Mr. FancyPhysicsBoy strikes again!

You've been hacked, Insane Running Girl!

No, as it turns out, I'm not hacking the system. In fact, I'm actually a writer on this site! Of course, you'd never know this since I've been doing a remarkable job of not writing. In fact, this is some of the best not-writing I've done in a long time.

As Leah said, Physics is hard. Last week consisted of many 16 hour work days mixed in with a 24 hour day and then capped off with a 17 hour day. Not a lot of time for running.

I'm not really okay with this.

I don't like when my work interferes with my life to the point where I can't do the simple things...like run. But, as long as it's only a couple weeks once every many, many months it's survivable. What I have discovered is that I know I never want the type of job that forces me to keep up this kind of pace on a daily basis.

Actually, I think it's sort of impossible to keep up this sort of pace with any regularity unless you do entire buckets-full of Coccaine, which is an expensive habit and can give you a nasty case of the sniffles. So I plan on passing on 80 hour weeks.

What's that you say? This is a running site? Okay, if you insist, I will write about today's run. Leah and I repeated last week's 5.3 mile run along the lakefront. I felt pretty good and mostly I was just happy to be out there. The sun was shining, the air was cool, and I was sweating as I definitely overdressed.

All I know is it wasn't work and it felt great.

-----------Side Note-----------------

So, when I got home on Friday after working from 7am-midnight, there was a little present waiting for me. I unwrap it and, to my amazement, what do I find? An iPod! The wonderful wife, as a belated X-mas gift and to celebrate my (basically) finished first analysis, bought me a fancy new iPod. For once, I am actually in posession of a current technology.

It was a physics miracle.

(I have a good wife)

Um....Like....Physics is Hard

Alright, first of all awhile ago there was a hilarious episode of Will & Grace where Grace has to get a shot or something at the doctors office and the nurse who has to take the blood is really young and keeps saying, "And I was all like, This is Hard"....anyone know the episode? They had a bunch of outtakes of it because Debra Messing could barely get through the scene.

Anyways, Physics is hard.

I am trying to fit some data, and the fit doesn't want to sit on the points, it thinks it's much better to go off into space and fit NOTHINGNESS. Alright then.

Actually physics is hard, but being a graduate student is rather nice. 90% of the time, at this moment Jason would not agree with me. But in general we have A LOT of freedom in...well...in everything. We can work from home, take a day off, go on vacation...whatever. This is very condusive to running as most of the time we have no problem getting our runs/races in.

Just a little thought of the day. When I get really frustrated with my work, I have to step back and realize that the money might be crap but in general not too bad of a lifestyle. I have to remind myself to get to this realization though!

No running or gym today since I was able to get in a run yesterday. I am going to take a walk down to my local Barnes and Nobles to look for some way to spend a Christmas gift card. That's about a 1.5 mile walk one way, so it's something I suppose. Tomorrow I have a meeting in the morning at the lab and then Jason and I will run in the afternoon, and then Sunday maybe start putting up more distance.....6 miles maybe.

Get That Boy Some Air

Well after Jason slept for a couple hours I thought it would be a good idea for him to just

GET OUTSIDE!

so I finally convinced him to put on some running clothes and we'd just go for a short run/walk to get him some fresh air. Well go figure he felt great and we ended up doing the favorite loop at 3.7 miles and a nice pace. Go Jason!

Alright, well dollar beers at the local pub is calling my name so I'll leave you with this picture of my dresser (i know i know great(!) organizatioin).....whos' that in there. oh my cat missy :

All Nighter!

Well I didn't pull one, but Jason did. :-(

I went to bed last night around 11:30 pm and Jason saying he thought he would be to bed in a couple of hours. I woke up at 4:30 and heard him making more coffee and when I got out of bed at 5 am There he was in front of the comptuer finishing up his talk. Man what a trooper. He gave his talk this morning at 9:30 and did a great (!) job. Tomorrow the paper covering all this work is due and as soon as that is turned in by midnight he'll be all done....well for a couple days anyways, at least until the group send him all the comments they have for the analysis and he has to go through and work all those out....but still.

I haven't decided if I will run today or tomorrow yet. I am guessing tomorrow morning since my sleep shouldn't be so screwed up tonight and I can get that done in the morning before sitting down to work the rest of the day. That's my plan of the hour!

There's Tight and Then There's Too Tight

Now, I could be talking about the pair of jeans in the back of my dresser that I refuse to throw out, but probably couldn't wear again unless I got on the ice cube popsicle diet...

But I'm not.

I talking about the shoe that was on my left foot this morning. My poor little piggies needed the jaws of life to free them. Alright, so that's some good information for tomorrow....pull on the laces to tighten the shoes, not death grip the laces and pull them until your knuckes turn white.....too dramatic....I think so.

But the run did go well this morning, I went the same loop I went yesterday and like yesterday I went alone. Jason's presentation is tomorrow morning and then the paper is due on Friday. So soon all this craziness will be over. I better get my ass moving on my analysis so that this doesn't happen to me in the coming months.

So last night apparently (I only vaguely remember) I woke up and started screaming at the blanket on the bed. Something about it wasn't fitting the curve, so I guess I put the blanket back on but then threw it on to the floor saying oh forget it. Well that's only slightly embarrising. what the....

Lonely Runnin'

Well Mr. FancyPhysicsBoy also known as Jason, the other wriiter on this site and my husband has been so busy these last few weeks with his physics analysis that he has had to sit at work for hours and hours and hence, not be runnin'

This leaves Leah lonely on her runs. :-(

(let's be honest....it's only been 2 runs....but still)

It's so different running alone. I know that lots of you do it all the time it's just something I am totally not used to. I love having my partner by my side when I'm out there. But sigh, not meant to be today.

Today's run was hosted by a beautiful winter afternoon. The temperature was about 36 degrees or so, but sunny and just that awesome crisp winter weather that I actually quite enjoy running in. Totally not too cold and just nice out. I went about 3.7 miles on one of my favorite city loops. I run right by wrigley field then to the lake front and then back home through city streets. It's the best loop because on the way back through the streets I can totally get around all the lights and hence never get stuck waiting for that magic green color to come my way.

There weren't too many other runners on the path, I think I only saw about 4-5, but I went around 3:30 pm when most people are still at work.

Tomorrow I'll try and get a run in before we go to the lab, if that doesn't happen I'll just run AT the lab......around the ring perhaps. Speaking of the Fermi Ring.

I have heard rumers that a couple years ago there used to be a annual "Race around the Ring" at Fermi Lab. I am on this graduate student council thing and I am thinking of trying to bring it back. There are actually quite a bit of runners at the lab and I think people would get a kick out of it. I am going to see if I can get some money to sponser it and then we could have t-shirts and stuff. or even just a $5 dollar entry fee or something cheap. It would be nice it it could be a bigger event and catch on then year to year. We'll have to see if I can get that going.

My Kind of Town....

Chicago Is.....My Kind of Town.

Jason and I just got back from a 5.3 mile run. Again it was about 48 degress when we left for our run. And again I over dressed.
I had on windpants....which by the way if it's really windy out just turn into like wind balloons :-), then a Nike tank top thing, a dry fit long sleeve t-shirt and then another regular cotten long sleeve shirt over that. It was pretty bad when the wind was with us as I got a little heated, but then of course we have to turn around and the wind goes from helping you to blowing you into the random other runner on the running path.

As I was running today, as frequently happens when I am out running, I was overcome by a feeling of love? desire? I really don't know the right word I am looking for here. But I get nostalgic for this town. Jason and I are nearing the end of our bout with graduate school and will be moving on probably by the end of the year. To where we don't know yet. Who knows maybe Apple Computers will hire me. California then? Maybe a big company in New York City will hire Jason and we can turn into New yorkers? Perfect weather? The biggest city? But what about MY city. I grew up here in Chicago and I LOVE IT. I love the people that live here, I love the lake front, I love the Cubs (if I move to NY and I start rooting for the Mets my father will disown me, but I canNOT be a yankees fan with those stupid rules), I love the Bears......I love all that is Chicago. It doesn't mean that I don't want to see what else this big world has to offer, but I know when the time comes to make a decision it's going to be hard for me to leave my beloved Windy City.

