Do Not Rent From HAYES PROPERTIES - Part 2

Didn't catch part one? Read it here.

Three days before it's time for the lease to transfer hands, Jason a.k.a. Wonder Husband, called the Big Bad Rental Agency (Leah pretty much refused to talk to them after the makeup case incident) to find out how to get our keys back to them. Simple question equaled not such a simple answer.

They wanted Jason to get in contact with the new tenant to find a time in which the keys could be exchanged. We don't feel that this is our responsibility and so Jason tells the woman (who's name is Robin so we'll call her Bird Bitch) that we would rather just drop the keys off to them and they can deal with it since....well since they are the fucking rental agency.

Bird Bitch said, "It's too hard for us to do that, we have like 60 apartments." (so my previous value 24*$1000 can be bumped to over $60,000 a month). B.B. continued to say, "The new tenant would like to move in Saturday night so if you could get him the keys before then that would be great."

Jason said he would call back when we decided what we would do. The happy couple is heavy set on the fact that we don't own the building we shouldn't have to do their key exchanges for them. We noted that when we moved into our new apartment the building manager met us here and gave us keys, showed us the important parts of the building...you know....how it should be done. However, we realize that we are going to be at Wrigleyville Disaster on Saturday morning finishing moving our stuff and cleaning the place so we decide that if the new tenant would like to meet us there at 10am that would work for us.

Leah calls back and leaves a message saying that is what we will do.

About 2 minutes later our phone rings and what do you know it's Bird Bitch. She first asks for Jason and I ask who's calling and when I realize that it's the BBRA I say she can just talk to me....the following conversation ensued :

BB : It's not fair for you to just pick a time like that. What if he's working at 10 am?
Leah : It's not my problem if he's not available, that's when I'll be at the apartment.
BB : You don't understand. How am I suppose to get the keys to him. I left a message but what if he doesn't call me back?
Leah : I thought you wanted a time in which we could exchange the keys.
BB : Well you can't just pick a time!
Leah : Would you like me to be there all day Saturday and Sunday to meet up with him?
BB : You don't understand how inconvient this is for us.
Leah : I don't live there anymore. I am trying to make this easier for everyone. You told my husband that this guy wanted to move in on Saturday night anyways.
BB : I NEVER SAID ANYTHING LIKE THAT.
Leah : Actually you did to my husband.
BB : NO I DIDN'T
Leah : How is this my problem. I am not the rental agency. I am telling you when I am going to be at the apartment finishing our move. HOW IS THIS NOT WORKING FOR YOU?
BB : WILL YOU PLEASE CALM DOWN YOU ARE GETTING ALL HYSTERICAL AND MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY CALMING DOWN YOU SOUND A LITTLE OUT OF CONTROL. MAYBE IT'S FROM THE MOVE OR SOMETHING.
Leah : YOU'RE RIGHT I AM GETTING FRUSTRATED BECAUSE YOU WON'T LET ME FINISH A SENTANCE AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE YOU WANT FROM US. I AM TELLING YOU WHEN WE ARE GOING TO BE AT THE APARTMENT, WHEN WE ARE MOVING OUT AND IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU WANT US JUST TO HANG OUT AND WHEN HE GETS THERE WE CAN GIVE HIM THE KEYS.
BB : You are being ridiculous. If the tenant hasn't called you yet to set up a time to exchange keys.....
Leah : Wait a minute, how is it ok for you to give our number out to random people?
BB : We aren't giving it to random people.
Leah : Well I don't know the new tenant, so yes in my book that would be a random person.
BB : Why don't you call back when you are being more rational and have calmed down.

CLICK.

The bitch hung up on me?!?!?!?!

Which let me say, hanging up on me (a phone in our past died becausue of this type of situation) calling me names and interrupting me does NOT GO OVER WELL.

Jason immediatly called back and asked to speak to Robin. Here is their conversation:

Jason : Hi, this is Jason you just spoke to my wife and apparently hung up on her?
Robin : Well, she was being hysterical and yelling. I could hear her the first time we talked and I could hear here yelling hysterically in the background (which Leah would like to add that she wasn't she was just talking to Jason to try and understand what they were talking about)
Jason : I don't think it's your place to tell me how my wife acts.
Robin : Couldn't you hear her talking to me. What's wrong with her?
Jason : Yes I heard her, she wasn't hysterical.
Robin : Maybe I don't know how she talks or what hysterical is.
Jason : It's not our place....
Robin : blah blah blah.
Jason : Can I finis.....
Robin : blah blah blah
Jason : Robin?
Robin : blah blah blah
Jason : Robin? Can I say....
Robin : blah blah blah
Jason : Robin, you never let anyone finish a sentance.
Robin : Well neither does your wife. (What are we 9 years old Leah asks...this woman is all about the Your wife is mean.....)
Jason : I have worked in customer service, it's your job to let me finish my sentance and not INTERRUPT ME!!! Now, what is wrong with Saturday?
Robin : Well what if he was out of town all week and got back next week on Thurday?
Jason : Um? I am guessing you would be giving him the keys at that point right?
Robin goes on and on and on and on about how hard it is for them to get the keys out and Jason could not get a sentance out to her.
Robin : Forget it, I'll just make copies and get him the keys on Friday.
Jason : BUT WHAT IS WRONG WITH GIVING HIM THE KEYS ON SATURDAY MORNING? All we know at this point is that he hasn't call anyone back to let them know if that will work for them.
Leah says to Jason : Why don't you get his number and we can try and call him
Robin : She there she is again yelling and being all hysterical in the background
Jason : Why don't you give us his number and we'll see if we can get the keys to him sometime.
Robin : No I'm not going to give you his number (so it's ok for random people to have our number.....). We'll see if he calls us back..

CLICK.

Bitch hangs up again.

I have NEVER in my life been treated that way. EVER. I do not think that someone should be complaining to my husband about my "hysterical" behavior. When we had all the problems with Comcast last week, I called them and I admit that I got a bit agitated because I was missing days of work......do you know what they did on the other end of the phone? Nothing. They just were quiet until I finished my tirade and then they said, "Maam, I am really sorry for your inconvenience.." Did I stop yelling? Eventually. And eventually they gave us a bunch of credits to our account. This interrupting people and calling them names and yelling at them on the phone because they aren't making your life (you the owner) easier is ridiculous. I don't own the building. I don't rent the apartments. So. Fucking. Ridiculous.

The happy couple will have lots to talk about on thier run tonight. They are guessing that the speed workout will go relatively well considering the fire that has been lit under their asses.

Thus our story time ends and the moral? STAY AWAY FROM HAYES PROPERTIES. They have awful awful customer service. (Hope no one out there just signed a lease with them)

Do Not Rent From HAYES PROPERTIES

A story of a bad rental agency.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful happy running couple by the names of Jason and Leah. After their wedding in 2004 they moved into their dream house (ok apartment) in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Wrigleyville. They were close to their beloved Cubbies, tons of bars and restaurants, the city's 18 mile running path and tons of other city spectacularness. It was perfect. sigh.

Within the first six months of their glorious wedding, they were realizing that it wasn't paradise in which they were living. Fast forward to 1 am at our New Years Eve soiree with our best man barefoot and soaking wet while he plunged...not that kind of story....our toilet. The happy couple thought that the toilet had been fixed in the previous 4 or 5 times the rental company had tried to fix it. Apparently not so, as us and our guests had to go across the hall to use the neighbor's facilities. Jason and Leah continued to have problems with the toilet.....for 18 months. Sometimes it would be fine. Other times they were forced to go stay the weekend with Leah's parents because there was no emergency number.....and zero water going down the toilet does not equal "livable". Finally the sewer men found the culprit : a makeup case was stuck down there. Leah was sure that it was not her makeup case since she had not bought that type of makeup for roughly 2 years. The Big Bad Rental Agency called Leah and told her she owed them $150.

Her eye widen as she says, "Um....well.....I don't own.....it's been broken since we moved in."

B.B.R.A. said, "Well if there was a problem, you should have called when it happened."

Leah said, "Well, I did. Don't you guys have a record of that kind of stuff? And for that matter it's not even my makeup case so why should I pay for it"

B.B.R.A. said, "Well, you just don't understand how expensive this stuff is for us."

Leah thinks, "Wait I pay about a grand a month in rent........so do the other 24 tenants of just this building....and these are the reasons that I RENT!!!" She proceeds to write a letter to the company explaining the situation and that is all that was ever heard about it.

Fast forward to July of 2006. The couple get a letter in the mail stating that their rent will be going up $25 and that we had to tell them within 2 weeks otherwise it would go up an additional $5. Jason and Leah were ready for this since they had dealt with this same issue the previous year, but had argued with B.B.R.A. to only increase the rent $10 which they had thought was fair. What is brilliant with the B.B.R.A plan is that there are no aparments available for October 1st on July 15th. So if the happy runners don't find anything they would be forced to pay the $30 instead of the meger value of $25.

After all the problems with the company, the happy couple decided to move to the Village of the Ukrainians. They found a nice 2 bedrooom apartment for $100 less than the Wrigleyville Disaster and found a nice rental agency to go along with it. They have a buildling manager that can be reached at any time if there is an emergency. And although the move in was a little shakey with some feline urinary issues, the company straightened everything out and were very nice and quick about it.

Fast forward to when it's time for the new tenant to take over the Wrigleyville Disaster, as that is when our story really gains momentum.

