Miles, Cubs, Banks & Tastes

Yesterday went to the Jayhawks to join them for our 10 mile run. The ever famous Mouse was there...who is fabulous, it was nice to finally meet her and talk to her for more than the 2 minutes that we have gotten in the past.

The 10 miles was good, averaging 8:44 for the total. I didn't have time for pretty graphs but all the miles were again very consistant except for the last one which was at our race pace (cause it's fun to go fast at the end). After the run we enjoyed some Tivo'd So You Think You Can Dance? and joined them for the results show. After American Idol I had to step away from the reality shows as I got so attached to the people on there.....but c'est la vie....I might be hooked.

When we got home I had an email from some family friends saying that they had an extra ticket to the Cubs game this afternoon, front row, 3rd base line and if I wanted to go. Do I want to go....um yeah....cause there is no NAN errors at good old Wrigley Field. Plus my double secret boyfriend Rich Hill is pitching and I couldn't let him down (Barrett was traded...I had to move on).

While I'm doing that Jason is going to talk to some old Fermilab people that left the field and are working for a Bank downtown. That's all I'm going to say about that...as it could be nothing.

After the game, I'm going to Red Line it BACK downtown and meet Jason down on Jackson Ave and head to the Taste of Chicago.

Busy Busy Friday! Good thing I had a hard time falling asleep last night (tears on your pillow and all) and only ended up with about 5 hours of shuteye. Ah well, it's only sleep. I'll get some tomorrow.

Happy Friday everyone.

YOU'RE MOM'S NOT A NUMBER

That's how my programming is going today. What the hell is going on?

sigh.

Running yesterday was a nice 5 mile recovery. Tonight it's 10 miles and some Jayhawk fun.

Frustrating day at work obviosuly.....but in exciting news from my better half.....Jason got the go ahead to get any job he finds starting now! As long as the company is ok with him not having PhD in hand (paper work still needs to be done) our advisor is ok with him getting a job before he's officially finished. Wheeee.

Just a Normal Wednesday

Haven't run yet today but we do have a 5 mile recovery run that we'll banging out later this afternoon. I have a love/hate relationship with recovery runs. As they are recovery our pace is much slower than a normal run, so it seems to take a lot longer to get through the run. On the other hand it's nice to get stuck by lights and not have to run to the next block or whatever to get across the street if we don't have to stop. Since it's recovery we usually use that time to stretch.

This weekend marks the start of the Taste of Chicago. Last summer for those of you that were reading this site remember that Jason an I had the work schedule from hell and missed out on a lot of Chicago things and spent many nights and days at the lab. This summer is the summer of us. We are doing as much as we can since we missed out last year. So Friday we are heading to the Taste after work if anyone is in the neighborhood. Next week we'll be picnicing for most of the day on the 3rd and then enjoying the sounds on John Mayer as he plays on the 4th.

Chicago in the summer. I ask anyone to give me a better city during these summer months. I love it! We deserve it too after the winters we have to endure.

My nerd factor is elevated these days as the new iPhone is being released on Friday. Given that I still have a year in my contract with Sprint and have no money to actually purchase said iPhone, all I can do is watch the videos and drool. It's going to be super sweet and I suppose it'll be just as sweet in 12 months. For those that haven't been caught up in the hype check this out : http://www.apple.com/iphone/usingiphone/guidedtour.html

Alright, from the land of Jason and Leah this is the latter, signing off.

This is fun...

I have been following this guys other site for awhile. He's riding from Chicago to the east coast on his bike and either updating on the trip himself or having his friends back home post for him. A super fun idea and he's doing great so check him out :

http://mymillennium.blogspot.com/

I wonder how far Jason would ride on a bike....I'm guessing the train station is about it for him....well for me too....but...how far would he run....

A Tale of Two Runs

You see, it's like A Tale of Two Cities, except it's different because I replaced the word "cities" with "runs." Well, that and I might actually make it all the way through this post.

Anyway, we had 8 miles with 10x100 strides today. After going to bed extremely early yesterday (see: lingering hangover) we were up at six and ready to go...back to bed. But, we stayed up, ate some toast, drank some coffee and...totally didn't want to run. Guh. But, whatever, we went.

It started out okay if you ignore the sweltering heat. It was probably only 80 out, but it was just unbelievably humid and we were nowhere near hydrated enough to deal with the amount of sweating we were in for. But, we pressed on and managed pretty good paces for the first 5 miles (between 8:30 and 9 after a 9:26 first mile) despite the heat. We then came to our designated "run sprints in the city" place which is just one of the schools near us. There is a nice, long sidewalk there and it works nicely for our sprints. We would sprint the straightaway, walk a little bit, turn around, jog back to the straightaway, and sprint again. Repeat ten times and we were done. These sprints also went pretty well except that one point when my soul left my body (I got it back). So I would say phase one of the run was good. Five solid miles and 10 solid sprints in tough conditions.