We'll just have to see.

(Ah yes, don't forget to check out the Running Progress link on the upper right as it will be updated today with our progress over the last week. )

Great Run

Today jason and I went for about 3.75 miles. I was concerned after yesterdays run because my shins hurt so bad. I don't know what the deal is with this problem. It almost feels like those muscles in front of my shins on the outside are getting super tight, almost like they are spasming. I really dont' know how to describe it but yesterday when I missed a traffic light and needed to stop I couldn't barely stand those muscles hurt so bad. I spent probably about a minute trying to stretch out that area of my legs and it did feel a bit better when I started up again, but never perfect.

Today though we started off super slow and ran at this pace for maybe 5 blocks and then continued at our normal pace.

no pain.

not even a little twinge of annoyance. So maybe starting off a bit slower is more key than I had thought before. I am really looking forward to our run tomorrow. We are planning on 5 miles so we'll see how that goes (i am also really excited because we finally did laundry and my smart wool socks are clean...I know I am just the coolest person ever....but they are really comfy socks)

Jason also found out that his friend Jon Phillips will be running the Indianapolis mini marathon in May so that should be super fun. Apparently Jon has run two marathons, his first was done at about 4:20 and his second at 3:40 !!! way to go Jon taking off 40 minutes between the two races....that's incredible.

Quick word on two novels. I just finished The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova which is a really awesome page turner concerning Dracula and I highly recommend it. I am also just starting a book called Saturday by Ian McEwan which so far is well done. The book follows around the main character as he goes about his business on one Saturday in February. So far I really like it......(just a little book info for you librarian/runners out there :-) )

Preferred Start I

So I was just at the Shamrock Shuffle website and not only do Jason and I get a Preferred start but we get a Preferred I start. So I guess there are 3 qualifying bins, Competative, Preferred I and Preferred II

Competitive Start:
004-05 LaSalle Bank Shamrock Shuffle 8K: < 0:35:59
2004-05 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon Half split: < 1:35:59
2004-05 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon time: < 3:15:59

Preferred Start (I):
2004-05 LaSalle Bank Shamrock Shuffle 8K: < 0:42:30
2004-05 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon Half split: < 1:45:59
2004-05 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon time: < 3:45:59

Preferred Start (II):
004-05 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon Half split: < 2:00:59
2004-05 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon time: < 4:30:59

I think last year we ran it in 38:30 or something like this so we are in the Preferred (I) bin. Now I'm a little more nervous. It's so funny because by 1/2 and full marathon times relate to the Preferred (II) bin.

I hope that Jason and I can do at least as well as we did last year and hopefully a little better. I wonder if we could ever get down to the competative start bin for this race....35:59.....7:14 pace......hmmm....maybe not so much.

Today I'll run and hit the gym hopefully. Jason still has loads of work to do so I don't know if he'll be able to join me. I hope so, I don't want to run alone again. I suppose he could join me for the run since that won't take too much time away from the physics.

Cocktails and Brownies

Well Jason had to go into work today because he has to be done with this analysis by next week. eeek. So I had the day to myself as Friday's are the days we deem, "Work at Home days". I did do some work, but I found this cool program called Comic Life on the computer and played with that for what some people might call, awhile. Anyways, it's totally awesome because you can make comic strips using your photos, and then you can give the photos comic book effects. Very cool. Or you could make cool posters of yourself running....

I went for a run by myself today. how odd was that! I can't remember the last time I went for a run alone. It was good and bad. Bad because it got a little boring like instantly, but good because I had to force myself to keep going even though my shins were screaming for me to stop. Gotta find that inner power somewhere. The weather was AWESOME. It was 50 degrees out when I left the house for my run. I wish it wasn't January and this could be real weather. sigh.

So where does that leave me.....that's right I'm baking some brownies and drinking some cocktails. If you mix the juice of a lime wedge, Captain Morgans Tattoo Rum, and Diet Coke you have a mighty tasty little drinky drink. I swear to god it tastes like a green sour patch kid! Jason disagrees with me, but I'm totally serious. Enjoy!

Lots o' MEETINGS

AUGH I hate meetings! Thursdays tend to be a pretty busy day for us here at the lab. We have either an 8:30am or 9:00am meeting depending on which week it is, which is fine, but today we are meeting with our advisor at around 5pm and then I have a Graduate Student Association officer meeting after that.

We decided to push the run to tomorrow because we wouldn't be able to run until pretty late, and we work at home tomorrow so that should work out fine. We will go maybe the same loop we went on Wednesday and then also hit the gym tomorrow.

Of other interest, I am trying to work out new ways to plot my running data, so using iWeb I created another blog that will live at my .mac address. This will just be updated every Sunday with plots of the week, summed distance and so on. You can check it out now (albeit not very interesting yet) by clicking on the "Running Progress" link on the upper right.

Drivers : Always ALWAYS look for pedestrians!

This morning Jason and I got up at our usual 7:15 and were out the door by 7:40. We decided to shake things up a bit, yes we here at the Welty-Rieger household can get pretty crazy, and go for a looping run instead of just an out and back which we tend to do because we can stay away from traffic lights along the lake front path. Everything was going great and then we get to the corner of Aldine and Halstead and we are waiting for a bus to go through the intersection and then we are going to cross. I notice that there is a car behind the bus and also a blue car on the street that we are on, but on the other side so as the bus went by we were hidden from him (although I did see him so he should have noticed us as well). So the bus goes by, Jason and Leah proceed to cross the street and the blue car proceeds to make a right turn RIGHT INTO ME! The driver totally didn't even think about pedestrians. Not only do I almost get hit by a car, but the guy doesn't even give the apologetic wave/shoulder shrug. Very scary actually as that was the closest I have come so far in my running to getting touched by a vehicle. Always Always remember the pedestrians...and know that if you ever hit one it's on you no matter if it was your fault or not.

But we did have a great run, total distance of 3.7 miles. Yes that's right, we are building up that milage again. I will have the cool plots again in the coming days.

In other fantastic news the physics program now works on the new computer! So a shout out to Fons Radermakers who is The Man who got this running on this intel architechture. (he's actually really awesome as he is one of the original creators of the program!)

No Gym but Great Run

Last night we didn't leave Fermi Lab until about 8:15pm (after losing 3 games in volleyball :-( !! ) So by the time we got near the gym it was 9:15 and Jason and i were exhausted and so decided to skip on the gym so that we won't totally wear ourselves down.

Our run this morning was nice. It was 35 degrees out which I over dressed for a bit. We just went 3 miles, but it just feels so good to be out there again!

Nothing else is new here...including my comptuer woes. I cannot freakin' get anyone to write me back. don't really know what to do now. I am trying to remotely log into my machine at work and that is painfully painfully slow because of the computers talking back and forth.

alright, frustration is turning into utter annoyance.

sigh

**but i would like to note that the computer in general is AWESOME. It's super fast and there is almost no waiting for things to load up or quit out of. As soon as this one little stupid program works I will love it 100%**

New Technology

I am starting to freak out about our new computer. As it is a new technology I am starting to worry that nothing I need will work. And by nothing, i mean one program that I need for my physics analysis. I have posted a question on a discussion forum with no response, sent an e-mail to a mailing list with questions with a promise to "look at it tomorrow". I love my new computer and I know that it will work *eventually*. But what if eventually is in a couple months? I need the machinary now! well at least by Friday since this is the next day I will work at home.

sigh.

So frustrating. I know that a lot of other physics nerds are going to be very interested in the new macpro book and hence the creators of the package will have to have the program ready for more people soon.