Stay tuned as Leah fixes the gasket she blew talking to B.B.R.A. (which is Hayes Properites if it wasn't clear from the title)

Recovery for Reals

Yesterday was a 5 mile run with 6x100m strides. We started the run from our old apartment so we would be forced to finish there so we would be forced to fill more boxes and move them. I hate this moving in town shit. When you move out of town you better have everything done on moving day. At least all of this will be over by Saturday.

The run was fine. I am having some pain in my lower left leg....don't know what that's all about. Today we have 10 miles with 4x1200m@5K pace (that's right...it's another V02 Max). We'll run down to the track on Chicago Ave sprint it out and run back.

Friday it's 10 miles, then 4 on Saturday and the plan calls for 20 on Sunday but I think we'll try for 22 and see how that goes. Hopefully my lower leg agrees with all the miles....

Monday we start the taper....who's excited? ooooh me memememe!!!!!

My Little Helper

Working from home today and only somewhat torturing kitty :

5 Paced, Phase 2, 17 LSD & I'm 27

This weeked was BUSY! On Friday night we went to our old apartment and apparently, "Jason, all we have to do is pack up a few things in the kitchen and we'll be done." was slightly exagerrated. We started opening all the cabinets and realizing how much storage space we have in that apartment compared to our new place. We packed up a box or two and then headed down the street to get some burgers and beers and then grabbed a few of the boxes and headed back to our new apartment.

I had dreams of getting up at 5:30am Saturday morning and crusing through a 9 mile pace run before going to get out Budget truck and continuing with the move for the day. Right. No. That didn't happen. I did get up at 7am however and we cruised through a 5 mile pace run. It went well, we pace 8:30 miles for the whole thing which is pretty good.

We spent the rest of the day moving our furniture to our new place. Thanks to my cousin Lisa and her fiance Evin for helping us. Our old apartment was on the third floor, so we had a nice bit of cross training. We made the first trip back to the new place with our funiture and Jason gets to tell me, "I told you so" because everything fit! I was convinced that it wouldn't but as he reminded me, we live in a 3D world :-) On the way back to the old place for another trip we realized we were starving and saw a Burger King and so for the first time in a long time we enjoyed big Whoppers with Cheese and some fries. So. Delicious. When we got back to the old place I just started throwing stuff into boxes. None of it goes together but it's all somewhere. I had one box that had some pictures in it, a fancy pillow, some CD's some books and some kitchen utensils.

Now our apartment is filled with furniture (yeah) and lots and lots of boxes (booo). We will try and get through the boxes this afternoon as this isn't quite what you would call work conducive. The best part (aside from having a couch to sit on) is that we have our bed now. No more air mattress, and wow that proved to be nice and I slept really hard on Saturday night and woke up at 5:30am Sunday morning sans alarm clock.

On Sunday morning we went out for a 17 miler. My garmin's batteries were dead, but I knew about where we should turn around. This ended up being really nice as sometimes, it's really nice to just go out and run and let the world around you pass by and not be only in tune with your watch. It was a beautiful morning along the lake front and I don't remember the last time we were up so early. It's amazing how quiet downtown bustling Chicago can be at certain times of the day. Very. Cool.

We ended up doing this run in about 2 hours and 35 minutes which is great. 2 hours and 33 minutes would have been 9 minute miles. So a good day.

Sunday was also my birthday. I'm the big 27. I don't know why I feel so old. I know 27 is not old, but I think when I was in my lower twenties, I was like 27? That's old. Sigh. Oh well, my next scary age is 44 so I got some years in between. Hopefully by my birthday next year you'll all be able to call me Dr. Leah.....that's if my advisor doesn't give me the boot first (hence I should get to work)

Jason gave me Bears tickets for my birthday!!!!! The Sunday after the marathon which should be loads of fun. This Sunday however we went out to a bar called Cans and met up with Mike and Barb, our friends Jake and Laura and Lisa stopped by for awhile as well. We had a great time and it was a perfect way to celebrate. It was hilarious because the Bears were down with 2 minutes to go and I was like, "That's just perfect, all I really wanted for my birthday was a Bears win". The next two plays......TOUCHDOWN. It's when you can win not easily that I think shows that potential of a team. So Go Bears.

Alright, it's off to work for me (now that I am working from home this just requires me opening another window...I love working at home!). Enjoy your Monday's!

It Only Took 8 Hours

And another missed day of work. Whatever, Comcast comped us and addition 25 dollars on top of the 3-4 days we had already gotten. Hopefully we won't have as many problems now.

BUT because we had to stay home all day yesterday, we had to come into work today to try and catch our advisor. This means that we won't be able to get to the old apartment early this afternoon to pack. Which means we'll be there late...which means we'll probably be skipping the 4 miles tonight. I want to have a quality 5-9 mile run tomorrow morning though so I think this will be fine.

I will post pictures of the new place soon, I have just been wanting to wait so that I have furniture in there so it doesn't look so barren. Everyone cross your fingers for our furniture fitting into the apartment (I wouldn't be me if I didn't have something to worry about)

Comcast, The Last 4 Miles and Furniture

oooooh I am livid. We had an outage all day yesterday and we just got all of our services hooked up on Monday. Not looking good for Comcast so far. I love when you call these places and they say, "Well we just know there is an outage, but we don't know what it is or when it will be turned back on" I let loose on the third lady that I talked to and actually I have to hand it to them they did give me a three day credit and told me the outage would be over at 10pm. When everything was still broken at midnight we called back. "Oh yes the outage is still happening and we don't know when it will be fixed....". When we woke up this morning and everything is still not working we call again, "Oh there is no outage now so there must be another problem so we'll send out a tech guy. But just so you know if it's not a problem with the cable we are going to charge you" They are going to see a nasty Leah runner who works from home if they charge me for anything! I guess the woman gave us another credit this morning. Grumble. Grumble. Grumble. If I miss the Grey's Anatomy premier this evening because I can't DVR it I am going to go balistic.

Alright then.

Right the 11 miles yesterday went well. We did it much slower this time coming in at about 9:30 min/mile pace.

While we were running I rememberd something that helped me get through the end of the marathon last year and I thought I would share. Last summer at the end of any run we did when there was 4 miles left I would stop talking to Jason and focus in on the distace that was left. 4 miles, 3 miles, 2 miles, 1 mile, finish. This was beyond beneficial on marathon day because when I got to 22 miles I had a surge of energy because I knew that distance. I knew exactly how much farther I had to go and I knew that I could get through 4 miles because no matter how bad I had felt during my training runs, I powered through the last 4 miles. I will start to do this again, concentrating on that exact distance. We did that last night and our last four miles were 9:05, 8:50, 8:45 and 8:41. Just a tip that helped me last year.

The rest of the week is 4 miles on Friday, 8-15K race (we aren't racing but we will run as if we were) and then 17 on Sunday. The only hitch in this plan is that we are moving all of our heavy furniture on Saturday so I am hoping that Sunday's run will go alright. We should have some help though and we are doing it in one big move instead of many many trips. I am convinced that our furniture is not going to fit into our new apartment although Jason promises me it will.....(but I have measured......I don't think so) Doors will come off, windows will come out. Dammit I am going to have a couch to sit on. If anyone is not busy on Saturday and wants to lift furniture (I know I know there isn't much else one would want to do) let me know....there will be free beer for helpers :-)

Just the Norm V02 Max

Tonight was another V02 Max workout. After last weeks 5x1000 repeats we were ready to kick some ass on 5x600 repeats.

We did the 4 miles to the track and since there aren't any markers on the track I just change the units on Garmin to meters and then set the quick workout for intervals with .6 km followed by 90 seconds of recovery. I am almost 100% sure that the track is a 400m track (I ran the 400 in high school for two years...actually I ran the open 400, the medly relay 400 and the mile relay 400 at each meet.....I know the distance well :-) ...I love the 400m race, I think it's by far the most exciting race in track and field....ok...back to todays non-400m workout shall we......alright) TODAY was 600 meters which should be 1.5 laps. I think that two of the repeats were too long since we went what seemed to be an extra 100m so those times were slow, but as far as the feeling of the repeats they all felt about the same. So a good workout. I am having some kind of pain in my lower left leg, but it goes away after running for a mile or two...so I'm going to say I just need to stretch more....so I should actually do that!

There was another running couple at the track and holy ass were they fast and beautiful runners. I think they were doing 800m repeats and just very very speedy. So to them, if you are reading this....and I'm sure you not.....but nice job.

This evening Jason and I went to the container store because I got tired of trying to find a butcher block/cabinet type thing for out kitchen on Craigslist. It's all still kind of expensive and I couldn't find anything that wasn't kinda crappy. So we got this cool elfa shelf thing with drawers, a cutting board on top and wheels so we can move it around the kitchen, I think it should work out well.

To our delight we ran into Barb and Mike who were buying a hamper solution thing. It was good to see them and this is the second time we have run into them outside of running, we must have some kind of couples karma :-)

Anyways, tomorow is an 11 mile medium long run which we are going to try and slow down a bit since these midweek runs have all been too fast and I think this was the problem last week on Sunday.

Happy Running Everyone!

Bad Distance Runners BAD!!!

Well disappointment.

Today was a 17 with 14 at marathon pace. After all the good runs we had this week we were looking forward to it. Unfortunaly I don't think Jason and I are recovering enough and I think we are doing our midweek runs too fast. What does that mean? Dead, tired and not moving legs. We stopped several times in the first three miles for water and to stretch and after 4 miles (that's total not an additional :-( ) we stopped and stared at each other with the What The Fuck look in our eyes.