Thus ends run one.

Run two was not so good. We still had to run 1.75 miles before we were done. If you have plans to do these sprints in the future, do them at the end of your run. Or, at the very least, leave yourself less than a mile to go. It was so demoralizing to be exhausted and have so far to go. We walked a little bit to get our breathing under control. We then walked a little bit more for good measure. Ah, what the hell, might as well walk to the next light too. A quarter mile later we were running again...until we found a water fountain! Water! We drank happily and then it was back to running.

In the end, between the last stride, the post stride walking, and the drinking (oh, and the running), mile 7 ended up taking us 15 minutes. I wouldn't call this a "15 minute mile" per se, but it still ended up taking forever. The last mile we kicked it back up to a 9 minute mile and then, mercifully, we were done.

Only three more days until the Taste! Woot!

Go Cubs.

Sunday's for Running and for Partying (apparently)

Well the weekend is now over.....good running and good partying made for quite the Sunday.

Saturday we didn't do much of anything. We got our 4 mile recovery in and then cleaned our place up and I ended up napping to the Cubs game. We really wanted to relax on Saturday because we knew how jam packed our Sunday was going to be. We were good little marathon trainers and went to bed at 10pm on Saturday night to get up at 5am to get our long run in.

The Pfitz schedule called for 14 miles and getting through it would be putting our weekly mileage at 40 miles which is a nice milestone to get to. We had such a good run on Thursday with better pacing and a good pace at that. We wanted to get our long run miles more consistent and we wanted to slow down a little bit. Our goal was to average at 9 min/mile. Our first mile was pretty slow at 9:55, but we brought the pace down and were very consistently around 9 minutes for the next 10 miles of the run. We had a higher mile time when we stopped and took a Gu (I don't like to stop the watch for water or Gu stops because we will do this in the marathon and the clock doesn't stop there). The last three miles I leave open to whatever. I like to get up around marathon race pace for the last mile and was nice to see that only our last three miles (8:23,8:22,7:57) were in that low range unlike previous weeks where many middle miles were low like that. Our average was 9min/mile exactly just like we had wanted to do. Our General Aerobic miles and our long run miles have been having the same pace, so I was happy that we slowed down a bit this week. Here's the graph :

We felt great those last three miles, still talking easily and running smooth.

After the run, we did our ice bath and laid down for about 45 minutes. We wanted to try and sleep because we knew we were going to be out the rest of the day at the Gay Pride Parade. We got up and on it and jumped on the Western Bus and got off at Diversey. Apparently they don't give transfers on the bus anymore so we walked from there to Broadway and headed to a bar we used to frequent what seems like a lifetime ago.

We haven't been there for 2 years so we were wondering what had changed or who had changed and we were a little nervous walking in to the place that used to know our names.....we were greeted with : LEAH, JASON HOW THE HELL ARE YOU!!! The people were the same, the bar was the same and it was really nice to see everyone again. We had some beers and then went down the block aways to talk to Haight and Lora and while we were standing there, someone came up to us and said, "Are you Jason and Leah?" We said, "yes....". The person is a fan of our blog and recognized us from pictures we have posted on here. So hi to Berner who made me feel famous :-)

Many beers later we were joined by Dawn who had to do some catching up. She had competed in a triathlon earlier in the day and had been battling traffic on the way home from the burbs. We had tons of fun hanging with Dawn for the rest of the afternoon. Many many beers later and after the parade, our old friend Will came by and told us that he had opened his own place down the street. So we closed out our tabs and headed to his new place, Brendan's Pub. We had a few beers and maybe the shot of Barcadi O at this point wasn't the best decision. Poor Dawn's boyfriend got drunk phone called. Barb might have gotten a drunk text message, I'm already horrible at texting...add in 8 beers too many and I'm sure it was totally unreadable.

After the bar we went to the Melrose diner and got some food....man do all my good eating habits and behavior go out the window on Gay Pride Sunday! At this point I drunk phone called our friend Joe who was the best man in our wedding because the Melrose was a favorite of his when we used to live in the neighborhood.

We walked Dawn to her apartment, and then just for good measure, had to get an ice cream cone. We walked a little bit....Jason dropped his cone on the ground....we hopped a cab...and then ended up at Monday morning...with a pretty big headache....but all worth it. Below is a slide show of the afternoon's activities including hot boys on floats! And so now here we go...another week in front of us.