Maybe all will be fine and I'll get word back that everything will be fine sooner rather than later, but I tend to freak out about things like this. It could not even be their problem and I am doing something stupid.....I just don't know.

Tonight we play volleyball against my least favorite team. It is very *VERY* important for this team to bitch about every call the ref makes.

The Call : Out of Bounds
Mean Team : Um, actually that wasn't out of bounds.

The Call : Lifting the ball instead of setting properly
Mean Team : What is wrong with you, that clearly wasn't a lift.

Many calls later : Serve into the net
Mean Team : IT DIDN'T HIT THE NET & Remember that Out of bounds call 10 mintues ago? yeah? Well it still wasn't out of bounds!

It's so frustrating. This doesn't help my already crappy volleyball game because I just want to beat them so bad and my play goes down the toilet. But perhaps this will be the night that we conquer the team.....we'll see.

After the game we'll head back home and stop at the YMCA to get big and strong, then home to try and get my program to work again :-( Maybe a miracle will occur

Remembering LOoOoOng Sunday runs

Today Jason and I went out for what ended up being ~4.5 miles. It was really a wonderful as the weather was pretty nice (at a balmy 32 degrees) and our underpass has finally been reopended so we were able to jump onto the lake front path immediatly.

When we got to the lakefront path which was about at the Totem Pole for those of you that know Chicago I was smacked with an image of Jason and I going out for one of our long marathon training runs last summer. I remember we would get the Totem pole for say a 16 mile run, and i would go, "Ok, Leah get settled in, only 15 miles to go". Wow. And it wasn't ever a big deal, just alright, keep putting one foot in front of another and kick this run's ass. Today we only went 4.5 miles, but we felt great. I am really looking forward getting into our mini marathon training and bumping up that long run again.

tomorrow we have volleyball and a workout at the YMCA and then the plan is TWR run, F gym, SS run. So we'll see.

oh yeah and going to bed at 3am and 4:30 AM the last two evenings has me pretty screwed up at the moment. I'm just got up from a nap (this should make falling asleep tonight NO PROBLEM) and jason and i ate lunch around 5 or so. what! What time will dinner be then?

Google Earth

So they recently (finally!) released Google Earth for the Mac. And now that I am running Tiger I can use said program. Holy Cow is that program amazing! Below is the little easy 3.something mile run that Jason and I have been doing lately, click on it to make it larger. When you draw the line on the map it will tell you the distance as well. It's just like we live in the 21st century! Very Cool! (by the way, did anyone notice the time of this post. We just got back from video gaming and movie watching at Bryn and Tina's place....it's just like I'm a grownup and up late on a Saturday night! Good thing I can run tomorrow afternoon)

New Shoes and Apples

That's right Jason and I purchased the new 20" iMac with the Dual Core Intel Chips in it. It's super cool and with the built in camera we can take funny pictures like this:











So, although the pictures are fun (and I could take them for hours) I really needed this computer so that I could work from home more efficiently....unfortunatly I am having quite a time getting the main analysis tool to compile on this computer. I know it will work eventually just a tad frustrating because I want it to work now. sigh. and because I have some work to do sooner rather than later. I know that it will work eventually and be blaziing fast when it does, so hopefully it will happen soon.

We also went for a run this morning which I am proud of as we were up till 3am working with the computer. Just went three miles again, but will go 4 tomorrow. I noticed that my favorite entrance to the lakefront path that has been closed for the last several months was back open so that is good news. The weather today was AMAZING. The temperature was somewhere in the mid 20's, but there was NO wind and NO clouds. It snowed last night so there was the familar crunching of snow beneath of feet. Very nice.

Oh Macintosh, how I love Thee

So Apple just release some fancy new fast computers.

Who loves fast computers? Leah and Jason!

So my dear dad would say, "Calm down there gadget girl," in which I would reply, "But I feel the need......the NEED FOR SPEED". As I have mentioned Jason and I are working towards a graduation date of the end of the year and for this to happen I think that we will need to work some on the weekends. When we first made the decision to hurry up and graduate I thought we would need to move to the Lab because we would have to work many hours and many days. All I'm saying is that with a new fast machine we can work A LOT from home....including weekends.

Have I convinced you yet? Not yet?

I e-mailed the creator of a graphical program we use to graph our data (name of this program is ROOT) to ask if their program would have any problems running on the new intel chip, his reply was:

ROOT has been running since last June on the Intel Macs (we have two dev platforms here). So just get one and enjoy the speed. I did :-)

Ha.

Well something we are definitly thinking about. We are going to go downtown for a movie tonight...and if we so happen to stop at the mac store....so be it:-)

Right, working out then. We went to the YMCA today and did our usual loop of machines. Next time I go, I will bring some paper so I can write down exactly what we did. I did lots of ab work, but I don't think I am doing some of those runner's world ones correctly....or maybe I am just really strong! Tomorrow we will go for a 3 mile run, and then 4 (that's right we are building on up!) on Sunday.

Workin' workin'

No running today :-( But actually that's ok as we are trying to get back into the game without blowing out our legs this time.

We had a long day at the lab today. We have early meetings on Thursday so we got here around 8:30 and will leave probably around 7 or 7:30. The meeting this morning is usually 1.5 hours long but today it was something like 2.25 hours. There are tons of physics conferences coming up (that's right, we're big nerds!) and so lots of people are presenting analyses that hope to be shown at these conferences. Jason is working on one that will hopefully go through for the Moriod QCD (Quantum ChromoDynamics) conference, who's deadline for presenting is creeping up on him. As I won't be ready for these winter conferences I have a bit more time but I am working on an analysis for the APS (American Physical Society) conference that will be in Dallas, TX the 3rd week of April.

Tomorrow we head to the gym for more good ab work, we'll see if Leah can keep her feet off the ground this time. Then running on Saturday and Sunday. Next week we'll go for T, W, R, S &S (running) and M,F (YMCA) which will be our schedule while training for the Indianapolis half marathon.

New Shoes!

Oh man, do I love shoes! When I was in high school I worked at our local sportmart and oh man, you get like 10% (that's right!) off on anything in the store. Let me tell you where my paychecks went :-) Kidding really.

But I recently went to Momentum Running on Clybourn Ave to peruse their inventory, mainly shoes as my current trainers are nearing their end (this is really because I don't like them that much not becuase I have actually put too many miles on them, they aren't even at the 200 mark yet :-) ). I have really been wanting to try the Brooks Adrenaline 6's on, but they didn't have them in my size and said that they would call when they came in.

Well ladies and gents. That day was today.

I have heard that they are a bit more narrow than the 5's but when I tried them on I knew that my feet had found their home. I have been running in the Asics 2100 and although they have carried me far, I just knew that they weren't the ones for me.

Yes I realize that I haven't run in my new shoesies yet, but I did test them out on the sidewalk and they really did feel wonderful. I'm looking forward to getting them out on the road and putting some miles on them. And I know you all want a picture....

I'm Running Too!

Leah has been doing such a tremendous job of getting this site up and running ("running", get it?) again that I have been pretty happy to just read her stuff and nod along. Well, my names on this site too, so what do I have to say?

Well, um, first off I have to agree with everything Leah has written below (I mean, I don't literally "have to", I just choose to). It is great to be back into running and I'm feeling better already. I had taken a break from writing on either this site or my other site because I was feeling very uninspired. I was a little concerned that I was losing my sense of humor (correction: my razor sharp sense of humor). However, with a couple weeks of running/working out under my belt, I'm starting to feel like my old self again. The lethargy has lifted and so has my spirit.

It's amazing what a little exercise can do.

The Weather is Here...wish Running is Beautiful

(get the Jimmy Buffett reference? Anyone? Anyone?)

Jason and I got another 3 mile run in this morning.