Granted we know this is not good, however, we have 5 weeks to get our shit together. We have a few long runs to get in still and 5 weeks to work on sleeping and eating better. One slice of frozen pizza after the 12 miles just isn't going to cut it. I also realize that we have missed a few of our longer runs in the training schedule, so I guess we can say we are running a modified Pfitz program. Since this is only our second marathon and we have had a summer from hell I am not that worried about it. I think we have already done more total miles than the plan we followed last summer and we ran 4:20 last year. We are hoping with the additional runs (even though we have missed some) we will be able to get under 4 hours this year. That's the plan anyways.

I am very dissapointed but I am hoping that next week things will go better. We will probably get up early tomorrow and try to run 10 at a brisk pace to make up for today. Then we'll do our run on tuesday in the evening to still give us plenty of recovery time.

Dammit Dammit Dammit.

City Running, for reals

On Friday, Leah and I went for a 12 mile run throughout the city. It was quite the trek, I must say. We started on Iowa and Western (Iowa's 900 North), went East a mile to Ashland, zig-zagged around like crazy (Leah can fill in the details, but we hit Cortland, Southport, Lincoln, and a few others) all the way North to Montrose (4400 North). Given that there are 8 block to a mile, this was still almost not enough and we had to do a bit more zigging on the way home.

It's crazy, I know.

City running is so different than running on the lakefront path. For one thing, the blocks are relatively short, so a milestone is never far off. As a result, it seems like you are travelling a long ways, but the watch tells a different story. I find it takes a lot more mental discipline to run far in the city than along the lakefront. Between the difficulty in estimating distance and the lack of a well-worn route (so far, we just moved out here), the miles don't just slip way like on the lakefront path. That being said, the marathon will be run in the city, so I do believe this to be very good training for the marathon.

Finally, the real difficulty with running on the city sidewalks is the concrete. The entire 12 miles was on concrete and that was some serious pounding. I felt it all the way up into my hips and my feet got really sore. While the run was still good, I definitely felt the impact of each step more than I prefer. But, hey, high impact's good for ya. We don't want no sissy runners around here.

I'm not ragging on running in the city versus the lakefront path, mind you. I'm just noting that it's a bit harder. That being said, I really like winding my way through all the different neighborhoods and exploring new areas of the city. It's the only way to get around. Still, I'm pretty happy that the 17 milers later today will take place primarily on the lakefront path because my calves, shins and knees could really use a break.

They be achy.

Spring Break Marathon

Hey People

Jason and I are thinking about running a spring marathon. We are thinking about this one :

www.sarasotamarathon.com

It's on March 4th and so perfect timing to start training after a short break after Chicago. It's much smaller, I think there were like 1700 runners last year in the inagural run.

Anyone else interested? We could start a winter training group. People might have different paces but we could try and do the same workouts each day and then after the long runs go and get breakfast or whatever. If you are interested and not in Chicago we could of course still compare training notes. I was thinking this race could be a bit more fun and just more experience in running the distance. Road trip?

PLUS this marathon is about 30 minutes away from my mom which means that everyone could meet her :-).

Let me know if you are interested.

More Working At Home

Jason and I have been throwing around the idea of working almost exclusively from home. I am not hooked up with any kind of postdoc at Fermilab so there is no one to talk to on a daily basis. And with the ease of iChat video on the Macs I can actually video conference with my advisor easier if I am at home. Plus the iMac that we have is much faster than my desktop at work so that's not an issue.

That being said....we all know that working at home turns into "working at home" frequently. We have to make sure that we get good quality work done at home to make it possible. We are thinking about giving it a two week trial period and seeing how it goes. We'll still have to go in once a week probably to meet with our advisor when he's in town, but that's really it.

So that's the idea, I am really hoping that we can make it work. On Monday, Comcast comes and puts in our new shiney services (we went for the triple play and we are getting DVR which I am super excited about) so we'll be able to start the work at home plan next week. Here's to hoping.

12 miles later today which will be more neighborhood running, hopefully I can dodge the lights a little bit better today.

Before I head off to bed

Alright, I'm wrapping up the last week of these stupid midnight-8am shifts. I did manage to sleep a couple hours before coming to work, but I'm still pretty tired so hopefully this is at least half-way coherent.

Yesterday Leah and I stayed home from work since I knew that I would be coming in for these shifts and I didn't really want to be at work for 24 hours (I love work as much as the next physicist, but...). She went to our other apartment to take advantage of our super-fast computer and I went to use the wireless at a cafe. Sadly, our favorite coffee shop, Cafe Ballou, is closed on Wednesday so I had to head over to this other place, Cafe Zori. This place couldn't possibly be more Ukraniane.

I just ordered coffee to start off and the lady gave me a nice big cup, simultaneously pushing the cream and sugar in my direction. I thanked her and started grabbing for my coffee when she frowned and asked if I didn't want cream and sugar. I assured her, no, I take it black. She looked very concerned and asked if I was sure. When I assured her I was, she offered to make my coffee stronger with an extra shot of expresso. Other than the extra expresso shot, I'm fairly sure I've had the exact same conversation at Leah's Ukranian Grandmother's house. Oh those Ukranians.

(hmm, that story sounded more interesting in my head. sorry about that)

Anyway, Leah and I worked separately before combining our efforts at the Bucktown library to tackle this coding problem that was driving her crazy. Honestly, thinking about it started to make my head hurt. Eventually, though, Leah triumphed over her code and the error was discovered. Basically, the problem was that pointers are evil, and I'll leave it at that.

Code bugs vanquished and the afternoon growing late, it was time to run. We have 9 miles with 5x1000 meters at our 5 k pace. This was, to say the least, terrifying. I was honestly concerned about getting through this run.

We did the usual, running down Augusta/Chicago to the track over by Lakeshore Drive and then walked about a lap to get ready. Then we were off! The first one was kind of hard, but I think that's because we were a little fast at 4:17. Our goal was around 4:30 for each kilometer, so we agreed to slow it down for the next one (and my lungs were thankful). In the end, the splits were as follows (between each, we walked for 45 seconds and then jogged for 1:15 minutes):

1 k: 4:17
2 k: 4:30
3 k: 4:26
4 k: 4:29
5 k: 4.37

Neither of us could understand how the last one could possibly have been that much slower than the rest, but maybe we were just tired. All in all though, we were both really proud to hit the pace so well and feel that we did them about perfectly. In the end, the first and third ones were hard, but the other laps weren't so bad.

We then jogged 2.5 k back to make an even 15k, which is right around 9.3 miles. A great run, I have to say. We then stopped at a really expensive sandwich place to get a drink, hopped on the 66 bus, and were home in time to eat and fall asleep watching the Cubs play really bad baseball. And after that? Well, I'm here. Boo.

Okay, my relief should be here soon and then I'm gonna grab me some air mattress.

ZigZaggy 8 Miles

Yesterday evening Jason and I went for an 8 mile run through the streets instead of heading down to the lake front path. This is one of the best things about Garmin for city kids, because when you miss a light you can just turn down a different street and you don't have to worry about screwing up a preplanned route. We made it almost all the way back up to our old apartment but headed back west a big south of Belmont. We got a little turned around near Diversy and Damen which is a neighborhood that you don't really want to get turned around it. Hence that miles was done in 8:18.

We finished pacing 9:02 miles (I think) which is good. I feel like our runs however are creeping towards all about the same speed. I think we could have been around 8:50 last night had it not been for lights (even though you can dodge them...you can only run west for so long).

At the end of the run we stopped in a sandwich place on Western for a nice big Pepsi and found the guy working there to be really really nice. He looked at us and said, "Oh it must be raining out." and we said, "Actually, no it's not....we are just that sweaty". We walked back home ate some frozen pizza for dinner (I thought I couldn't get tired of frozen pizza....turns out...I can as I had 1.5 pieces).

Tonight is a V02 Max workout : 9 miles with 5x1000m at 5K pace. We'll head down to the track on Chicago again later this afternoon. If anyone else in the city is doing a speed workout there maybe we'll see you :-)

A Surprise Weekend

What an awesome weekend!!!

On Saturday morning the floor guys came to fix our floors and so Jason and I were in and out all day. We went to the laundry mat, to the coffee house, to Dodo for a late breakfast, to Borders to our Old apartment to pick up some stuff. Anything to stay out of the house while they were sanding and scraping and painting. That evening we were going to a surprise birthday party for old friends of the family. So all of a sudden it was 3:30 and we had to leave for the party (we didn't want to miss the surprise part and hand to be there between 4-5). We didnt' get a run in that day because I could get into my apartment to change into running clothes and they took all day, so we decided to skip the 8-15K tune up race because well...life got in the way.

So we head out to Brookfield for the party and I call my dad and tell him that our floors look awesome and and I am so happy with the job they did and blah blah blah. I tell him Jason and I were close to the party so I was going to let him go. We got to the house and Kay and Gary say that their son Sam for who the party was for was in the basement playing the drums and that Jason and I and Evin (my cousin's fiance) should go down and surprise him. I am a little thrown at this point because I thought it was going to be a big surprise party, but ok, I guess it's just going to be the three of us. So I head downstairs and who is behind the drum set?

MY DAD!!!!!!!

He came into town to surprise me for my birthday! He did this last year too and I totally did not see it coming. He came two weeks early so that helped keep the suprise, but oh it was just so much fun!!!!

That night we watched the end of the Notre Dame game (they could go all the way this year!!!) and hung out.