Perfect 10!

Yesterday the plan called for 10 miles. After Tuesday's debacle of a run I was worried. Lots of times it happens that I have shitty runs followed by other shitty runs....followed by....well you get the idea. I don't know if get a bad mental bug or the fact that I had a bad run in the first place is a sign that I am too tired or whatever.

According to weather.com we were going to get strong storms in the afternoon & evening. We were also so exhausted so we decided to ditch on the jayhawks (so sorry you guys) and run earlier at the lab. We thought we could go around 2:30pm, but again according to the weather the storms would be here by then. Not wanting to sit on the train soaking wet, we decided to go at 1pm when it was still nice and sunny out.

Oh yeah....sunscreen....we had forgotten it and since when we left home we weren't planning on running until 6:30pm so thought we wouldn't need it anyways. Right. I'm fine, but Jason and his ever so paleness got a bit toasty.

I have been having trouble with pacing. The average always ends up being fine, but I'm up and down and all around the place during the run. Yesterday's run was the first time that we have found our groove and gone with it. No mile was under the prescribed pace as they usually are, but the final two were still faster than the rest. It's always nice to finish the run with some gas left in your tank. For your visual pleasure :

Sometimes it's hard to run at the lab because we either do the rings or .... well that's about it lately. Yesterday we took advantage of most of the campus and headed to one part that we had never run on before which took us to the main entrance for the lab. There is an amazing sculpture there and was fun to see from the ground rather than in a vehicle.

It was just one of those runs....you know what I'm talking about. You look down at your Garmin to see how much farther it is to the next mile, and you are floored that you are at 5.98mi since the last time you looked at it which was "just seconds ago" you had just hit 5. I love these kinds of runs and they really bring home the "why I like to run".

So it was a nice fun easy (although sunny) run. 10 miles in 1:27:33 (8:45 avg). Tonight it's a rest day. We rode our bikes to the train (can't really rest right?) and are going to go grab a beer with the Kansas consortium on our way home since we haven't seen them at all this week.

This weekend has 4 recovery on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. Sunday also brings the Gay Pride parade. Jason and I will be attending and if anyone out there is interested in joining us we'll be at the bar Monsignor Murphy's on the east side of Broadway between Wellington and Barry. Drop me an e-mail (jasonleahrun@gmail.com) if you are going to be out and I can be sure to keep an eye out for you.

Four miles, slow and steady

Yesterday was a rough day as Leah and I were both extremely tired. The fact is, we've been tired all week after a weekend where we, once again, did too much. Leah detailed it in a previous post, but I think all the running and walking and biking caught up to us a bit. We really need to rest for awhile after our long runs and that hasn't happened for a couple weeks now. This weekend, though...oh wait, it's Gay Pride. Well, we're going to try to run very early so we can catch a couple hours worth of napping before heading out. Hopefully that'll be enough.

Anyway, as I said, we were very tired yesterday and the whole day just dragged on. Being tired makes everything worse as nothing much gets accomplished at work and there's no motivation to do much of anything. Surprisingly, the crabby factor was pretty low for both of us, so that's a bonus. But still. So, it's good that yesterday's run was a short recovery run. We went out for four miles and made sure the entire run was as slow as we could make it. Slow slow slow. We were happily caught at a couple lights and even got a call from Leah's dad which allowed for a welcome break. It ended up being a very easy run and, although I'm still tired today, my legs feel pretty good. In the end, it was 4 miles in 39:10.

Today we've got 10 miles scheduled (and so 10 miles we shall do). We had originally planned to run with Mike and Barb, but Mike was sick yesterday so we're on our own. Since our clothes are already here, the plan is to run at the lab (hopefully before the storms roll in). While Fermi is certainly less exciting than The City, it does have the benefit of no light and no traffic, which has been an annoying feature of our last two midweek runs.

Alright, so that wasn't the most exciting post. You try making a post about a four mile recovery run exciting. But, since you made it all the way to the end, I will reward you with fun stuff:

Awesomely funny father's day post from Xmastime
Equally awesome valentine's day post (from same guy)

From CNN: Couple banned from naming son "4real" - God, I would love to be name 4real. It's super easy to text message that name. You would be at the top of every alphabetical list. "4" is probably the most stylistic of all numbers. This definitely rivals the names I've propose to Leah for future baby names: pwned for a boy, and l33t for a girl.

That's all from here.

Go Cubs.

Deal of the Century

Because it was impossible for me to bike with the backpack that apparently weighs the same as plutonium, I started looking for alternatives that were yes more girly and not so large. I really liked the Timbuk2 Commute messenger bag...but there is no way that I was going to spend $100 on something that was lets admit....a fashion statement (ok and it would help my back when I was riding a bike).