I know I know!!! That's 2 days IN A ROW

Yesterday I started updating the graphs I like to make and wow we were so awesome back in November running something like 30 miles/week. It's hard to look at the weeks and month after that where we were lucky to get in a couple miles a week. The holidays overtook us, and I do think that we were overdoing it with those highish milage weeks because at least my shins were absolutly killing me.

Getting back into the groove though is really spectacular. Something about the first of the year coming and detoxing after the holidays maybe. Today's run was nice. Nothing fancy, just runnin' :-) (and no shin pain!)

So the weather here in Chicago for January is not so bad. I checked the 10 day weather forcast yesterday and it looks like it will be in the upper 30's lower 40's. Wow! This is Chicago people, I was expecting 10's and maybe 20's with some snow. But it looks good for now. Still have to get through February though....

Shuffle

Well as we won't be doing the Superbowl Shuffle.....by the way the Bears allowed Steve Smith a GAME HIGH of 218 yards. That's what I would call the "best" defense in the league.

But we will be doing the Shamrock Shuffle 8K that will be on April 2nd in Chicago. This was a fun race last year and we are looking forward to running it again. Last year we somehow had some speed finishing with a pace of 7:40 or so, we are going to try and beat that by a little and finish in around 36:30 which would roughly be 7:20 pace or so...we'll see if that can happen. Who knows what the Welty-Rieger clan can do with speedwork added into our repertoire

Up and On it

This week starts the second week of....let's get on that running train. Last week I thought it would be no problem to get all the runs/workouts in without being too tired. I was totally wrong about that. However I am feeling much better so far this week. Yesterday we got to work around 10am and went to a Volleyball clinic from 5:30-7:15. After that we drove back to the city and stopped by the local YMCA to get our muscles big and strong :-)

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to try and do these ab exercises that were in Runner's World magazine. Yeah. I apparently have a few weak stomach, which I never would have thought as I am in pretty good shape. One of the exercises was to lay on your back with your legs straight up in the air and then twist your trunk so that your legs were about 12 inches off the ground and then pull them back up to vertical. hahaha, once my feet were 12 inches off the floor they kept right on going to the ground. I do think that these are good exercises because the article mentioned that they were good workouts for running, so hopefully they will help the ole's abs and also benefit my running a bit.

Today we got up at 7 and went for an easy 3 mile run, and felt pretty good. Tomorrow we'll try that again and see how much our bodies like getting up earlish to run.

Bears Lose!

What the......

The Chicago Bears were labeled as having the BEST defense by far in the NFL. Before yesterday that was true. They allowed 29 points yesterday at Soldiers Field. During the regular season they only allowed 61 TOTAL points at home. Man.

I do have to give kudos to little Rex Grossman who was able to guide the offense to 21 points...which is A LOT more than we have been seeing from the Bears this season.

But alas football season is over for me and dear Jason who is a huge Colts fan.....can't even talk about what happened there. So for us it's GO DENVER and GO SEATTLE!

How about running? We ran 3 times last week. That's right we are total badasses.

We ran 3 miles on Tuesday morning, ~3.75 on Thursday afternoon at Fermi Lab and then 3 again on Friday. The weather on Thursday afternoon was unbelievable for Chicago in January. I think it was 50-something degrees. Hence quite the shock for our Friday run when it was "snowing" I put snowing in quotes because it was some weird combination of snow, rain with a hammering wind accompanying it. We were going to run on Sunday but as we strapped in at our local pub for what would have been the greatest day in sports ever we didn't quite make it.

This week's plan will be to add a 4th day of running, and then next week a 5th day. This gets us into gear for the half marathon training and hopefully our shins will not be crying as much as they were back in November.

We are also trying to frequent the gym more than we did last year. We will hopefully go Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays/Saturdays. In this month's Runner's World magazine there was an article about some ab exercises that should help benefit the running, so I am going to try this routine tonight and see how it goes.

A question for you readers:

Have any of you tried the new Brooks Adrenalines? I loved the 5's but have heard not such good things about the Brooks Adrenaline 6's. Thanks!

Are we back?

I hope so!

After a crazy end to 2005 Jason and I have laced up our running shoes and are back on the running trails again. We are running the Indianapolis Mini Marathon along with a few Teyemas and need to get into shape for that. After looking through several different running programs it looks like we will be trying to stick to Hal Higdon's Intermediate Half Marathon program. This program is 5 days a week and includes speed work which should work well with our busy schedule. Other races that we are looking into are the Shamrock Shuffle right here in Chicago and then there is a 12K in Fort Wayne, IN where Jason is from that we thought might be fun as it would be quite a bit smaller than all the races that we have run in the past. What about a marathon? That question is still up in the air as our busy schedule is almost over taking us.

Why so busy all of a sudden? We are still graduate students and were able to get in a marathon last year, so what happened in the last few months? Well we went to visit NYC and got an itch :-) We are both hoping to find jobs there and move by the end of the year. Alright not the end of the year, actually by the beginning of October as that is when our lease here in Chicago is up. So in the next 8 months Jason and I have to finish up a full analysis and write up our thesis and get this party called life started.

Do we know what we want to be when we grow up. Well no.....but we do know that we are ready to move along and see what else this great big world holds.

So stay tuned, and let's see if Crazy Leah can design a work/workout/running matrix that allows for all the stuff to get done!

Embrace the snowyness

Jason and i just got back from running. That's right. 2 times this week....well 2 times this week if you start the week at sunday. I usually don't so, ok ok 1 time this week.

But anyways, it went awesome! For the first time in a long time I can say that. We started off pretty slow and after the first half mile or so I just tried to keep everything steady...no sprinting if a fast song came on, or slowing way down if I didn't feel perfect. We ran 4.7 miles and it didn't feel that far at all. I thought maybe it was 4 miles, but to my surprise it was a bit farther.

The weather here in chicago has been ridiculous so far. We have way more snow than we did all of last winter, I think. It's windy, it's nasty, I am super busy at work....but keeping running on this type of schudule doesn't take so much time and I feel so much better after a good run.

We are going to florida sometime in the near future for the holidays and so will be able to run in the sun down there, so that will be good also to get back on track for a new year.

Where did the running go?

My god have Jason and I gotten busy these last few weeks. not that this is an excuse for not running as there is no excuse for that kind of behavior. However things have gotten a bit crazy over here. To make a rather long story short, we need to accelerate our graduation aside from the fact that we want to figure out what we want to be when we grow up, but we could have some job possibilites in New York City. So we are going to attempt a graduation around October 1st. Yowza....that's only like 9 months away!!! This had not been the plan a couple weeks ago but as with everything in life, things change. So Jason and I will be moving away from cushy grad student lifestyle to oh shit my ass is on fire life style. Back to the long hours at the lab and working on the weekends. But it's ok because there is perhaps a tiny light bulb at the end of the tunnel.

So what does that mean for running? I just need to do a much better job of time management, the train is still a big possibility, and running at work will have to become a bigger event. Hopefully we'll be able to get our act together and work from home one day a week and then could run in the neighborhood.

We had not been running lately though but was able to trek through the snow this afternoon for an easy three miler. Will stick with these type of runs for awhile until I can wrap all parts of this new life into 24 hours. We are planning a trip to Florida for the holidays....um right i think that would be next week or so.... also so it will be fun to run in the sun for a few days.

Dissappointed

Well Jason sums up nicely below the last week of running...or non running. We are on the road again starting wednesday for a conference down in Bloomington. I think maybe just setting the bar a little lower for this week would be alright. Maybe try and get 16 miles in.....4 runs of 4 miles. we'll just have to see. Here are the plots from the last week. Yuck.

Vacation over

In honor of a holiday built on eating, napping, and watching football, Leah and I ran very little this last week. Sure, it's sad to see the mileage graph take a dip, but in this case it was sort of necessary.