Jason and I went back home and got up early on Sunday to get our 17 miles in. I have to say we felt pretty damn good. Even though it was raining sideways for about 16.5 miles of the run we had a really nice time out there. I talked to more people along the path which made the time go by a bit faster. We paced 9:17 miles which I can only be happy about. When we got home I called my dad and he came to the city and we spent the rest of the day hanging out in our new neighborhood and watching the Bears (sorry Bob) kick some Packer Ass. Hey Bears fans....how good did they look!!!! We have been waiting for Rex to play like that for years....let's hope he stays healthy.

I took yesterday off from work to hang out with my dad some more. He came by the apartment around 8:30 and we promptly put him to work fixing stuff around our apartment. He put dimmer switches in our dinning room, and just some other little odd jobs that we needed help with.

It was so awesome to see him and already can't wait to see him in 6 weeks for the marathon. So happy birthday to me (although it's a bit early) and thanks Dad for coming to visit. You and Jason will have to get more clever as the years go on though if you keep doing this :-)

Today is an 8 mile GA run and then...well I haven't looked at the rest of the week yet, so I don't know.

We'll Have NEW Floors!!!

On SATURDAY morning!!!!

The contractor for the building came to look at our floors today and I'm not insane as apparently when he and Jason pulled back the plastic we had covering the spots the smell was way overpowering! The guy was like, "That's gross" and called (of course) his cousin to come out and take a look at what actually would have to be done.

After dude #2 came out they decided to rip out the old floor boards and lay down some new ones in large areas surrounding the bad floor boards in the two rooms AND they are going to sand and reseal both rooms as long as they are in there.

I am so excited and now just so much more excited about the apartment. I can't wait to move all my furniture and organize the rooms and.....well and it's just going to be so much fun!

The best part is that they are going to be there on Saturday morning so we won't be living in Stinkyville for much longer. So for the record, we like our rental agency as they got this problem taken care of in one weeks time.

11 Weekday Miles

Yesterday Jason and I did an 11 mile medium long run. I guess these paces should be around where you long run paces are. Our first 5 miles or so were probably a little too fast (9 and under) but as we were running down Chicago Ave we made every single light. For those of you city kids you know how infrequent that is. We got to the lakefront and since all of our distances are screwed up from as we knew them before we decided to shake things up a bit. Now wait for it....we get kind of crazy here.

Instead of staying on the lake front path after the aquarium, we took a left and ran out onto the point by the planitarium. This was probably at about 7:30 pm and the view of the Chicago skyline was breath taking. New Yorkers....you don't have much on that view. Sorry. We turned around on the other side of the planitarium, stretched for about a minute and stared at the full moon with several sailboats beneath them. I would love to have a really nice digital camera where I could take long exposure pictures that would have the moon or even that night time skyline in them.

We finished the run averaging 9:14 min/miles which is perfect. We stopped at a Walgreens for some gatorade and then jumped on the Chicago bus back to western. I had worn a cotton t-shirt last night and it was soaked with sweat, so I was totally that nasty sweaty person on the bus. Oh well, I say if you don't like it.....don't take the bus.

We have a contractor coming to look at our floors today. I had to go to work today so Jason is in charge of making sure it gets taken care of. You can all imagine how much I like not being in charge, but Jason is a lot nicer than me so Mr. Contractor won't get yelled at if he thinks the floors don't need to be done....which he cannot possibly think as far as I am concerned. I am hoping that Jason can convince the guy that since he is doing a patch of the kitchen floor to do all of it because they aren't in the best shape...we'll see.

Happy Thursday everyone!

Speedy in Chicago

Last night was a speed session. 8 miles with 5x600m at a 5K pace with 90s of jogging inbetween these.

When Jason and I went running on Sunday we found a track that is on Chicago Ave and basically Lake Shore Drive. For you Chicago people it's right next door to the Museum of Contemporary Art. I was talking to my dad and I think that it used to be a part of Northwestern. It has proved to be a really nice find.

Anyways, we decided to run there from our new apartment which we have found to work out really well. We have found the best way to get over the expressway and to the lakefront is to take Augusta over it and then hang a right at Elston and take this to Chicago Ave and then Chicago Ave to the lakefront. Chicago Ave does get really crowded and lots of stopping and starting with the lights...but as dear old dad says, "that's just a problem looking for a solution". It's a little over 4 miles to the lakefront path which is a nice warm up to get ready to run.

Yesterday however we stopped before the lakefront path at the track to start our speedwork. We ended up running 4 miles before starting the speed repeats. Our goal is to do these repeats between a 6:50 min/mile pace to 7:10 min/mile. We totally started off way way too fast and we were both sucking wind severly after the first one. We didn't really know what the problem was, but we scrapped our bodies off the track and kept going. Later when looking at the repeat times I realized why we were so tired:

1. 5:44 min/mile : 2:10.69
2. 7:12 min/mile : 2:43.87
3. 6:53 min/mile : 2:36.80
4. 7:04 min/mile : 2:41.00
5. 7:00 min/mile : 2:39.47

I think that if we had slowed the first one down we would have been able to be a bit faster on the other four. The speed workout ended up being 2.5 miles total. We ran 1.5 miles west on Chicago and jumped on the bus and rode the remaining 3 miles or so to Western and then walked the few blocks home.

While we were running these repeats there was TONS happening over by the park. There was a 16" softball game happening as well as live music coming from the MCA next door. It was a really really wonderful evening in the city and just more fuel for my "I don't want to leave Chicago" fire.

I am really enjoying doing more running in the city. When we lived in Wrigleyville we always did the same route.....waveland to the lakefront....south for x number of miles and then back north for x number of miles and then home. Not too exciting and I'm sure we'll get into similar ruts in our new place, but as of now there is tons to see and fun making new loops.

Anyone interested in going to the Ukrainian Village Festival on Sunday afternoon? This is taking place 3 blocks from our apartment and is 1-10pm on Sunday afternoon....perfect for after say a early morning long run. Beer Garden and Ukrainian food and dancers....really anything better? Let me know at jasonleahrun@gmail.com.

School Project Help

Hello to people out in blogland. My advisor's son is taking a statistics course and needs to get lots of people to answer some random questions. He's having some problems getting enough responses SO...

Please go here :

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=247262538621

and answer 10 random questions. The project is due tomorrow (Sept 5th) so if you don't read this until tomorrow....don't worry about it.

Thanks everyone!

Not Far Enough

Well the weekend of moving has come to an end.

We are slowly making headway in moving the important stuff from our old apartment to our new apartment and have a solution for the cat urine stains. Jason's dad (thanks Walt!) had a good solution to try and contain the smells at least until we could talk to the apartment folks on Tuesday. We got some plastic painters floor covering and put a big rectangle over where the stains are and then sealed the edges with duct tape. I think it has helped a lot already and so hopefully the apartment will air out in the next few days and then we can deal with the stains on Tuesday (hopefully!)

What's frustrating is that they aren't my cat's stains as she always goes in her box (and let's all give Dagny a big hand as even though there are cat smells all over the new place she is dutifully using her box!).

The run today was well. crappy. after the whirlwind of the last few days I have to say I am happy that we went out at all all. We went 5 miles yesterday and then 7 today with about 3-4 more walking back to the bus stop. I am a bit dissapointed, but that's what happens when Life happens. We should get things under control today and tomorrow and get back on the schedule this week. OH AND I found a nice little track on Chicago and basically the lake front. My dad said it might have been a part of Northwestern but now it's just a track for the public. It has two softball fields in the middle of it so no need to dodge the high school kids since it's not part of a school. That's a huge find because I'll be able to do my speed workouts there.

Alright, we are currently at our old apartment getting some last minute stuff (coffe pot and pizza cutter are vital to our living) and then it's back to the new place to clean up the rooms, put clothes away, move boxes out of the room that has now been labeled the 'P' room....and probably watch some Scrubs on DVD...which by the way is the best show ever!

A big thanks goes out to Jason for being so positive about this experience. He is and always the be the best hubby a girl can have. :-)

Here's to a better week of running and living situations!!!

Apartment Disaster

This has been the worst move ever. We are renting our current apartment to our friend semi-furnished for the month of september. The thinking here was that we would then not have to rent a truck and could just move things in stages. We worked from 8pm Thursday night to about 10pm last night with a 3 hour nap in between. needless to say our 12 mile run didn't happen. And? Oh we still don't have a bunch of our stuff that we need....like our coffee pot for example. (although it's all getting there)

The big problem though is that the old tenant at our new apartment had a cat that apparently missed the fucking litter box. For 2 YEARS. The whole apartment smells like cat urine and it's all soaked up into the wood. I tried to clean it up with this extra strength cleaner, and scrub it out. Now I have just made the floors worse and the smell not better. There are two main spots, one in the kitchen and one in the second bedroom. Of course I won't be able to talk to the apartment people until Tuesday because of the holiday and I am guessing when I tell them they have to sand and resurface those two rooms (it's all hard wood) they are going to say no. and I am going to continue to have a nervous break down. I went to Home Depot and asked the guy if there was anything I could do and he said it would be such a pain in the ass and to tell the landlords they have to do it.

I am so pissed because I actually love moving and this has made the whole experience awful and depressing. Whatever.

I hope to get 5 miles in tonight and then 20 tomorrow and count going up and down three flights of stairs for 24 hours equal to 12 miles.

shit.

It's Too Far

Walking An Extra 4 Miles...

....So you can lactate with the wind at your back.

The run on today's menu was 12 miles with 7 miles at a lactate threshold pace (7:40-8:00 min/miles for us). Terrifying you ask? Absolutely!

