He....

made me laugh so hard Listerine almost shot out of my nose....instead it sprayed out of my mouth and all over our walls.....I hope the laughter happened after my 30s rinse time.

Our run last night went well, 7 miles in just over an hour which was slightly less than 9 minute miles. We have a 5 mile run today and are going to try to keep our cool and make it a recovery (read : slow) run. I do believe the word on the Chicago streets is that winter will be here tomorrow so we have one more run in the warmth before that nasty Chicago winter hits us. I do believe I am mentally prepared for it though so BRING IT. Come on wind and ice and snow and sleet....show me what you got!

The tickets have been purchased for our trip. 16 days of vacation! 8 Days with mom in Sarasota + marathon + 8 days of snorkling and swimming and Mind Erasers in the Bahamas. I am loving that the marathon will be the 2nd day of vacation because I'll have a true 2 weeks off after that with guilt free non-running. niiiiiiice. Let's hope I have a result by then so I can come back and still have a job. 13 weeks until go time, which means 13 weeks to get my shit together and produce the number that needs to be produced.

Happy Running.

Sore Sides and 3 Loses in VB

Well we played my least favorite team in volleyball yesterday. They bitch about every call and since I am the weakest player on the team they kept hitting the ball at me....which I say fine because it's just more practice for me. Since these games really mean nothing they're stupid, if they never aimed it at me, I wouldn't get any practice and then in the playoffs you could whoop ass if you always hit at me. But now, now, I am going to end up shoving that volleyball right up their asses.......and again....it's the FERMILAB VOLLEYBALL LEAGUE!!!! When you win you beat a bunch of other physics nerd (read : you aren't that cool).

Anyways.

After the game we got some beers with our team and when we got home I did a set of ab exercises and did some pushups to go along with it. My obliques (read : love handles) are a bit sore today, but nothing too debilitating. We are going to run 7-8 today after work at the lab.

We just got permission from our advisor for a 2 week vacation in March. Now I just have to pull the trigger and buy the airline tickets since the price seem really low right now. The trip will include 8 days with my mom in Sarasota + the marathon, then 8 days with my dad in the Bahamas aboard his 40ft sailboat. Again, I have to work my ass off these next few months so I feel good about taking the vacation and not guilty.

1 more hour till running. I am really excited. I forgot iPod at home, so it'll be a nice silent run today. ***wow that was a GREAT sentance :-) ***

Time To Detox

If you call napping for 2 hours on the couch running 12 miles.....then we ran 12 miles yesterday. If you call it slacking then you and I are in the same boat and so we'll leave it at that.

Jason and I got home from Indiana around 11am yesterday to a very cranky Cat who does not like to be left alone. We sat on the couch to watch "some" football before running and suddenly it was 5 till 3 (ala 20 minutes before the Bears kickoff). So I jumped in the shower and enjoyed the rest of my Sunday, well that was the plan until the Bears looked like a 1-9 team and not the 9-1 team that they were. Oh well.....it's hard to win at Foxbourgh yadda yadda yadda.

The last few weeks have had running in them yes...but also a lot of beer drinking, junky (read : delicious) food eating and not much else. It's time to step up and get this train back on track, I have to be crazy like to keep all the plates going. Between running, working, volleyballing, commuting, newly added weight training......I have to get on a set schedule. I love working early morning to early afternoon, but to get that started I can't be going to bed at 1am and thinking getting up at 5am is going to be no problem.

So that's my goal for the week, just get the ball rolling, get back on a schedule get the runs in and just make a habit. They say it takes two weeks to make a habit stick (or something like that) and I have two weeks before marathon training starts so I should be good to go. Well that's the plan anyways. Tonight is volleyball and then we'll be running for the rest of the week. Given that I ran 8.5 miles total last week, I have to stay focused to get back up in the upper 20s this week.

Too Optimistic

Ok 27 miles isn't going to happen.....I think that my knees didn't like the hills around here in southernish Indiana so we are going to skip this morning's 8 miles. We are going to try and get 12 or 13 in tomorrow however so we'll still end up at 20+ miles for the week. Given that this is a vacation week I'm still saying that's it's Golden.

Two more days and it's back to the Lab....