I think after the marathon, when we were ready to start running again, we were so excited to not have to train (i.e. we could run for fun) that we had energy to burn. All of our runs were fast - faster than we had ever run. This was great fun, but it ended up being pretty hard on the legs. By the week before Thanksgiving, when we had finally made it up to around 30 miles per week, my shins had begun to hurt...a lot. And it wasn't just that they were sore, it was that they felt like all the strength had gone out of them. Also, they weren't just sore while I ran; it hurt to walk as well. Leah was having the same problem.

Shin pain is evil. It isn't like it is impossible to run, but it is definitely not fun. The insidious ache sucks the motivation right out of you. The question of "why am I doing this" comes screaming to the forefront. So, to put it simply, this is something that needed to go away.

I guess the first thing that is always recommended when the ol' legs start to hurt is rest, and so rest we did. We took Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off and cut our Sunday run down to ~5 miles. Hopefully this rest will help a bit and the shin-ache will go away. It is one thing to run through pain when there is a marathon on the way...it is quite another thing to do it when you are just trying to run for fun in the off-season.

Fort Wayne Long Run

We spent the weekend at Jasons' parent's house in Fort Wayne, IN to celebrate Thanksgiving since we will be going to my aunt's house on Thursday (by the way, this is by far my favorite holiday of the year....so much delicious food!)

We didn't run on Friday or Saturday to give our poor shins a bit of a break. We did walk to the gym on Friday evening and lifted some weights and as Jason likes to say, got big and huge. Today then we ran ~9.3 miles (!). Putting our weekly total at about 28 miles. You can see the charts below that show our progress since the marathon and we have been adding distance each week but I feel we are now getting to a point where we can sit for awhile. I would like to be consistant at 30 miles per week until we start seriously training for our next big race which will be the Indianapolis 1/2 Marathon on May 6th. I would also like our longs runs to be consistant at 10 miles. So we are just about there. Don't know if this will happen next week because of the big family bash in Frankfort Indiana, but we will try and get them all in.

By the way. Frankfort's high school mascot is the Hot Dogs

The Frankfort Hot Dogs......I couldn't even make this up!

SHINS!!!

Yesterday we ran at Fermi Lab again and I had a lot of pain on the outside of my shins. This is so annoying because of course I can still run forward but it was really painful. I get this often and lots of times it starts to happen when my shoes start to go. I am wearing Asics 2100's and there is probably only about 150 miles on them, which is not a lot. So I am wondering if it is bothering me because I have been adding miles very quickly...?

We ran about .75 miles and then stopped to stretch which always helps for about a .25 miles after that. The pain does eventually stop though so I was able to get through the run without have to walk or stopping to stretch again.

We will probably not run today or tomorrow to give our legs a bit of a break. We are going to Fort Wayne, IN to visit Jason's parents for thanksgiving and so we will run on Sunday morning around there. We will try and walk to the gym tonight though and work out. We'll see as it will depend on what time we want to leave for Indiana.

Last night we went to see Saw 2 with some memeber of our volleyball team. oh man was it scary! I am such a sucker for horror flicks and this one lived up to it's predecesor. Good twist and scary scenes.....eeek. (i totally checked the backseat of my car before we got in to drive home...hahahaha)

Quick Note about distance

I just wanted to mention that the distance we ended up going last night was about 6.9 miles. This is a little more reasonable for us right now than 8 miles two nights in a row. The run really was nice because we didn't have to stop at any lights. I think we got lucky for some at the end though, but still a much better solution I think.

This way we zigzag through downtown and then end up at Oak Street beach for a nice run home. Tonight we will again run around the ring here at work. Tonight we are going to see Saw 2 with some friends. After the first one, I seriously went around my apartment and turned on every light....so CREEPY. Hopefully this one is as good.

Left, Right, Left, Right...

A military parade?

Nope, it's just the adventures of Insane Girl and her dashing sidekick, Jason...the Great. This is the sidekick's story.

To make a long story short, it was cold yesterday. It started out cold in the morning and then, as luck would have it, it just kept getting colder. But the good news was that the cold was accompanied by 20 mph wind, gusting up to 30 mph.

Sweet.

Well, if you know Insane Girl, you know this is just her kind of thing. She'll start singing the theme to Rocky, punching the air, and running circles around her sidekick. Me, I was worried I would freeze my ass off.

No, I mean that literally.

I figured that, right around mile four of our run home, I would hear a dull thud and turn around to find two quivering lumps of flesh lying on the ground, mocking me with their not-attached-to-my-body-ness. That's just not something you want to see...ever.

Luckily, though, it ended up not being that bad. Instead of running through Millenium Park to get to the Lakefront path, we zig-zagged through downtown, crossing whatever street allowed us the rightaway. This meandering run was really nice because it broke up the early part of the run into little pieces and also because that nasty wind was never in our face for too long. By the time we made it to the lake, we were already halfway done and the whole run felt so much shorter.

Next time on The Adventures of Insane Girl and Her Dashing Sidekick, Jason (Note: must find zippier title): Four feet of snow? Bah!

LSD and the Windy City

Last night in our continued quest for getting runs in during our commute, we decided instead of running down one of the busiest streets in the city and getting stopped at every light we would instead run all the way to the lake front, and then run the lake front path home. It's needless to say it was a spectacular run. We ran east to Milienium Park and were able to run through this park and over the BP Bridge. For those of you who ran the Chicago Marathon, or the Shamrock Shuffle, this is the bridge that you run under at the very beginning of the race. It was so beautiful downtown at night and running through this park was a much different experience than just walking through it in the summer.

We landed on the lake front path at the Harbor that is on Monroe (maybe it's even called the Monroe st. harbor). We ran this path so many times over the summer that I knew the route and was beginning to realize we might be going a bit farther than we had hoped. Oh well, it was really fun to run along Lake Shore Drive, right along the lake. There were a few other runners on the path and I would give them a wave as they passed by. I think I get about a 25% wave return. Well I was noticing that the wind was really picking up, or maybe it had been bad the whole time, just at my back.

I got off the lakefront path and kept running North for about a half a mile and everytime we got to a street corner, seriously the wind just about picked me up and would push me into Jason. I knew that the last mile or so of the run was directly running west and I knew that it was going to be a tough finish. I told Jason that we had to be tough for this last mile and we did make it back to our apartment without being blown away.

This morning I checked the distance of the route (click here) and it looks to be about 8 miles. This is farther than we ran on Sunday and so somewhat negates the long run on Sundays. We'll try this again tonight. By the way the weather yesterday was 50 degees. I woke up this morning to 30 degrees and some snow flurries! I love Chicago winters. It's so all of a sudden. One day fall. Next day dead of winter. Ah well, it had to happen sometime.

***Note I found these pictures online, I would like to start carrying my camera with my so I can take my own pictures. I have a Canon power shot camera which is very tiny, so soon I will do that

Hey, Spidey!

Appropriately enough, I am my favorite comic book hero. Batman would have been cooler, though.

You scored as The Amazing Spider-Man. After being bitten by a radioactive spider, Peter Parker was transformed from a nerdy high school student into New York's greatest hero. Peter enjoys the thrill of being a super hero, but he struggles with the burdens of leading a double life. He hopes someday to win the heart of his true love Mary Jane, the woman he's loved since before he even liked girls. Right now, he just wants to make it through college and pay his bills. The Amazing Spider-Man 67% James Bond, Agent 007 58% Indiana Jones 54% The Terminator 50% Batman, the Dark Knight 50% Neo, the "One" 50% Lara Croft 46% Captain Jack Sparrow 42% William Wallace 42% El Zorro 38% Maximus 33% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

007

From Flatman's blog I took the "Which Action Hero are you"quiz.

That's right. 007 James Bond....perhaps Jamie Bond for me......A good top 3 though too!