I was not looking forward to this run and after the warm up with legs still sore and angry from running in bad shoes yesterday, I wasn't feeling any more confident. But ok, stretched out the sore shins for the third or fouth time and finished the last half mile of the warm up and started speeding up.

I immediatly noticed how strong the wind was at my back. Chalk it up to the looks on the oncoming runners face, the look of, "oh please. please, please kill me know and make the pain and torture stop", or the look of the bikers who couldn't actually look straight ahead and had their heads skewed in my direction, or the fact that with every step I took I flew a little bit in the air or the fact that the sand that was blowing on the backs of my legs was actually painful.

We decided to go a bit farther away from our apartment because we didn't want to do too many of these important speedy miles into the wind. Of course doing this has your full 12 mile run ending 4 miles away from your apartment, but totally worth it....because....

WE ROCKED THIS WORKOUT!!! Garmin was a little crabby for a few miles but :

Our splits were :

1. 7:53
2. 7:53
3. 7:38
4. 7:13*
5. 7:58
6. 7:55
7. 9:57**

*This mile might have been slightly short because we lost the signal as we went under a bridge, but gained it back right away
**This mile was about 0.3 miles too LONG. I was noticing where we were on the garmin at each mile marker. The mile before the last one garmin said 8.80 miles and the mile marker was 8.5. When we got to the 7.5 mile marker you would think that garmin would be some where close to 9.80 miles....um no it was at 9.5. So if you take that into account this was probably about 1.25 miles and so something like 8 minute miles which is SPECTACULAR as we were directly into this horrible horrible wind.

(are we noticing the colors.....DA BEARS start next weekend!!!!)

We slowly slowly slowly ran/walked the last two miles of the scheduled 12 miles....and then stretched a bit and the walked another 4 miles home where we talked about what we want to be when we grow up (Dad you'll love the new plan!)

I am really proud of the effort and outcome of this run. And the best part : NO MORE LACTATE THRESHOLD RUNS!!!

Tomorrow is a day off and then 12 Friday, 5 Saturday and 20 on Sunday. We found out that we can get into our new apartment tomorrow night which is so exciting so stay tuned for pictures!

The Trance : A Different View

Well Well.

I DO NOT LIKE!

After reading Bob's post about the new Brooks Trance 6 that came out with a 90 day guarantee I couldn't (apparently turn it down). I went to Running Away in Chicago which is a really nice running shoe store, and they had the shoe in my size. It felt great in the store so I went for it.

Today I had an easy 6 mile recovery with 6x100m strides thrown in there.

By the end of the first mile I could barely move my left leg, by the middle of the run I felt like I had put my feet into concrete buckets let it harden and then gone out for a run, and by the end after adjusting the laces about 400 times Jason looked at me and said there is no need to have that close of a relationship with your shoes.

They are just A LOT of shoe, and too much helping me run a certain way which is bad for my legs and they seem REALLY heavy. The store I got the shoes at don't have my beloved adrenalines in my size but I am going to go in tomorrow anyways and try on a pair of mizunos that I read about in Runner's World and if those don't feel good, I am going to order 2 pairs of the adrenalines that I love (one pair for the marathon) and run in my old adrenalines until they come in.

sigh. I am so dissapointed because the Trance's are very cute shoes...but sheesh....just too much help.

Oh right 6 miles with 6x100m strides. Done and Done.

Weekend Roundup

Amazingly, our weekend consisted mainly of:

• running
• working

I know, I know, you don't believe me. And I can't blame you since, I'm sure, you expected me to write something more along the lines of:

• drinking
• partying
• partying and drinking

But this was one of those rare weeks where we were really busy and were just happy to get our runs in. I was on midnight-8am shifts on Saturday and Sunday morning, so my nights and days were pretty much shot. On Friday, as Leah mentioned, we woke up around 7am and left Bloomington for Chicago, getting home around 1 or 2. We then went for our 5 mile recovery run and then Leah went to meet up with Lisa and Evin and I was left to my own devices. This was supposed to consist mostly of sleeping and...sleeping, but our little kitty Dagny had other ideas. She was more in a passive-agressive violence-through-nuzzling type of sleep thwarting mood and made sure that I didn't get to sleep for more than maybe a half hour. Awesome. Well, whatever, off to work I go.

I got home around 9 and, having been mostly up for over 24 hours, crashed pretty hard and didn't wake up until after 6. The most amazing thing? While I was asleep, the apartment cleaned and packed itself. I've got to sleep during the day more often.

Okay, time to run. We were out the door at around 7 for a beautiful dusk run, 8 miles with 8x100 strides. The run went extremely well although it was a bit misty and slippery. Luckily, I handle corners like a dream and come equipped with traction control. The run went by really quickly and we both felt pretty good. This set of strides was the first in a long time that my legs didn't feel really heavy. So, instead of being 30 feet behind Leah during each sprint, I was only, like, 10! (she's fast)

Okay, run done, off to work for me. Work work work, home at 9 am. Scare the crap out of Leah when I walk into the bedroom just as she's waking up. She has a minor heart attack, but I'm too tired for CPR. Luckily, she pulled through. Despite her brush with death, Leah was still plucky enough to make a big breakfast and it was rather delicious (we switched to eggs that weren't harvested by Satan, and they're much tastier. I recommend the cage-free eggs). Hunger sated, it was off the bed for me. I slept for a bit and then dragged myself out of bed at 6 (actually, Leah woke me up by jumping up and down on the bed yelling "wake up, I'm bored! Entertain me!!" I guess it's time to get up.

We were set for a 14 mile run yesterday, which was about as far as I'd want to run starting at 7pm. It's always harder to run far in the evening, it just seems longer somehow. Still, the run went pretty well. We ran south from the totem pole to Grant Park along the lakefront path and we both agreed that Garmin must be confused, because clearly we were running faster than 9:15 miles. Not that I mind that pace, I just felt that I was running my-tee fast and Leah agreed. Alas, we were likely faster than technology and the Garmin was just trying to catch up. We made it to the 9 miles marker, GU'd up, and turned around.

And there's the wind. Lots of it.

Running into the wind is hard. We mostly maintained our pace but it did slow us down some. The real effect of the increased resistence was an increase in effort and an increase in aches and pains. Leah's knee started acting up, likely a residual soreness from hill-running in Bloomington. The wind never helps with knee problems. Also, she started getting a rumbly in her tumbly and that's never fun. Still, she kept her spirits up and finished very strong. Our last mile was the fastest, just the way we like it.

Over all, our pace on the long run was around 9:30, which is in the dead center of our long run range. I'm certainly pleased with the effort this weekend and now comes the challenge. We are entering our highest mileage week ever AND we're moving AND we both have tons of work to do.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go sacrafice a chicken to the God of Time Management.

(technically, it'll be a chicken egg, and the sacrifice will be nestled in some tuna, two slices of bread, and some cheese. And it'll be all melty and delicious)

Book Report x 2

Hello all, although it took me awhile to get through In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, I made up for that slowness for getting through another book in one day yesterday, so here are two for your enjoyment :

When I started reading this book Jason was on shift and I was home late at night. Although I tore through the first chapter I was so terrified that I had to put the book down and wait till he got home to continue. As I was nearing towards the end of the book my mind suddenly went, "Wait, this is a true story" Which of course I knew, but it is written so well and it's so entralling that you can not tell. The level of creepyness that the two killers contain with in their person is really unnerving. So for those of you that like a good creepy book and a bit of history, pick this one up.



While in Bloomington my friend Karen aka The Super Reader gave me a bunch of new books to read. This was one of them. I started it in the car on the way home and I finished it later that night in my comfy reading chair. So a nice quick read if you are looking for something of that type. The story follows a 15 year old autistic kid for a few weeks as he tries to find out who killed a dog in his neighborhood. He ends up opening all kinds of doors that you know as the reader can see he probably shouldn't be opening. A very good story, and as usual Leah aka The Book Whore recommends it.

Happy Reading.

The Bloomington Report

Well Jason and I are back in good old Chicago. We had a wonderful couple of days in Bloomington, IN full of physics, running, drinking and seeing of old friends.

We decided to push our runs back a day, after again not sleeping much on Monday night because we were at work for a ridiculous amount of hours, I think I was correct in my prediction in being there for 13 hours and I needed every minute of the time to get ready for the talk which was at about 8:30am. The talk went fine but it's really hard to give a talk via video because I kept getting feedback and it was really disorienting. We napped for about an hour before taking off for Bloomington and we had to take turns driving because we were both falling asleep.

We had a great evening with beers and burgers at Nicks and then back to our friend's house for some good conversations. We got up early on Wednesday and after hitting our favorite breakfast place we headed over to the physics building (as seen on the right hand side). Smiled at the DOE reviewers and then headed out to walk around campus and pick up a Windows CD (very exciting because it's XP with Service Pack 2 which means now I can try Boot Camp on my iMAC although I am a little nervous about infecting my Mac with that PC garbage....but I would like to be able to use the Garmin software and other programs that i have heard about that you have to have Windows for....) Anyways, we ended the day at the physics building around 3:30 and headed back to get ready for an 8 mile run.

I was really worried about this run because last year when we went to Bloomington for the DOE review and we had a 6 mile run to do or something and Jason and I could barely make it a couple miles because of the heat and HILLS! Bloomington is Hilly. Chicago is Flat. It makes a difference. We headed out around 4pm so we still had the heat, but the run went really well. We ran by our old apartment and by our advisors house and through that old big house neighborhood and then we made our way after many hilly loops over to campus to look at all the teeny freshman moving in to the dorms. Then we went back to our friends house and finished up 8 miles paces 9:15 miles which I was thrilled with.