Thanksgiving Running

Oh Turkey, you are so tasty (In Scrubs Molly sings a song to her Chicken Salad sandwich....very similar tone here....she also says "Kielbasa" with rock star fingers (or maybe the 'I love you' sign.....I don't know...but if you haven't seen the episode it's AWESOME) and Jason and I keep walking up to each other saying that....with the rock star fingers...ok anyways...moving on)

So running....we got a good one in! My Aunt Donna and Uncle Ken live on a lake which has a road which encircles the lake and is 8.5 miles around. When Jason and I are on vacation so is our Garmin and so we just went out for a run on Thanksgiving morning before the feasting began. It was a beautiful run and although we weren't used to the hills we got through them without too many issues. We are going to try and do the same route tomorrow morning putting us at 17 miles and then another 10 on Sunday and WHOA that's 27 for the week. Which is a lot better than I thought we would do this given the away from homeness that was occuring. Next week then we can get back up to over 30 and have one more week to get ready for Sarasota training.

Happy Eating Holiday everyone. I hope everyone out there is thoroughly stuffed and having a great time!

Thanks for all the well wishes on the toe. It's not as bad as I thought it would be and held up fine duing our run on Thursday.

Slip and Fall....

and a Toe could have gotten the brunt of it

Last night I was home cleaning while Jason was out at the Laundrymat (dividing and conquering) when the phone rang. It was Jason's mom calling to talk to me about something on the computer so I headed into our office to take a look at what she was talking about. All of a sudden my feet completly slip out from under me, my foot bangs into the leg of my desk and I am swearing like a sailor forgetting my mother in law is on the other end of the line.

I luckily did not hit my head or anything equally as bad, but as the night went on I noticed that my third toe was huring a bit. This morning the knuckle of the toe that is nearest the ball of my foot looks way bigger than it should be.

damn damn damn it. It doesn't hurt TOO bad and I think I must have just jammed it. Lucky for me this was a low milage week since I'll be all weighed down with turkey and mashed potatoes. I am going to try and run maybe 5 tomorrow morning, 5 on Friday and then 10....maybe on Sunday keeping me at 20 for the week with a nice long run on the weekend. That's the plan anyways.

Happy Turkey Day to everyone..

One more thing. I hit snooze this morning for over 2 hours. That's how excited I was to come into work. Not that things are even going that badly, for once my advisor and I are on the same page I just .... GRUMBLE...can't get my fit to work. So.....come on mini-vacation!

A Week Off

WHEEEE!!!! I get an extra week before training for Sarasota starts. I thought I had to start on Dec 4th....BUT after typing the plan into my calendar I found that I start on Dec 11th. Nice to see because now I get an extra week after Thanksgiving to get my ass in gear and my life in order to start training again.

Alright. I should get to work...........

Slugging Through It

Well they can't all be perfect.

All the runs can't feel like frolicking through the fields with butterflies buzzing around you.

Sometimes the runs hurt and aren't comfortable for most of the steps you take...

But then, then you look around and look at your city with open eyes and tired legs and fall in love all over again.

Jason and I had 10 on the schedule yesterday and it would be the first time we went into double digits since the marathon. We started slowly, stopped to stretch for about two minute, continued on to the lake front path. Headed south to Soldier's Field and headed back to the Museum of Contemporary Art where my dad was waiting to pick us up. Nothing spectacular happened on this run. We got through it not fast not slow but just got through it. It's runs like this that make me feel tough. When the runs feel easy......well it's easy to get through them. It's when they aren't easy and you STILL get through them that counts. It was an absolute beautiful day in Chicago which helped.

I noticed that the runners on the lake front path were way more friendly than those runners I have seen in the summer. Everyone was saying hello and giving little waves and smiling. Maybe it's the commroderie of running in the winter...who knows....but it was really nice and I am continually surprised by the "niceness" of the big city we live in. Big city but midwestern values is what Jason says.

That put us at 30 miles for the week which was nice to see. This week will be significantly less mileage because of the "Eat until you burst" holiday. Next week we'll go for 30 again and then it's onto the marathon training program.

Happy Monday!

Around town

...for an easy 6.