You scored as James Bond, Agent 007. James Bond is MI6's best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license's to kill. He doesn't care about rules or regulations and somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner. James Bond, Agent 007 79% Neo, the "One" 71% Captain Jack Sparrow 67% Maximus 63% El Zorro 63% The Terminator 58% Lara Croft 58% Indiana Jones 58% The Amazing Spider-Man 58% Batman, the Dark Knight 50% William Wallace 42% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

Sunday Run

Yesterday we planned to go about 7 miles, going a little further down the lakefront path than we did last week. We ran at about 6pm and now that the winter months are coming the light in the evening is going. It was fully dark when we left, but it was a really beautiful run along the lake. We run south from our house so our view along the lake is downtown Chicago with all the building lit up. It's really an amazing sight. We ran to the North Ave bridge and then meandered our way back through the neighborhood. Amazingly enough we didn't get stopped at any lights which was nice.


We did about 25 miles last week which is a nice increase from the week before, and from the weekly distances that we kept last winter.

We only found one problem with running home from the train and that was all the stop lights along the way. On wednesday it felt that we had gotten stopped at all of them. This week we will extend these runs a little bit and run east to the lake, and then home along the lakefront path. It gets very annoying when you finally get a rhythm going to have to stop at a light. So this should increase our weekly distance thise week, but this is all we will add as I don't want to do too much too fast and get myself hurt.

Here are the up to date graphs of our progress.

Missing Someone You Never Met

Yesterday afternoon I watched the NBC coverage of the 2005 Ironman World Championship that takes place in Hawaii. Of course they had the personal interest stories that all good sport coverage takes care of. They really all bring a tear to your eye...but there was one of personal interst to me, Jonathan S. Blais. Jon was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gerig's disease) in May, but decided to compete in this years Ironman competition. My grandmother (my Dad's mom) died of this disease when I was 9 months old. I have heard so many stories, and seen so many pictures of her that I really wish that I would have had the chance to meet her...at least at an age when I would remember meeting her. When my Dad talks about her, I feel that he is telling a story that I could envision myself doing. For example, she used to play in a volleyball league at the junior high one evening during the week, that is until she found out that her daughter and all her friends called it the "old ladies gym club" (or something to that effect). So she never went again.

She was also an avid bowler (as Dad says, "I didn't see my mom one Friday night my entire childhood"). My dad and stepmom recently moved out of their house and onto their sailboat (read about their adventures here) and of course I got a lot of stuff since they cannot take it with them (which is great for my tiny 1 bedroom apartment) . But he said, "Do you want my mom's bowling ball? It has her initials on it" I said, "Sure, how heavy is it," thinking that I could use it when I went to play. He said, "16 lbs". I guess when she went to buy it they asked her how heavy of a ball she wanted, she asked how heavy do they get, they said 16 lbs, she said I'll take that.

She was 5'11" tall and wore size 10.5 size shoes. These are exactly my propotions (well 10.5 for running shoes 10 on all others). Apparently her good friend once gave her bowling shoes for Christmas, size 7.5. When my grandmother asked what the hell was wrong with her as obviously these weren't going to fit her, her friend told her that she just wanted to see her have to return them for a bigger size...a bigger size by 3, not just a half a size or something.

I think it was very hard for my grandfather see his wife take the turn that she did with the disease. I don't know if I could imagine watching someone that I loved who was so active in sports and life in general get a disease which cuts off your ability to move. He told me that they had stopped at a restaurant and she couldn't walk up the stairs to the entrace and had to go through the kitchen entrance. He said that's when he realized that something was really wrong.

I grew up Ukranian Catholic and when I couldn't sleep or something, my mom would say, pray or talk to God or whatever. Well I never really was into the God thing, but I would try and talk to my grandmother. I always thought that she was watching me and just hanging out. I am sad that I only know her through the stories and not her personally. I think that we would have been good friends if she were still alive.

As far as grandparents go I am pretty lucky as my other 3 are still alive and are 3 people that are truly spectacular. They have lived lives and come from a time that I can't even fathom. But after watching the Jon Brais complete an Ironman with this horrific disease I cannot help but to think of Lucille Welty, a woman that I never got to meet, but miss all the time.

$1

Beers that is. We live about a half mile from Wrigley Field so finding cheap beer in our neighborhood is quite the find. The bar across the street from the ball park (Bernies) has $1 bottles of domestic beers and $3 cheeseburgers (w/fries) on Thursday nights. Of course this is only if the Cubs aren't in town(otherwise the beers are like 6 bucks), so now that it's the off season, for both the Cubs and the marathon, we tend to frequent this place when we get home on Thursdays. If anyone reading this lives in Chicago, come join us!

I had big BIG plans to get up early on Friday and go to the gym in the morning and then run 3 miles or so in the evening. Well that didn't happen as "getting up early" wasn't going to happen. We work at home on Friday's but we are working these computer shifts and so had to be in front of the computer from 10am-6pm.

We did run to the gym in the evening and then worked out and ran home. Our little routine at the gym is the following:

3 sets dips/pullups on the machine that assists you to do this
3 sets on the bench press
3 sets of biceps/triceps
3 sets of shoulder exercises
3 sets for upper back
3 sets for lower back
crunches

(I don't know the real name for any of these things...i like shoulder exercises....sounds like i'm in the 50's...come on kids time to do your exercises)

So I think the total amount of running yesterday was 1.5 miles. Actually this ended up being ok, because I would like to add the 5th day of running back in slowly. Tomorrow our plan is to go out for 7 miles. Today is an off day.

You be matter, I'll be anti-matter

...GO!

Just like it says below, Leah and I did our very best impression of a proton and an anti-proton racing around the ring except that, instead of eventually crashing together at energies not seen since the birth of our universe, we just occasionally brushed up against each other while tooling down the road. Other than that, though, our impression was dead on.

Anyway, that is neither here nor there. Basically, we ran at work yesterday and it was business as usual. Business as usual, that is, until the conclusion of our loop when, all of a sudden, Leah was gone! Well, that's the way it seemed to me anyway because she started sprinting towards the finish line and suddenly her form was just a blur.

This was just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Because, you see, I started sprinting too. I did; I was hauling ass. But, as I'm forcing my body closer and closer to its top speed, she's just casually gliding along unaware of me clawing at the air trying desparately to catch up.

Faster and faster I go. My body starts to shake like a Klingon Bird of Prey appraoching warp speed (yes I just said that. No, I'm not ashamed), body parts flying off, clouds of steam coming out of my ass and what about Leah? Well, she's jusy coasting along doing her nails (figuratively speaking, of course). And do you know what it reminded me of? It was like watching the women start the NY marathon. They looked like they were barely moving and I thought to myself, aren't they starting off awfully slow? Of course, they were, as they start off at aroung a 6 minute mile pace. They were running miles I can only dream of and it looked like they were hardly trying.

That's what it looked like from my vantage point of 10 feet behind Leah (wait, no, 20 feet...30 feet...geez). It looked completely effortless as she approached top speed. Just smooth as can be.

So, I'll tell you what. I'm just going to go ahead and let her win these little sprints at the end of our runs. She can go ahead and run "fast". Because, as we all know, the marathon isn't a sprint, it's a...well, it's a marathon. Which is really far.

It just must be nice to be able to acutally race the protons around the ring...and win.

Running the Ring

Yesterday Jason and I ran at work which I was a little worried about. While we were training for the marathon we would need to run at work sometimes and the lab is basically farm country with a big ass particle accelerator on it. So not too much to look at, especially when one is used to running through downtown streets.

But we made the decision to run around the ring instead of just around the grounds and it was (like all of our runs lately) a great run. The main building is really an amazing piece of architecture and it looked so cool at night with all the lights on. This picture was taken on the other side than we were running on (just found it online).

There is something to be said about running at work. There are times when I hate being a grad student. I hate the menial jobs that we get stuck with, I hate the teeny salary that we get....