The picture on the left is one of my favorite locations on campus.

On Wednesday night we went to a reception at one of the proffessors house which was an amazing house out a bit aways from campus. We met one of the DOE review people that is actually a professor at the University of Michigan who I noticed was wearing a dress shirt, jeans and running shoes....which always means that they are a pretty serious runner. We found out that he's training for the Detroit marathon and has run a total of 7 marathon and has done Boston a couple of times....in fact when he first qualified for Boston he did it in 2:54!!!! Now that is fast! He was a super nice guy and I told him in his report to mention that Jason and Leah are the two best grad students he has ever met. He said he would include a line that mentions we need time to train for the marathon and so to leave us alone for the next few months....I somehow think that won't fly with our advisor though :-) (Jason come on....get on that quark diagram. I mean really how stupid are you? i love you :-))

After the reception we went to Yogi's to meet up with our friends Aaron and Karen with whom we were staying, and had a super good time. We split a pitcher of beer with Aaron and then when that was done we noticed that mini pitchers of Long Islands were $3.5o so we each ordered one of those.....and holy ASS were they strong. There was little or no coke in those puppies...and I must say they were De-licious! After Yogi's we headed to a billiard hall on the square and Ms. Leah was unstoppable. I made everything. I beat the boys and everyone is always happy when Leah wins....as most of you that read this blog regularly know.

Needless to say we had a slight hangover on Thursday morning and I was really worried about our VO2 Max workout. It was 8 miles with 5x600m with 90s in between those. We didn't find a real track to do them on, but we did find a gravel track that was near the workout building on campus. Turns out that the loops was 0.4 miles long so just slightly shorter than the 0.38 which is 600m which was nice....the gravel wa a little loose in a couple places so that made it a bit harder. The track was about 1.7 miles away from our friends house, so we did that as a warmup and then I programmed in a workout to take care of the VO2 Max part. Run for 0.38 recover for 90s and repeat 5 times. Unfortunatly I wasn't too on the ball with these and was a little jumpy with the pace. They are as follows :

1. 6:28 min/mile = 2:27.28
2. 7:02 min/mile = 2:40.16
3. 6:55 min/mile = 2:37.59
4. 7:14 min/mile = 2:44.39
5. 7:07 min/mile = 2:42.20

I think I would have liked to have been able to stick to about 7 min/mile and perhaps it will be easier if we can find a track for the next set of these guys so we are sure that it is exactly flat. And I have to say for the way we treated our bodies the night before and the heat and not being in our own rhythms and schedules.

The repeats ended up being a total of 2.5 miles. Jason had some serious serious leg pain after this run (I guess he would have a pain in his ankle but it would move all the way up to his lower back, and not on every step....just every third or every other which was kind of weird). So we ran for about 0.8 more miles and we were both dying of thirst and Jason was in a whole bunch of pain, so we decided just to walk back (though the University entrace gates) to our friends house and just be ok with only running a total of 5 miles instead of 8. Next time I will do more miles before the repeats.....or something.

Thursday night we went out to dinner and then came back to watch a movie (A History of Violence...which was really good). We chatted for a bit more and then it was off to bed.

We got back to Chicago around 1pm and relaxed a bit at the house and then headed out for a 5 mile recovery which went really well with no crazy leg pain from Jason which was nice. Jason is working the midnight shift tonight and I went out to dinner with Evin, Lisa and Matt at Goose Island. Jason and I gave Evin and Lisa the 3rd season of Scrubs on DVD for an engagement present and they loved it...there was almost tears of happiness.

Thus ending our 4 days of travel...although Jason will be up for the next 12 hours...but I'm done, so I'm off to read my book and watch some Sex and the City on DVD.

I Am A Big Cheater

Alright. Alright. I cheated.

I didn't do my 15 mile run with 12 at pace. There I said it. I am somewhat upset about missing it, but my work schedule and sleep schedule and "I don't want to make myself sick" schedule did not allow for it. I was going to try and do the run at 8:30 this morning and realized that I had been up for about 20 hours. 2+ hours of running and then an hour drive home makes for too close to 24 hours of awake time for me.

So I skipped it.

So What. I was happy to get some sleep and be able to be in here working (can't you tell I am working) earlier.

I shouldn't miss any of the runs this week....although we are going to Bloomington until Friday. The drinks are very blue and very cheap in Bloomington, so here's to hoping I can run around around that schedule that I am guessing our friends Aaron and Karen have been putting in place. Jason and I always love going back to Bloomington to visit because we met in our undergrad years there....we were randomly assigned physics lab partners the second semester of our sophmore year and instantly became friends where we stayed for about a year and a half before the boy finally asked me out ("so....uh....like....do you want to go out with me or something?"). Anyways, it's just fun to go hang out in the old haunts and see the town.

We will run tomorrow morning after I give a talk via video at a conference that is happening in England. So that only puts me at the lab today for oh....13 or so hours. Awesome.

Procrastinate.

Well that's just fine. Yesterday Jason and I woke up at 9.....let me go back.

On Saturday morning Jason and I got up at 2:30am to go see my old roommate compete in her first triathlon. It was so much fun, but needless to say we didn't get much sleep. We both slept a bit in the car on the ride home and then we went to bed around 10:30 pm.

The alarm going off at 6:30 was not happening as apparently my inner bully came out and started beating on the alarm. Why is it I can so easily find the snooze button, but not the FUCKING OFF button! I snoozed for 2 hours dragging myself out of the bed at 8:30am. We talked about how our run was going to go and realizing that the air and water show was happening on the lake front there would be no running there but we had an important run to do (15 miles with 12 at marathon pace). I went back into the bedroom to change into my running clothes and I layed down, and that was it. I stayed in bed until...1 pm! I have not slept that late since I was an undergrad.

By that point we decided that we had to wait until this morning to do the run. Jason is working a midnight-8am shift and I have tons of work to do so we both came in here after going to a friend of the family's house for dinner. So I have been here since 10pm, I woke up at 1pm.....I had steak and shake at 5am. I am guessing this run is going to be brilliant!

OOOOH in very exciting news, I got a phone call from my cousin Lisa at about 11pm, her boyfriend Evin proposed to her last night! So a big congrats to the two of them, they are both such awesome people and a perfect match! Congrats!

Alright, 1.5 hours still before we can run. big. sigh. I probably should chalk this one up to stupid schedules and work but we'll see, maybe it will go really well...

Slow, Sore, and Slurpeelicious

Sometimes it's just really hard to go slow on a recovery run. Other times, it's just really necessary.

We went a modest six miles as slowly as we could possibly manage, which was really pretty slow. We plodded along for the first two and a half miles, but after we stopped for water and to stretch, we lost all our momentum (both literally and metaphorically). After that, we pretty much walk/ran the rest of the way, walking for a little bit at each half mile. It was incredibly humid and we were both pretty sore and worn out from running yesterday, so it was just hard to get motivated to run slowly back home.

That is, until we decided to get Slurpees. Oh Slurpees, you are so icey and delicious. The thought of this frozen treat gave us the motivation to run the last two miles all the way home. Although only one flavor was ready to pour (Frozen Mountain Dew), it was still delicious and we had a nice walk home.

It wasn't the easiest run. We were tired and it was humid. But it's over now and six more miles have been notched. Go us.

All Over The Map

Today was a 14 mile run which we started at about 6:30pm. Although we paced 9:06 miles for the whole run we were all over the map with some miles at 8:30ish or less and others around 10 minutes, although the longer miles usually included some water/stretching.

I just said to myself, "We ran 14 miles today". There was a time in my life when 14 miles would have been ridiculous, it would have been something that I would have had to spend all week getting mentally prepared to go out there and get done. Now we are just knocking off the miles on a Wednesday night.....with all the other shit that doesn't work in my life it's awesome that running is usually consistant.

Very. Nice.

6 mile recovery tomorrow. 6 with strides on Saturday and then 15 w/12 at marathon pace on Sunday....shit....what is my marathon pace?

Oh and Saturday is Bridgette's big day. She's competing in her first triathlon!!! We are heading to Indianapolis to cheer her on! She's going to do so awesomely! Go Go Bridgette :-)

Running towards....Something

Don't know. Run was fine. 6 miles at a recoveryish pace.

Work is kinda....oh I don't know. Annoying. Don't know where I'm going with this physics thing. I don't know what I'm doing and people keep asking, "Do you have a result yet?"

Nope.

Still nothing works.

Since I am alone working on this project, nothing will continue to happen.

More wine? Ok.

Good Food Good Drinks

Last night Jason and I indulged ourselves at our favorite Chicago restuarant, Wildfire. It's a steak house with a 1940sesk vibe to it. The food was so delicous and I think that the waitress probably talked to the other folks on the wait staff about the amount of food two of her customers were consuming. Wow.....that's why you run 20 miles just so you can have a great meal like that. The food and the beer, martinis, bottle of wine......all so good.

I didn't sleep well though last night, I kept waking up and I had a really terrifying nightmare which woke me right up this morning. I hate having fitful nights of sleep because I am just like goo all the next day. Good thing today is a day off from running and tomorrow is only a 6 mile recovery run.

The rest of this week is shaping up to be very interesting. I have a meeting with a woman on Wednesday to talk about the possibility of me moving into the field of neuroscience.....very. interesting. Jason and I are also going to start working on applications for fellowships at a physics lab in Germany. I am going to be looking at the medical physics program at UIC. Who knows where this train stops next but any way it's going to be super exciting....and terrifying!