Nothing special today run wise. Today was a day of "fitting in the run" as we had to go to work, dodge traffic on the way home (i.e., not leave at rush hour), and then run before we headed out to Small Bar to meet some fun people. The time of this writing is the lull between running and hitting the bars.

I've got to tell you, I really wish my calves and shins would go ahead and get better. Apparently my lower legs came out of volleyball with no healing strategy and don't want to give a definitive drop-dead get-better date. On one hand I can see why they don't want to box themselves into a corner with a definitive date, but on the other hand I'd like them to be less achy. But whatever, I iced today and will see how they feel on Sunday after the run. It's no big deal since it's not running related, but it's still annoying.

Sunday we're going for a big ten mile run and then heading out to a Bears/Jets party. Go Bears!

Oh, and Saturday is the big Indiana/Purdue game. Indiana needs one win to be bowl eligible. Go Hoosiers!

um...and Go Jason and Leah!

yeah!

One up

Yesterday's run sort of reminded me of the old Larry Bird vs. MJ commercials. You know, the "through the rafters, off the bleachers, of the mascot's crotch, nothing but net" commercials where Jordan and Bird consistently tried to one-up each other.

For us, it was "okay, run the main ring plus the accelerator ring but this time add in another two miles AND a 20 mph wind. And on tired legs." It was basically the same run as the day before, just a bit harder and a bit more of a challenge.

And, I've got to say, it went well. Each mile was faster than the last and that's just spiffy. We started out at 9:45 pace (nice, slow music) and they progressed from there:

mile 2: 9:14
mile 3: 9:00
mile 4: 8:59
mile 5: 8:46
mile 6: 8:41
mile 7: 8:41
mile 8: 8:07

That last mile was half with the wind blowing us backwards and half with the wind almost pushing us over from behind, so I would say it averaged out to a wind-free 8:07 pace.

I'm a really big fan of this double-loop deal. The main ring is so big that it almost feels like running straight, but the smaller loop has a much tighter curvature and it's really obvious that you are running in a circle. The contrast helps to break up the run. While running along the small ring (the accelerator) Leah wondered if they were seeing some sort of weird little bumps in the protons spiking at a consistent rhythm. Perhaps to the rhythm of "I wanna dance with somebody" by Whitney Houston?

I'm guessing there's some theorist somewhere who's freaking out because, as we all know, little rhythmic spikey-bumps in the protons is the classic tachyon signature*. They're running around right now trying to figure out how to get these tachyons into a beam to create some wormholes and allow for time travel.

Hmm, maybe I've said too much.

Anyway, we don't run today as we're giving our weary legs a rest. I'm pretty damn happy about this as the wind is even gustier today than yesterday, if that's possible. Then it'll be Friday 6 and 10 on either Sunday or Saturday. That'll give us 30 miles for the week and we're on pace to start marathon training on December 4th.


* This may not actually be true

Feelin' Like a Proton......or Anti-Proton

Last night we ran at Fermi Lab again since the getting up at 5am has not been happening (big surprise) but we don't want to try driving home at 5:30 because of rush hour traffic. We wanted to get 6 miles in and although we really like running around the main ring, it's only 3.8 (or so) miles around. So we decided to run more of the rings here at the lab. The picture on the Right hand side is a cartoon image of what happens at Fermilab. Since it's hard to make Anti-Protons you have to build them up....you make some (in the anti-proton sourse rin...looks kind of triangular) and then they are sent into the Recycler and go around and around and then more Anti-Protons are sent in and so on. When you have enough we can send them into the Tevatron. Protons are also stacked up in the Recycler before heading into the main ring. However these don't take nearly as much time to make as the anti-protons. The point is you end up with Protons going one way in the Tevatron and Anti-Protons going the other way and then people here can aim them so that they hit each other at the two detectors.

Alright then where am I going with this? Oh Right.....running. To get in the additional 2.2ish miles that we needed we ran around both the anti-proton making ring and the recylcer ring. It was really fun but so so dark outside. While we were running the Recycler ring we decided that was actually where the mafia must drop their bodies since it was so barren and quiet and dark. We then retracted that and said it actually must be where the bad grad students go if they don't get their work done (oh shit....maybe I should get back to work). I love that you can see that we ran the other two loops so clearly in the above image.