But then there are times that the project that you have been working on for 1.5 years works or at least doesn't make situations worse for ALL the physics groups. When you realize that you work at the most prestigous physics lab in the world which is pretty spectacular realization. I still don't know what I want to be when I "grow up", but this all has to lead somewhere. As far as my time now, I will always look upon this part of my life fondly. I mean, moved back to Bloomington, back to Chicago, got married, ran a marathon, and eventually got a PhD in physics. That's a lot of doing in 5 years. Well we all know that I like being busy!

Running Into the Wind

Yesterday, we ran home again from the train station. I realized when I got to work and checked the temperature for that evening I might have not brought enough clothing.

The temp was 45 with a 25 mph NW wind.

I had brought running shorts, a tank top and a long sleeve t-shirt. hmm. Luckily I married a very smart man who brougth 2 long sleeve shirts. he was able to wear the sweatshirt he wore to work and one of these and so I was able to nab an extra long sleeve shirt.

The run went well again, actually much better for me than the first time we did this because I didn't have that annoying pack sitting around my waist (notice how I refrain from calling this thing a fanny pack). But jeez the wind was quite the event. One good thing I suppose about running in a loop is that at least for part of the run you can get a break from the wind, but if you run in a straight line and the wind is in your face, it's going to be there for the next hour.

But we live in Chicago, and expect the weather to not be ideal throughout the winter months. However, we were able to get through it last year, through all the snow storms and 10 degree days. I am hopeing that we will still be able to do this even though this winter our milage will be higher than last year. I just HATE running on a treadmill and once I get out there on the path, no matter what the weather I can usually survive it. I always say that the hardest part is getting out the door, once you are out there you might as well finish. :-)

Today we will run here at Fermi Lab...probably around the main ring.
(I love doing this because we send protons and anti-protons around this ring at about the speed of light....I like to think that I am racing them....plus lots of math to do in my head to try and figure out how many times the protons have gone around in just one of my steps.)

Jason's take on commuting/running

...or runnuting, as the kids are calling it these days.

It's fantastic. It's the only way to travel and it's about 10,000 times better than sitting on the Eisenhower. Commuting with bike was nice too, but this is so much better because I get home and my run is done. Just like magic.

There were a couple really cool things about it. First off, Clark street is an exceptionally cool street to run down, especially at night. Between the restaurants and the bars and the park, there are tons of different looks and neighborhoods. Time absolutely flew by. I mean, we were running pretty fast, but that's not really the point. It still took probably 50 minutes to get home, but it felt like 20.

Another really great thing was the feeling of getting somewhere. Whenever we run, as Leah mentions below, we either make some sort of loop or do a straight-out-straight-back run. This is great if we are running from home (and the only real option) but it is so much cooler to run from point A to point B (luckily enough, point A was the train station and point B was our house. Otherwise, who knows where we would have ended up). I really like the idea of using my legs for transportation and if not for the potential smell issue, I think this would always be a great idea. Just run everywhere!

And finally, yes, the backpack was fine. I never really noticed except when I was noticing that I didn't notice it. Got that? It is sort of like when we are running and I notice that my breathing has been fine which completely screws up my breathing and I have to spend the next five minutes trying to get it under control. Basically, the only time I noticed the bag was if I expanded my lungs more than usual and then I would feel the chest-strap a bit, but it didn't restrict my breathing any. I will probably go ahead and loosen the strap for the next run as I thought it was more necessary than it really is. This give me high hopes for using a hydration backpack in the winter as they are apparently not as annoying as they look.

So, in summary, commuting is much better without a car and I'm really grateful that Leah came up with the idea.

Running and Getting Somewhere

Tonight Jason and I tried our plan to use our commute as time to get some training runs in. So we had this problem of loving to read on the train, but not wanting to exactly carry our books home with us. We went to REI to see what kind of interesting things we could find. I had posted this question on one of the Runners Worlds Forums and there was a suggestion to try one of these water backpacks and to take the bladder out. Jason found one of these that is very small so he got that(on the left) and I found a small, you might call it a "fanny pack", but I won't because that would be too nerdy. We also thought that the water pack would be good for some longer runs we want to do during the winter months because the water fountains are turned off along the lake front, I don't know if I want to do a 10 -15 mile run and not have any water.

So we started downtown at Madison and Canal and ran east to Clark St. This was so beautiful and fun to run across the rivers. Then just took this all the way home (bascially). This ended up being a 6 mile run. You can see the full route here. This was such a fun run because we got somewhere. We have to get from point A to B somehow and to be able to use a run to do part of that really made the trip much better. It was also fun to run downtown and through some neighborhoods that we don't get to see because we tend to run from our door in some kind of loop and then back to our door.

As far as the packs go, I guess Jason's worked really well, while mine didn't. I couldn't quite get the thing to sit right on my waist. I put the pack part right above my fanny thinking that perhaps it would just sit on my lower back and not bother me too much. Unfortunatly it kept sliding around and I had to cinch the strap tight so that it wouldn't bounce. This became a problem at the end as we were moving a pretty good clip and it was affecting my breathing/stomach (too tight!!!). Jason said his little bag didn't bother him AT ALL so he will carry my book from now on and perhaps we can take turns with that.

We will try this again tomorrow and then slightly shorter runs on Thursday (4.25 mi) and Friday (3.8 mi). Whee!!!

Musings on Sunday's run

I think Leah did a better job than I ever could of describing our great 6 mile run on Sunday. I will just add that it was wonderful to get back out there and that Chicago's Lakefront path is as good as it gets and it is probably at its best in early November.

But while running, I couldn't help but think some thoughts (it's what I do). One of the things I thought of during our run was how differently everyone runs. Granted, there weren't exactly throngs of people to look at on this particular rainy Sunday morning, but everyone we passed was just a bit different.

There was the girl who ran as if she either was nursing an injury or had one leg shorter than the other. Whatever it was, it gave the appearance that she had more control over one side of her body than the other. Then there was another guy who ran very deliberately and heavily, as if each step was a big commitment and he wanted to be absolutely sure of it. And, of course, the 50 year old super run who blew past us with his perfect form. I hate that guy.

Just to be clear, I'm not judging. I have nowhere near perfect form. Leah has, in my opinion, nearly perfect form. She holds her arms at the perfect angle, takes nice, clean strides, and doesn't bounce very much (especially when we run faster). And when she sprints, it is a thing of beauty. She is a real runner and a natural runner. I just picked this sport up later in life, so I have a few flaws in my form that I doubt I will correct anytime soon.

The main thing that I would like to correct is my arm angle. Mainly this is an aesthetic thing, as I think the race photos look better when I don't hold my arms up high. I've heard it helps with the running, too, but that's really just a side benefit of looking good. Maybe a picture would help. I run like this most of the time:

But when I get tired, my form really can go to a bad place. My arms get much higher...which would be good in boxing, but less ideal in running. Unfortunately, I've been known to get tired in races and then those arms start climbing...and then invariably a picture is taken. For example:

I think I've gotten a lot better about this in the past half year or so. I didn't really notice this happening during the marathon. Like they say, everyone has a different running style and different things work for different people. I'm not really concerned about having the "perfect form" or anything along this lines as long as I can run far. I just hope it doesn't go to the bad place anymore.

Too Many Meetings

So our plan was to run 3 or so miles this morning before coming into work. That of course was before there was a new "task force" created here at work which apparently I need to be a part of even though it has NOTHING to do with my thesis topic which I am just NOW getting to work on. These meetings are going to be at 8:30 or 9am on Monday mornings and Monday evenings I play volleyball at work which in the end makes for about a 12 hour day. AUGH!!!!

I love the concept of the "task force" being created now when the problem the force is addressing is a problem that has been around for years. That's what you get working for an organization that is a part of the Department of Energy....lots of task forces....not a lot of things accomplished execpt more meetings and more discussing.

Talk amongst yourselves...i'll give you a topic....