I did some research and found a discontinued color one through the REI-Outlet for $50 so half off. I thought I would try calling the REI store near my work to see if they happened to have it in stock. And not only did they have it....but they had it marked as $16.83. I told them to put it on hold, Jason and I went over there and 18 dollars later I am the owner of this *very* girly, yet awesome bag! I love it even more than I should because of how much we got it for!

Who Knows

Well my LT run did not go as planned, that much is obvious from my previous post. But what the hell happened? Let's review.

Because I was giving a talk in the afternoon we decided to do the run at Fermilab. This usually works out pretty well because it's very flat and very boring, so during LT runs there is nothing to think about or distracting me away from concentrating on my pace. So the meeting was over, we changed into our running clothes and at about 5:15 off we went to LT our asses off.

I wanted to slow down the first two miles before starting the LT miles because when I have practiced in the past I end up with miles in the low 8s and that doesn't bode well for the faster miles which follow. So we did good there, we were at 8:59 for mile 1 and then 8:35 for mile 2. Perfect. Time to start LT mile 1. Lose Yourself by Eminem came on the iPod :

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You Own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo

Perfect song, perfect beat, perfect sentiment.

First mile done in 7:35. Ok, good stuff. These first miles have been coming in at 7:15 and although my goal had been 7:45 or so I was ok with this because I felt pretty good. I was still feeling good during mile 2. Then at about 1.75 miles into the LT miles I got a stitch in my side so bad that it literally took my breath away. It felt like someone had taken a knife and jammed it into my side and then twisted it around.

Of course the question is why did this happen. I haven't gotten a stitch in my side since, I don't know when. During mile 1 when I looked at the Garmin I would see current paces anywhere from 7:15-7:45 or so (I realize that this isn't accurate but it can usually give me a rough estimate of how I am doing). During mile two when I looked at the current paces it was usually between 6:55-7:10. So maybe Eye of the Tiger was giving me too much pump in my step? Maybe the half a snickers bar I had before we went, or the water I had right before we left affected me.

I don't know. Maybe it was the extra biking and walking that we did on Sunday, or the fact that our pace was probably a bit to fast on Sunday, or it was the biking the morning of the LT run. I could go through all the possible things that I did different or the fact that I was probably going to fast had something to do with it. I am frustrated because had I not gotten that stitch I think I would have been fine. It was the most painful thing I have felt in awhile. I mean sure, legs get tired but your run through it. But this was breathtaking...literally.

The other thing to note is we had 25 mph winds in our face for the last two LT miles. One of the bad things about running at Fermilab is that if there is any wind it really picks up across the ring and is in your face for half of your run. Mile 2 was at 8:30. I gave the Garmin to Jason and told him to go ahead (we need to work on him leaving me when I'm feeling bad..for those of you that are working with Coach Leah, be happy that you aren't married to her because Jason got quite the earful for slowing down to stay with me...and by earful I mean people on the other side of the ring could have heard me "coaching" him). I took his watch and had my last two miles in 17:00. Given that mile 3 was probably at about 9 min/mile (tears and heavy breathing), mile 4 must have been at 8 min/mile. I think Jason's miles were around 8:15 or so.

The final two, post LT, miles were in I don't care what. Very slow.

I hate making excuses and when it comes down to it. I didn't get it done. Whether it was all the reasons I listen above or whatever. In the end it doesn't matter. The pace wasn't there and that's that.

So now what.

Well I'll do what I do. I'll keep lacing up my running shoes, keep trying to do what the schedule says, and I'll just keep running. Bad runs affect me for a long time so I hope to end the week with some better quality runs. I get to fail better at another LT run in two weeks time....so you fucking 9 with 4 that I see teasing me on the schedule, you better watch out. I'm coming for you.

Tonight is a 4 mile recovery. Key word being recovery.

I'm. A. Failure.

That's how the LT run went.

Biking for a Change

This morning we decided to bike downtown and take the train because I have to give a presentation later in the day today and so we'll be staying here late and doing our LT run around the ring. Hence we'll be taking a later train home, which doesn't stop at Kedzie and since I don't want to walk 3.5 miles at 9pm after running a LT we needed our bike downtown.

I swear to God, every fucking day our schedule, how far we are running & what's happening at work, has to go into some giant matrix calculation to determine the combination of walking/driving/biking that will have to be in place to get to work.

So yes. We biked.