The run itself was great. 6 miles averaging a 9:09 pace which is fine by me. Both of us had really really sore legs after the run though....not from running but from the volleyball that we played on Monday night. Sore calves and whatnot. Not a big deal, but starting a sport that takes other muscles than "keep moving forward" is always fun during the first couple weeks.

Volleyball Back in Season

Monday nights are back! Oh that's right, 1 grueling hour of physics nerd volleyball happens and yesterday was the first day of the season. Our team is strange, we usually don't play very well in the regular season....BUT come playoff time we have come close to knocking out one of the top teams out of it......but in the end it came down to us losing....but we lost in spectacular fashion. The league has moved to speed scoring and each game goes to 21 instead of the only scoring when you are serving and the games going to 11. We lost all three games last night but I have to say, we had a lot of fun. We have the same team as last year so everyone knows their roles and we just had fun out there.

After the game the team met up at the bar on site (yes....we do have a bar on the Fermilab site) and chatted for about 45 minutes. Last year we went hardly ever went out after the games and I think that is why we suffered a bit. Not much team "closeness" perhaps.

Incorporating volleyball into a marathon training schedule will be different than our last two years of volleying. Also since we are moving the training schedule up by one day we will have to run on Monday's where usually this is a day off so we'll try and run early in the city before coming to work. It's too hard running right before or right after the game. We are also going to add two days of lifting into our routine and it's looking like it'll be tuesdays and thursdays.

It's going to be a busy winter....but BRING IT!!!!!

Weekend Fun

Our weekend started with a 5 mile run at Fermi Lab on Friday afternoon around 2:30pm. I really wanted to get this run in because if I didn't I would have had to run really long on Sunday to get in our planned 25 miles for the week. However, the weather in Chicago on Friday afternoon was horrific, windy and cold and stormy and all that jazz. Jason (aka my brilliant husband) said he checked the weather and a long sleeve shirt and shorts would be fine to run it.....uh yeah...not so much. But we went out there and did it and averaged an 8:05 pace for the five miles. Each of our miles were faster going from 8:38 on mile one to 7:25 on mile five. The weather was so bad and I'm thinking we ran so fast because we wanted to get the hell out of it, but I was thrilled to see the middle miles when we were running directly into the wind and it started raining, were still fast and we didn't slow down at all.

After the run I met up with my step mom and we headed to her sister's house for a sleep over with most of the women in th family. We had a total of seven people there and stayed up really late drinking martinis, wine, beer and watching a ton of movies ranging from 40 Year Old Virgin to an old Marilyn Monroe movie. Very fun times.....very little sleep.

Early Saturday morning Jason came to pick me up and we headed to Fort Wayne to have an early Thanksgiving celebration with Jason's family. Jason's brother Jamie his wife Susanne and their three kids came and we just had so much fun with them. We ate a lot of food.....oh yeah....I totaly went back for seconds of everything. Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday of the year.....so much food so much napping....all good things. The little girls Sam and Jordan were all kinds of hyper and wound up and enjoyed jumping all over us and poking us for the night. I was exhausted just from hanging with them for a couple hours that I can't imagine what it's like to be the parent and have them all the time. Never a dull moment I'm sure :-) Jamie and Susanne went back to Indy that night and the girls spent the night. We watched Clue with Claudia (the oldest girl) and Jason's parents and their pet bird Pacal (the bird starts off really friendly and then starts biting people...I don't get it).

We got home on Sunday around 1pm and headed to our favorite laundry mat. I really do love the laundrymat cause it's a great people watching place. There are so many different kids of people there and kids all over the place. It's kind of annoying to not have our own washer and dryer but I LOVE that you can get like 6 loads of laundry done in less than two hours.

After the laundry we worked up the motivation to keep moving and headed out for a 7 mile run. I have to say. I felt FANTASTIC. I had no pain in my legs at all, the breathing was nice and easy. I wanted to keep the pace nice and easy and we averaged 8:50 min/mile. I am so surprised that an 8:50 pace is feeling so easy breezy, surprised but absolutly thrilled. I am excited to start the marathon training program as my body just feels better when I am in training due to the fact that I have to sleep more and I have to drink less and I have to eat better to make it through the runs. This week we'll try and get in 30 miles, with a longer run of hopefully 10-12 on Saturday. This training cycle we'll be doing our long runs on Saturday instead of Sunday so we can have Sunday open to watch DA Bears.