I'll update the blog tomorrow when we get home from running home from the train (very exciting!) Then this week we will run Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri and Sunday.

4 Weeks Later

Today is 4 weeks after the Chicago marathon. Wow, it doesn't seem like it was that long ago. I think that running that race has made a huge impact on my life and has absolutly changed the way I want to live it. Jason and I have already planned on running 4 races next year instead of just two and we will be taking a much more intense attitude toward the training by incorporating speed/hill work and in general running more miles per week.

Today was also the NYC marathon and we went out for our 6 mile run and was thinking about all the excitement that must be happening 1000 miles east of us. Remember standing and just waiting for the race to start and looking at all the people around us. Crazy. We have been following a fellow debut marathoner in his quest to run a marathon and was running the NYC marathon today. I just checked the tracker and he finished in 4:43. Congrats Danny!

Our 6 mile run followed roughly this route. We ended at the Jewel though instead of our apartment because we needed a few things for our traditional big Sunday breakfast. We tried to run this route about a week and a half after the marathon and made it about 3 miles. Felt awesome today however and finished with my usual little sprint :-) I have been listening to music again via my ipod shuffle and realized how much I missed it while training for the marathon. Although I do think it's imporant to get out there and listen to nature and your feet hitting the pavement, I also think it's way fun to get Jon Bon Jovi's Shot Through the Heart jammin in your ears.

This week we will attempt our running home from the train station and was happy to get through 6 miles today since we will need to do that tuesday and wednesday. Here are some plots from the week tracking our progress, these can also been seen under the Running Progress link on the upper right.

Slow And Steady

Today we got up at 6am and were out running by about 6:40 or so. Felt "ok". not bad. not great. I think my legs didn't even wake up until about 2 miles into the run. We ran our favorite "less than 4" route. It was good though that we got up and got the run done because this evening we are going to our friends house and so wouldn't be able to get the run in during the evening and then tomorrow morning I wanted to go to the gym and play racquetball and lift some weights before Jason's shift starts at 10am. My cousin is coming to hang out with us tomorrow, so if we wanted to get in 4 running days this week it had to be in the morning. It totally helps me get up and out of bed if I realize that there will be no other time that I can get that run in. It's a great feeling too I think being able to accomplish something (even if it is a stupid 3.8 mile run) when you don't exactly want to because your are nice and comfy in bed :-)

So this weekend marks 4 weeks after the marathon and so next week will add some intensity into our runs. We will try and run 5 days a week instead of 4 and will try and up the distance. I am thinking something like this :

• M : am 3.8 miles
• T : pm 6 miles
• W : pm 6 miles
• Tuesday and Wednesday we will be trying this new idea to run home from the train station. We'll see how it works out
• R : OFF
• F : 3.8 miles
• S : OFF
• S : 6 or 7
  

This will put our weekly distance at about 25 miles, which isn't too shabby. This week should end up at about 17.8 miles, so it might be a bit much of an increase but we will just see how we feel and alter it accordingly if we feel the need.

Too Many SweetTarts

As Jason mentions below our run yesterday was quick and awesome. We ran this route which is 4.34 miles. However we have a big bowl of halloween candy left over, your various assortments of sweet tarts, tootsie rolls, twizzlers and laffy taffys. I was snacking on said candies when we got home from work before we went running and oh was I feeling it in my belly about 1.5 miles into the run. I was able to keep up the pace though even with the rumblings in my tummy, but for future note

Less sweet tarts = better run.

I like running fast

Or rather, I like running "fast." I mean, it's fast to me, but to your average Kenyan it's sleeping. Which is the perfect segue given that we ran last night way past my bedtime. By the time we got home the Daily Show was on. The Daily Show. That's on, like, at 10!

PM!

But yes, it's true, we woke up a bit late on Wednesday morning and so our morning run was relegated to the night. And we were smokin' fast last night! It just feels really good to do more than simply plod on, gathering miles like wild flowers (yes, I just wrote that. No, I'm not proud). And it seems to be easier on the joints. I think if you run faster you run smoother and there is less bouncing and joint-jarring. Of course, the pain in the lungs goes up quite a bit, but I think this will be reduced by the future speed-work that we plan on working into our training.

But, in general, it just totally rocks to be out of training and able to pick up the pace a bit.

(Now if I can just take another minute off of last night's pace, I'll be able to qualify for Boston. Boston's evil.)

Running Teyemas

I just found out that my three cousins, Scottie, Erik and Lisa are also going to plan on running the Indianapolis half marathon in May. This should make the race even more fun. I have never run a race where other people I knew (except for Jason) were running also.

Go Go Welty-Rieger-Teyema Team ( yes i am just that nerdy!)

Carting Books

I am trying to find an easy way that Jason and I could get our books home from the train station while running (as per my commuting idea talked about below). I found this little pack online and it might be just right since it sits on your lower back, but it is small. Would it hold two small paperbacks even?

It will be quite the change to carry anything because we have never carried fuel belts or anything like that. The other idea I had would be to find shirts that are similar (or exactly) like the ones bikers wear that have the big pocket in the lower back, used usually I am assuming to hold food and what not. I am wondering if the size of this pocket however is the perfecct size for a paperback.

Any other suggestions?

7 Continents?

I think it would be pretty cool to have run marathons on 7 different continents (for those counting, that would be all the continents). Sure, it would require a decent travel budget, but if you spread it out enough it would just be a great way to travel and see the world. This seems like a great idea, but one of those continents is Antarctica.

And that would be one brisk marathon.

Take a look as the Antarctica Marathon page. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they are the only marathon that advertises with an iceberg. To be honest, though, the running conditions don't sound all that bad. 15-30 degrees Fahrenheit is not all that cold, especially if you train in Chicago.

I'm guessing this is a small field, though, which I think would make it that much more difficult. However, it is in freakin' Antarctica, and I think it sounds like fun.

All penguins are welcome.

Call Me Crazy

This morning we ran 3.88 miles and felt pretty good. Got up at 6:15am (like I promised myself I would) and were running by about 6:35 or so. It was cool out but a really beautiful morning. I took my ipod shuffle which used to have really really really awesome songs on. So I recently reloaded it with different songs only to find that it was replaced with very very very slow songs. Gotta do something about that as at the end of the run I had to keep pushing past songs. But all in all the run went really well.

So why can you call me crazy? Here's my new idea.

Jason and I live in Chicago but work in Batavia which is about an hour drive away. So we have two drivers so it's not all that bad, but it can get repetative after awhile. Last summer while training for the marathon Jason and I would ride our bikes downtown and take a train out to batavia, and then drive from there to work. It was great during the summer because our car didn't have air conditioning and it was a nice change of pace and we read on the train and so on. On the other hand, we were exhausted because were biking about 12 miles a day (which i know is not a lot) but then also training for the marathon. So we would get home and then have to run and it just got to be too much.

So here's my new idea. This keeps our cost of travel per week about the same, but changes things up a bit and lets us get training runs in simply. So here is the schedule

• Monday : Run in the AM, drive to work and back (as usual)
• Tuesday : Drive to work in AM take Metra downtown after work BUT RUN HOME FROM HERE!
• Wednesday : Take the el downtown, Metra to work, Metra back downtown RUN HOME
• Thursday : Take el downtown, metra to work, drive home. Perhaps an running off day
• Friday : Work from home and run whenever.
  

So its about 5.5 miles downtown from our apartment. So we get home and get our training run done AT THE SAME TIME. I love to multitask. Plus if we wanted to go farther than this distance we could always switch up the run and run along the lake or whatever instead of city streets.

We would only do this schedule if we weren't in some training program for a race. Right now that is looking like the rest of this month, December, January and then maybe June. We would have to be hyper organized with clothing and how do we get our books that we read on the train home in the afternoons while running (small backpack???) But we will start to try it out next week and see how it goes and we'll update the system on the blog.