we hit up Mountain Lake, VA (with some family), then Snowshoe, WV, then Spruce Knob, WV (my favorite place on earth), then Seneca Rocks, WV (where I got to hang out with my BFF, Jamie!!), then a crazy drive through WV today and flew back to the Midwest. A lot of these places are really remote. Snowshoe is actually in a Federally regulated quiet zone administered by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (read: NO cell service). I think it's regulated at least in part because the Green Bank Observatory (awesome, check it out here) is nearby. Spruce Knob is used by astronomy groups and recently had a small observatory built on it because it's one of the last "dark" spots on the eastern seaboard. I feel so incredibly blessed to know about these places, and to have such wonderful friends to visit with when we go. 

Must sleep--more coming soon!

Mondays On Notice

Today begins a new blog feature that I'm calling Mondays on Notice. The name borrows a bit from Stephen Colbert's list of things that are on notice, which in his case includes Lutherans and bears. Obviously this means that Mondays are permanently on notice, but I think we can all agree to that. Each week I will be featuring something I would like to add to my list of those things on notice.  Some of these will be running related, some will not. With that, my first Item on Notice:

Excessively short layovers.

Why? This past weekend we were traveling. Our travels involved  an almost 2 hour long layover in Detroit, which was absolutely perfect. We had enough time to exit security and see these people. (Sorry for the photo quality. This was my first attempt to use pics from my phone and I haven't quite figured out how to make it all work yet.)

And a little of this.

 

 And it was fantastic. I got to squeeze my nieces, drink coffee with my SIL, catch up with my brother and Dad (who is there because Kdot broke her collar bone and cannot drive, pick up babies, etc. Ouch!), then mozy on back through security and back to our gate. None of which I could have done with an excessively short layover. Plus, really short layovers induce all sorts of anxiety about delays and missed connections. So there you have it, Excessively Short Layovers, I hereby put you on notice!

At the other end of our flight, I finally got in a run I've dreamed of for a very long time--mountains! While there was a heat index of 112 at home, I was soaking up 4 miles of this gorgeousness. I think I had forgotten what mountain running felt like. It works those hammies and I loved it! This was the view as I started out. 

The trail is 2 miles long. I came across this at the back end, about 1 mile into the trail. So picturesque!

I did the whole trail twice for a total of 4 miles. It got really steep in a few places, so I wasn't that surprised to see that my pace was well over a minute per mile slower than usual. It was tough and just exactly what I'd hoped for.