After the Run we went back to the apartment and settled in to watch the Bears game. I admit that they looked like GARBAGE in the first half, but they were smokin' in the 2nd half. Rex totally settled down and we looked like we are the team to beat this year. It was also nice to see that Eli Manning didn't look great when he was rushed either. I think young QBs get nervous and throw the ball around......it was nice to see that Rex isn't the only one. So Rex is again God this week.

Go Bears! Go Run. Happy Monday.

Bear Down

Bear Down, Chicago Bears.
Make every play clear the way to victory!
Bear Down, Chicago Bears.
Put up a fight with a might so fearlessly!

We'll never forget the way you thrilled the nation,
With your T formation.

Bear Down, Chicago Bears.
And let them know why you're wearing the crown.

You're the pride and joy,
of all Illinois.

Chicago Bears, Bear Down!

A Trip to Fry's Electronics

Ok Ok, I admit I am a gadget geek. I love all electronics and am patiently waiting to have a "real" job so that I can have enough money to fully supply my gadgetting needs.

Now then....what are next big purchases on my dance card? The new MacBook Pro (but I want to wait to the next operating system anyways) AND a Canon 30D (digital SLR camera). Now then, I have done research on the digital cameras and it has come down to that's the one I want. Fine. I totally can't afford it right now...but one day I will and then I can dazzle you all with my photos.

Where is this going?

Today Jason and I went to Fry's electronics because I wanted to get the over the head ear phones that people recommended yesterday (which they had!!! whee!!!). Of course I was drawn to the camera display so I could look at the beautiful Canon 30D, plus I also wanted to see the new Canon Digital Rebel XTi to see if I thought it was still too small for my hands (it is). As I was standing there looking at the cameras one of the guys that work there came up to me and said, "Well now, how many of those $1500 dollar cameras do you want to buy". I looked at him and didn't really know what to say....so he went on to say, "You know that doesn't even come with the lens, you'll have to fork over another 500 dollars for one of those" I said, "um....yeah...ok" (while thinking....well that's not exactly true...but whatever). Then he said, "Well I mean I guess the Digial Rebel is a pretty nice one, it has 10.2 megapixels" I said back, "Look I have done hours of research on these so I don't need any help".

I left there thinking, what the ass just happened in there. Whenever I have looked at high price items before the sales people weren't smirky and making fun of the price of the items. It was really weird and way way annoying.

Tonight we'll run at the lab again and then I have a sleep over party with the ladies in my famliy so that should be a riot......martinis and movies here we come.

Ring Around The Rosey......

I mean

Ring Around The Run...?
Run around the Ring....?

***Edit for those of you that don't read the comments***

By the way...for whoever finds this sort of thing interesting...the ring and Fermilab and the Great Wall of China are about the only two man made constructions that show up from space. -- Leah's DAd

Due to staying up late to watch election returns (GO DEMS!!!!) we didn't get into work early (man, one day and I'm already off!). To dodge rush hour traffic we decided to run at Fermi Lab. We did two laps around the ring (almost two we stopped at 7 miles) and had a great run. I think we averaged 8:55 min/mile and our legs again felt great. The only thing we were worried about is the fact that it felt harder than it should have. No problems with my legs but I might have been breathing a bit too hard.....who knows.

I am still trying to find a good pair of head phones. My ears are really small and so immediatly iPod headphones fall out, and so recently I have been trying the ear buds that also have a contraption to go around the ear lobes, those also pop off. I tried to get a pair of Sony brand ones that again were just the around the ear lobe guys and they fell out while I was trying them out in the car, so those will have to go back. I like the over the head type that end up sticking in you ears, not those that cover your ears and apparently out of the 800 types of head phones that exist this kind does not. So I'm still on the hunt, if any other small eared people have suggestions, please let me know!