20 Miles and 2 years

Last night we went over to my cousin's apartment to visit and keep her company while she was babysitting her nephew, Will. We still don't understand why he is in a White Sox uniform, but he's so cute I think we can let it slide. We watched Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle which is so hilarious. Jason and I caught the end half of that movie a couple months ago and so even funnier all the way through. That's one of those movies that you could watch over and over again and it just keeps getting funnier. Apparently when Lisa and her boyfriend watched it last week they then had to go find White Castle for themselves. As Jason does not like the whiteys and i LOVE them, I am excited to have fellow White Castle lovers in town.

This morning we got up around 7am and were out running by 8:15. It was such a beautiful day out and we had wonderful run. At about mile 4 and near the Bally's (I really don't understand the spinning class....outside....on the bike path...but whatever) we saw someone yelling at said spinners and then noticed they had a familar shiney scalp, "Hey, HEEEEEY HEEEEEYYYYY JOSH!!!!" It was our friend Josh over at Pugpaw. He ran our direction for a few 100 meters and then sprinted back to catch up with his training group. I love LOVE love seeing people I know on the lake front path so that was a ton of fun.

We just kept on moving forward and soon enough we were at the 12 mile marker that is near the little beach and park a bit south of McCormick place. We had gels at mile 7.5 and ~15 and had slightly longer miles there (10:00 and 10:39) but other than that we just cruised at 9:15 miles ending with an 8:41 and 8:11 mile for the last two. I am always really happy to have something left in the take, especially at the end of a 20 miler. So we paced 9:22 miles, which I must say is pretty perfect!!!! It was a great run. It was a great feeling to be done with and we have run 100 miles in the last 13 days. I never thought that I would be able to do that, so now it's time to celebrate with some pizza rolls and frozen drinks before naptime :-)

Today we also celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary. Wow.

To Jason-I love you so much. While we were running today I was trying to think of a cute little thing to write to you ....you know, Webster's Dictionary defines love as....blah blah....but I couldn't think of anything very clever. So I will just say this : You are so spectacular and I am so lucky that not only do I get to spend the rest of my life with you, but I get to spend the rest of my life with you....my best friend and partner in crime :-) Happy Anniversary Baby. I love you. Here's to a wonderfully fun and exciting and spectacular and unordinary lifetime.

It's a beautiful day for a recovery

...let's run 5.

Man, if only all the summer days could be like this, 75 degrees, low humidity, and not a
cloud in the sky. Just a perfect day to be outside.

We had five miles of recovery to cover today so we were able to go nice and slow and really enjoy the weather. I think both of us were pretty achey to start out (I know I was) and so it was easy to go slow for the first half. That's what I love about doing recovery runs the day before a hard workout; it's like a shakedown run, gets all the kinks out. I know I'd rather feel sorta bad for a run that doesn't matter than one of my long runs or some sort of speed workout type thing.

The 2.5 mile mark was nicely timed to coincide with the water fountain right by the bridge that crosses the entrance to Diversey Harbor if you stay along the lakefront instead of following the actual running path (did even the Chicago people get that?). Anyway, it is a nice open area and so we had a drink of water and spent about 5 minutes stretching. I really like to stretch halfway through my recoveries since I so rarely stretch when my muscles are all warmed up and this seems like a good time to do it. Besides, that just meant more time in the great weather.

After a bit of stretching, we finished off the distance at our apartment and walked around the block to recover from our recovery. All in all, 5 very nice, easy miles and a nice morning. Tomorrow is 20 miles and today? Today is sorting through all our clothes and cleaning out the bedroom. Ah, what wild lives we lead.

We Did IT!!!!!!

Yes yes we did. The 11 miles with 6 at LT that has been dreaded by your fearless duo has been conquered!!!

Our goal was the 6 miles at an 8min/mile pace. When we first did this workout we were able to keep a 7:45 pace, but as we have not been able to get through one of these workouts since we decided to keep it at 8min. We did a 3 mile warm up with the paces decreasing from 9:30 to 8:30 and then we started in on the LT miles:

1. 7:58
2. 7:51
3. 7:47
4. 8:12
5. 8:13
6. 8:08

Ok so what happend with miles 4-6 you ask. We turned around at about 2.75 into the LT miles to a really really strong gusting wind...right. in. our. faces. ugh. So we did slow down, but in my opinion it was the same effort level because I didn't even feel like i was moving forward at one point AND the 6th mile although still slower than the first 3 miles, still faster than the previous 2 which was good to see. The average pace then was just slightly over 8min/mile (8:01:30 min/mile). YES!!!!

We finished with 2 slow slow cool down miles. Now it's time for some frozen margaritas and to revel in our speedyness!

3 Weeks to New Digs

Well we are moving 3 weeks from tomorrow which of course is utterly exciting......and the get the boxes fill the boxes move boxes aside dance has started!

I never realize how much crap we have until it's time to move. It a way it's good crap, books, movies, cds, office equipment (really you can never have too many ultra thin colored sharpie markers), photographs, a huge Lou Gerhig collection......more books....more photographs......

We are doing a nice long move though because a friend of ours is taking over our apartment for the month of september, which is awesome because we can move sooner. However, now it's like, ok what are we going to take with us in stage one and how do we get this place super clean to rent to someone with shit everywhere.

It will be done. Eventually.

Tomorrow is 11 with 6 at LT. I am SO looking forward to that. One mile at a time. One. Mile. At. A. Time.........we'll see.

12 Miles The Hard Way

Well that's done. It was particularly pretty but it's done.

Jason and I went 12 miles today and just felt....I don't know...kind of like....uggy. Around 4.5 miles or so I went ahead of Jason because I could feel a bickering fight coming on and I didn't want to deal with that. This ended up being brilliant because I knew with him 30 seconds behind me I would keep the pace up as well as I could and not take too long at water stops and so on.

We paced 9:16min/mile for the full 12 miles which isn't bad for a medium-long run. I realized at about mile 3 that I have no idea how fast to do these. Probably slower than a general aerobic run, but faster than a long long run. So I'm saying that 9:16 is fine. Not spectacular, but it works.

On Friday we have this 11 mile run with 6 miles at LT pace and are trying to mentally get around this training run. We got through the first LT run of the season and since then not so much. So hopefully being a bit more mentally ready and out of the 99 degree baloney will help....that's my plan anyways....that and probably having to slow down the LT miles a bit. Saturday it's a 5 mile recovery and then 20 on Sunday.

Sunday is also Jason and I's 2 year wedding anniversary :-) We have plans for dinner at Wildfire downtown which we are both looking forward to. 20 miles and a fancy dinner, is there any better way to tell someone you love them?

6 miles, sprinty style

Today was one of our more enjoyable runs. It wasn't perfect or anything, as Leah and I were both still a bit achey after our 18 mile run on Sunday, but it was very nice.

What was so great about it? It was only 6 miles! Not 7, or 8, or 18. Nope, just 6. Hell, the only runs we've had under 7 miles in a really, really long time have been recovery runs and those are rarely "fun" as they are soooo slooow (that is, you really get to experience each and every mile). But this was great. 6 miles and it went really fast because we also had 6x100 meter sprints which broke the run up into nice, managable sections (nibblets, if you will). There wasn't much time to worry about the distance, because after 3 miles of warmup we were doing the sprint/walk/jog cycle and had other things to think about besides just plodding along.

So, that's done now. This is the first run of this week's 54 (!) mile week, which is well beyond anything we've ever done before. It's a bit exciting and a bit scary (and probably some other stuff too).

Here's a question: does anyone have any brilliant ideas for getting around the Chicago Distance Classic that'll be going on along the lakefront path from 7-10:30 (I think that's right) on Sunday, the day of our long run? We generally start at the Totem Pole on the path and then head south and our 20 miler would normally take us to about 31st street. Obviously there will be lots of racers down on the south end of the path so we won't be able to take our usual route. Some thoughts we've had so far include running north first and then less far south, leaving late Sunday morning, and running through more of the city. But if anyone has any other ideas, they're more than welcome.

Famous People Tri-ing

Well well well.

I found out today that one of the competitors in my little race on Saturday morning is famous! Bob Scott holds 2

WORLD RECORDS!!!!

in the Kona Hawaii Ironman compitition.

He hold the record in the 70-74 and 75-79 age categories, finishing in 12:59 and 13:27 respectively in 2001 and 2005.

How cool is that! I noticed the Ironman stickers on his super fancy bike and asked how many Ironman's he had done which was 8....but I didn't find out anything more about him until today.

Seriously. How cool is that!

The Last 3 Days

Have been bu-sy!!!

Wow. Let's recap. Kind of a long post. The running parts are at the end.

On Friday was an off day from running which was great because I had so much work to do. We met up with my cousin Lisa for a late breakfast (she is now living in the hip Wicker Park area) at a place on Milwaukee called Earwax. Good hippy-ish food and good conversation as always. It's really fun have Lisa in town because I think I'll have someone to play with me when I'm bored :-)

Then....I went to work. I had an Inbox full of triathlon e-mails, more people wanting to register, more questions, more organizational trama to deal with. I spent the day working through those e-mails, meeting with the other oranizers of the race, setting up the biking and running course, setting up the swim order with Jim who was in charge of the swimming portion of the race and finishing up the excel spreadsheets housing people's name and what would hold their finishing times as well as other ones that would be running check points along to course to make sure people went by that point (or so they didn't get lost). I left Fermilab at 12:30am but didn't get home until about 2am due to some midnight lane closures on I-290.