A nice, pleasant - HOLY CRAP

Last night Leah and I went out for a nice, easy 6 mile run. We decided not to take any kind of music or anything and just enjoy the lovely fall evening. The weather was perfect and we were cruising at a healthy clip.

We just chatted about various things and tried to avoid eye contact with the various pollsters, stewing in our own shame that we weren't smart enough to figure out the registration process. So. Annoying. Anyway, we discussed the Lance Armstrong race and the governor's raAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH

OH JESUS!!!!

ASS OVER APPLE CART. TUMBLING.

somersault and...

present.

Yep, it was a nice, pleasant run until I caught my toe on a sidewalk crack and nose-dived (nose-dove?) straight at the concrete. Luckily (well, not luck, I'm very athletic) I managed to get my hands gown and parlay a potentially embarrassing moment into a pretty slick display of gymnastics. And no, Leah, you aren't allowed to comment.

So, I went down.

Leah squeaked.

And Leah laughed.

Whatever. Despite my grievous injurious (I swear my palms are going to be rough for days) I soldiered on and we completed the 6 miles, just as strong at mile 6 as mile 1. It was an excellent run.

Gymnastics nonwithstanding.

Now That I Have Had Coffee

I can write a coherent post. I tried this about an hour ago when I got to work and the post was starting to sound like,

I need to run and sleep and eat better.
I need to not go out much.
I like running.

So then, since that would have been lame....what to say. Well, I need to run and sleep and eat.....you get the idea.

Jason and I have decided to go back to working our really early schedule. Roughly 6:30am-2:30pm, that means getting up at 5am and leaving Chicago by 5:30am, which is totally fine because I love working in the morning before anyone is here at the lab. However it does require diligence and planning. I can't go to bed at 1am and think that I am going to get up at 5am, work for 8 hours, drive home and then get some kind of running workout in. It's just not going to happen. We have to go to bed at a reasonable time every night and it has to be the same each day. This plan ends up working out great because we are home by 4pm at the latest and then home from running by 6pm at the latest, then time to eat and get in bed. It makes things kind of "boring" I guess, but I like when all the components of my life are working like a well oiled machine.

That being said, I was up and out of bed at 5:05 and here at the lab by 6:15 this morning. All good things. The running plan of the week is 6 today, 7 tomorrow, 7 on Saturday in Fort Wayne (going to visit Jason's parents for an early Thanksgiving) and 5 on Sunday either in Fort Wayne before we leave or when we get back to Chicago, this gets us to 25 for the week which is on par for my building back up plan.

RunOn Friends.

Do Not Say Chicago Bears

I don't want to talk about it.

Wow, I have been MIA for a few days now, so let me get back up to speed.

I have mentioned that I have to start my thesis analysis all over. Yeah. That's not good. It's going to take me a little while longer to graduate than I had thought. Frustrating yes. But in the end perhaps it's better because I will have a clearer idea of what is going on. However, this means that Jason and I are going back to Fermi Lab every day now instead of working at home. I do work better there and until I have this new stuff under control I have to be away from all the distractions of my apartment.

Running has been good. We were going to run on Friday night when we got home from the Lab but after sitting in traffic for 2 HOURS(!!!!) we decided to go to a local bar we like to frequent and have a lot of beer instead (for those of you that haven't tried Fat Tire Beer...it's delicious...and comes in a 22oz bottle....). On Saturday we had a pretty lazy day in the first half catching up on DVR recordings and me cooking a big giant breakfast. In the afternoon we cleaned up the apartment as my parental units are staying with us for the week and went for a run, did laundry and at night headed back to the bar we frequent meeting up with Lisa and her friend Doug there AND running into a Fermi Lab post doc who we found out lives like two blocks from us. I love our new neighborhood.

Ok, but there is more to the run than, "we went for a run". For anyone that has had incidents with cars while running, you'll love this.

The plan was for 7 miles. Since we skipped out on the run on Friday night we weren't going to get to the 20 miles we had planned so we decided to up the mileage for Saturday to at least get close. Nothing exciting happened except the stupid angle streets of Chicago screwing me up (every time, every damn time) so we got a bit turned around, and eventually got back to our neighborhood. As we are nearing the end of our run a black BMW pulled right into the crosswalk of a street without even looking for pedestrians (which of course is nothing unusual) of course when this happens you change your stride and skip around them. Apparently Jason who was on my right and the car then was his right, touched the trunk of the car with two of his fingers as he was swinging his arms. I didn't notice that this happenened and we were kicking out the last mile or so of the run. All of a sudden I look ahead of me and a car has pulled into the drive way of the hospital, again nothing unusual....until the driver of the car, gets out and starts walking towards us. Just as I notice that it's a black BMW, Jason shouts, "Dude, I'm sorry I touched your car, I didn't mean to..." The guy starts charging us and then I notice it....

His car is rolling backwards back into traffic on Western. For those of you that don't live in Chicago, Western is one of the busiest streets here. So I yell, "Dude....your car is rolling back into the street, you might want to get that." He turns around and of course has to run back to the car so it doesn't roll into traffic and get hit. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! As we go by I said, "You might want to watch for pedestrians next time". It was so sweet and awesome.....he must have felt like such a dumbass.

Running Adventures gotta love them.

Yesterday we went to the Bears game again (we were at the game last week too which was a lot more fun), and then onto Cans to watch the Colts/Patriots game. I hate to say it but it looks like the Colts are going to be the team to beat this year.....good for Jason as he is a Colts fan....bad for Jason and Leah's marriage as he won't change allegiance......sigh. Well they did look great last night. So Go Colts...and the Bears....well at least Urlacher got injured on the last play....oh and Berrian was injured in the first quarter.....and Rex well he's going to be injured if any Chicago fans see him.

Ah well. Go Bears, Go Colts....Go running.....more on scheduling and changing of lifestyle next!

Fast & Furious....

Cause there are no Rules this week!!!

This is one of my favorite times to run. Just going out, listening to some music, running fast if i want, slowing down if I want. Whatever. I can run like I'm a kid till my legs are tired and my breathing is heavy and it doesn't matter.

Yesterday we ran 5.9 miles and averaged an 8:40 pace. We had one mile under 8 and one way over 9 and the rest were around 8:30ish or so. I do like running with music but just using it the past few days I have noticed that my pace depends a lot on what I am listening to. If the music is a lot slower my pace is much higher. If I am going to continue to use music to run I'll make sure I take that into account. I have already put the slower songs at the beginning which is nice because I am not starting out fast at all. However the pop songs for 3 miles might be much because I was cranking it at the end of 5 miles.

Other news of note on the run is that we ran almost 6 miles through city streets and NEVER stopped for a light. One thing I love about Garmin is that if you miss a light you can just turn and go a different way and it doesn't matter. Nice way to explore the city a bit :-)

My legs are still feeling nice and strong with zero pains. We'll do about 4 tomorrow and 5 on Saturday bring us to about 20 for the week. I have been working on nice excel sheets to keep much better track of my milage....just WAIT till you people see all the graphs I have come up with :-)

Utterly Fantastic

Was our night last night.

Mike, Barb and My Dad and Sue (my stepmom) came over to watch Halloween (aka The Best Scary Movie EVER) last night. My copy of Halloween is an old VHS copy so it was pretty fun to watch it and have the sound be all wrobbley and the tracking would go every once in awhile. In the digital age we live in, it was pretty fun to watch the movie this way. At one point someone said, "Look the movie on TV is having a tracking problem and so are we" hee hee.....

That music in that movie still gets me to this day. so. creepy.

Nothing too exciting happened except for one group of trick or treaters. We have many doors to get through to get outside and so they were starting to leave, and when they heard our inner door open, they came bounding back up the stairs pushing and shoving and falling all over themselves. There had to be like 8 kids in this group. All of them were probably 9 or 10, except for one tiny girl that was in the middle of everyone. She was probably about 5 or so and had a cute pink little hate on and that's all I could see of her. She was really really cute and just calmly holding her bag out like, "She'll find me eventually". Very fun.

So it's onto November, I'm on to make more giant strides in my analysis (I got the line to hit the points yesterday people, I did a little dance in my office......after almost crying in my meeting with my advisor......Leah = Awesome). We'll run about 5 miles tonight.