I woke up at 4am (yes if you are counting...home at 2am...probably didn't fall asleep till 2:30 am=1.5 hours of sleep) and threw myself out of bed and into the shower to wake myself up. The shower helped and I had to get into the mode of controlling not only 40 odd competitors but all the volunteers and spectators as well. We made a quick stop at Jewel for last minute things we needed for the race and then at McDonalds for some coffee for us and then it was back to the lab.

We got there at 5:45 and I mentioned to the security guard that there would be an influx of people coming in around 7am to compete in the triathlon. Now I had organized all of this with security and the roads and grounds grew already and I knew that security knew about it. Of course this security guard got all Barney Fife on me and said, "I don't know anything about any triathlon, if non-fermilab people get here before 8am I'm not letting them in. So you better call dispatch and let them know". So not having much sleep and already being a nice little ball of stress I was freaking out. I calmed down a bit and got a hold of the security guard that was going to be my contact for the day. He was SO SUPER nice and said not to worry about it and that of course he knew about it and would let the guards know that these people would be coming in. He came by the race site as well and we talked about the race and where people would be and it was nice to have such a nice person helping out with the event.

The race ended up going really really well. I was really nervous when I started to check people in and couldn't find my other GSA partners. Somehow it all got done though. Jim was spectacular in getting the swimming organized and all of a sudden it was happening. People were exiting the pool and runing for their bikes and coming back from the bikes and heading out for the running. Everyone said they had so much fun and thanked me so much for organizing the event. Past Fermilab competitors said it was so much fun to have more people competiting and even had other ideas to get more people through the race. I was so happy because I know I did a job well done. I was thrilled that people were happy with the race and that they had good time and that it actually worked! In the end we had 42 total competing (8 teams and 34 individuals) and the whole thing was over in 3 hours and 45 minutes! Thanks to all my GSA partners in helping me with the event as it would not have happened so smoothly without them.

Now onto running.

After the event I was flying high and so even though we were a bit tired we wanted to get OUR workout in. We had a 7 miles with 8x100m strides. We did the 3 miles of the race course which was good because I found some paper signs along the course and so I picked those up. We came back to our car for some water and then back out with 1 more mile of normal running and then 2.4 of strides and then .6 of cooling down. I think I finally have the strides figured out. We go all out for the stride part, walk for 0.13 slowly start jogging again for 0.1 and then sprint for 0.07. So each segment is .3 miles. It was a great run done just as I think it should be.

After we got home we showered ordered some pizza and passed out for a few hours. We woke up around 8:30 pm and watched Pride and Predjudice. I wanted to see the movie version since I had just read the book and as usual the book was better....but actually a really well done movie and Jason said he liked it....although I'm not sure if he really did.

We woke up around 7:30 this morning and I have to admit less than thrilled to have to be going out there for a 18 mile run.

But it went REALLY WELL!!!!! I took Garmin but instead of just watching the miles ticking off I set the fields to look at the time of day and the pace of the previous mile. This way I could just run and not go...oh my god that felt so far and it was only 0.4 miles!!! That doesn't help the mental game in anyway. Lalapalooza was happening down in Grant Park so we got some music as we went by (we don't take iPods for the long runs) and I, of course, heard a song I really liked and have no idea who it was. And we just ran. and ran. and ran.

In the end we paced 9:38 min/mile. When I list the pace times it always includes any water stops we take or lights that we hit. I want to simulate the marathon as best as I can and the clock doesn't stop on race day so I don't like to stop it during our runs. This is a perfect pace for our long runs (anywhere from 9-10minutes) and our last two miles were 8:56 and 8:52 respectively. All the other miles were over 9 and so we didn't go to fast and still had some in our tanks at the end.

My legs are sore now....it's time to shower and nap! (The ice bath is already done and I think Jason is already asleep)

Let's Go Tri!!!!

Alright people. I am SO excited to be putting on this race tomorrow. I got a few nasty e-mails including one that concluded,

"I'm sorry to be so mean in this e-mail but you deserve it"

I almost started crying and asked one of my GSA partners to write back to him because I would have told him what he deseves is a slap in the face.

I have had a blast getting ready for this race. I am excited for the extra involvement. I have done everything in my power to accomodate everyone. I might be fired after this becasue I had to send my boss an e-mail telling him I couldn't do physics work until Sunday night and I still haven't heard back from him. I might not sleep tonight but that's ok. I have spent the last two days solid working on this......and yes I still deserve a really really nasty e-mail. Bite Me. Most people have been really nice about the race though and understanding so that's good news.

After this event I am sending my resume to the Chicago Marathon Organizers (and if you -the Chicago Marathoner organizers are reading this...you should hire me...I'm really good!)

Ok, here's to a few hours sleep, a good tri race day and a 7 mile with 8x100 (yes I'm going to fit that in dammit :-) )

The Triathlon from Hell

ok people. ok.

15 people in this race last year.

we are up to 46 that want to compete but we had a cut off at 35 this year. (I am organizing this along with the my fellow GSA (Graduate Student Association) officers)

I am getting yelled at because I didn't mention the cut off (we didn't know a cut off would have to be envoked) and all these people can't compete now.

Of course I just want to say everyone can compete but we have a small 5 lane pool and so the race will take a long time. I don't mind about the time, but my other GSA folks might have a problem with it. And it's 10:45 at night and I can only get a hold of one of the other people organizing this who has some concerns but I think thinks it can be done.

I have been working on this triathlon stuff since I got here at 4pm. My advisor is not going to he be happy.

73

That was the temperature when Jason and I went running this morning.

That is 20 degrees less than any of our recent runs. What a difference. We had the wind at our back for the first half and when we turned around I was almost chilly!

Nothing too exciting (except that it was a nice fun easy run, that and there was a ton of really old looking sail boats on the lake...like 4-5 sail dealys). We pace 8:55 for the 11 miles which was nice. But what was even nicer about that pace was that we were very consistant. Sometimes I think that we take too long when we are getting water and then have a really speedy mile following. Today everything was right in the same wheel house. I like the feeling of consistant running and I'm going to try and do this more.

This weekend is 7 miles w8x100 and then 18 miles on Sunday.

I am organzing a triathlon at Fermilab on Saturday morning which is fun. however, last year there was a total of 15 participants (12 individuals and 3 teams) This year we are at 33 people (teams + individuals). Um. Right. It's going to be tons of fun, I just hope that the competitors will be patient because we only have a 5 lane pool that is short. I suppose if they aren't, they could just go home as this is a very friendly race. I am just so worried that I have forgotten something. Well there goes my sleep on Friday night :-)

Ahhhhh...recovery

It's nice to go run and know that, no matter how badly you want to, you aren't permitted to run fast. I mean, I was chopping at the bit to unleash my speed but no, it was not allowed. So we just toddled along, bearing the heat upon our shoulders like a big, really hot weight.

Okay, so it wasn't that dramatic. Actually, it was pretty good. We stopped after about 1.5 miles to stretch and then ran the whole rest of the way, not even needing to stop for water as we had hydrated well the day before. We finished about a half mile from the house which, conveniently enough, put us right at the fire hydrant outside Wrigley. Best water in the city, bar none.

Tomorrow is 11 miles of general aerobic and weather.com has promised us that it will be cooler. I don't care if it is pouring rain and lightening crackles all around us, I just want to run in reasonably cool weather.

Hey, whadya know? We're actually looking forward to tomorrow's run. Sweet.

On another note, join the e-mail campaign to get ESPN columnist and laundry blogger Paul Lucas to apologize for his slandering of Ron Santo and mocking of his disability. I know there are lots of Cubs fans who read this site, so if you are also a Ron Santo fan, stop over to Goat Riders and fire off an e-mail.

I Can't Control Everything

We slept, we drank tons of water, we ate, we were mentally ready to run. Excited to get out there and be speedy.

Then we get outside at 10:30am.

Then we run 2 miles.

And started melting.

It was 95 degrees when we left for our run. I'm not a strong enough runner to be able to lactate any kind of threshold in that kind of weather. There is nothing I can do about the time when we run because that is the schedule this week. I can't change it. I can't make it be 70 degrees instead of 95.

But I can be smarter that I have been in the past two weeks. I can realize that the 10 miles is never going to happen because it's getting dangerous. We decided to just run 6 miles at whatever pace we could get through.

And you know what? It's ok. It's not going to keep me from running the marathon. It's all I can do in this weather. We ended up having a nice run together and not bickering or bitching at each other ("Just go ahead of me, I suck" "No I'm staying with you" No I am a loser and I suck just go the fuck ahead of me" "I don't want to." "JUST DO IT") for the first time in awhile while out there running . We had a really fun last mile getting a little speedy and running funny and playing tag (really).

Making the realization that I can't control every piece of my life and so some of these training runs are going to have to change a bit depending on my schedule and the weather and so on, I think will help my mental/training state and make the training more fun (THIS IS KEY!). Maybe next year I won't be in such a ridiculous state of scheduling hell and can follow the plan to a T, but that's not this year. I'm going to get most of the miles in, I'm going to finish the marathon in some amount of time.......and

IT'S OK!!!

I'M GOING TO HAVE FUN! I AM GOING TO GET THROUGH THE TRAINING CAUSE AT THE END....I GET TO RUN THE CHICAGO MARATHON. HERE'S TO A GOOD REST OF THE SUMMER TRAINING WISE AND MOVING WISE AND WORK WISE AND DRIVING WISE AND READING WISE. WE HAVE TO REMEMBER TO HAVE FUN!