And for those of you that have been reading know that we got a new computer recently. This of course needs a better treatment than, "just put it in the bag and go" that our 5 year laptop got (we weren't that bad...but a new computer needs a bit of an upgrade). So, we got a computer backpack and had a sleeve to put the computer in and so now it's nice and protected. Plus there is lots of room in the bag for things like books and running clothes and so on. Since we are running at the lab this evening it was chock full of all kinds of good stuff. So I put on my super cool bag this morning and almost fell backwards it was so heavy. I look ridiculous wearing it as I look like a robot and it's about twice as thick as I am. This was *not good* on the bike. I had super sore shoulders by the time we were downtown. But at least I looked super cool...oh wait..no no...I looked like a super nerd....and being a physics grad student I guess that's a good fit.

ANYWAYS. I say yay! for the bag when we are walking because it's pretty comfortable, but horrible for when we are biking. Since we don't bike that much it shouldn't be a problem.

I am very nervous about the LT run tonight. We are doing it around the rings tonight at the lab which is nice because it's so boring here there is nothing else to focus on except getting those miles in correctly. I have a super fly mix of music loaded up on my iPod which should help. That's all from the world of Jason and Leah for now. Happy LTing all you Pfitzers.

Long Running on Sunday

Sundays are the days for long runs in our little household. Some folks prefer to shift schedules so that they can run long on Saturdays, but Jason and I have found that we very much like sleeping in on Saturday after our long commuting week and so stick with the schedule as it's laid out in Pfitz...which is good because I tend to be very much, "We have to do the runs exactly (!) when and how it says otherwise we won't even finish the marathon let alone get our time goal" A little dramatic perhaps....but this is Leah and those of you that know her know that she can be a little on the dramatic side from time to time.

Saturday we went to see Knocked Up with the lovely Lisa and her husband Evin and let me tell you.....I loved it and can't wait for it to come out on DVD. Highly recommended from this crew. On the way home we realized there was a mix up with some cars that were needed for the following day and thus realized that we were going to have to add in some biking on Sunday morning to get to the train station so we could get to our friends house out in Brookfield for a lunch that we were having.

So we decided to get up even earlier that originally planned and set our alarm for 5am. We went to bed early and were up and on it by 5:20. I had a minor freak out because I did snooze until 5:18 and so when I saw the clock I screamed, "JASON IT'S 5:20...WE HAVE TO GET UP NOW!!!" of course it wasn't a big deal at all as we just wanted to get out of the house and running by 6am. Which we beat as we were running by about 5:50.

Compared to our recovery run on Saturday in blinding 90 degree heat (right...our recovery run was 5 miles coming in at 47:30 or 9:30 min/mile) the 75 degrees felt nice and cool. I am still having problems pacing the long runs. I know I need to slow down but I get into a rhythm that feels comfortable and I end up running some fast sub 8:30 miles. We were up and down a bit, at one point the Garmin freaked out but luckily it was at a water stop, so we turned it off and back on again and got it back on track. The 1/2 mile before and after this were at exactly the same pace which I thought was good. We stopped for water as mentioned above around mile 4.5, then again at about 6.75 and splitting a bag of SportBeans (we again forgot to pick up some Gus :-( ) and then at about 8.75).

We averaged 8:50 min/mile and the run was broken up as follows :

So the problem I have is not the spikes as that is probably where we stopped for water, but rather the large dips, like on miles 3, 4,11 &12. And moreso the first two. I don't mind having my last mile be at or around marathon race pace because I like to remind my legs what that's going to feel like. But I would really like to find some consistency with the mid miles and try and keep things around 9 minute miles. Something to try next week.

After the run we both took an ice bath, quickly showered then it was on our bikes to get downtown to catch the 10:30 train to Brookfield. I was initially really worried about adding in the biking but it ended up being a nice ride (very slow) and relaxing and felt good on my legs. We also walked from the station to the house in Brookfield...all added up we did 7 miles of biking (there and back) and about 2 miles of walking. Can you say, "Hello Cardio!"

Tomorrow is my most dreaded workout of marathon training season. The lactate threshold run. It's 8 miles with 4 at LT pace. I am going to try for a 7:30ish on those LT miles. I think I get myself very worked up for these runs and if I would just laugh and have fun with them they wouldn't be so bad. So if you see two people burning down the lakefront path with their speed tomorrow evening it's probably Jason and I. If you also see one of them crying because one mile was off pace, it probably really was Jason and I :-).

Going for 40 miles this week and just for fun this is how we have been doing since the beginning of the year. Notice when I gave up on training for a spring marathon. I do like how the distance has been growing consistently since about the beginning of April with no huge jumps in weekly mileage.


Happy Monday!

$2 PBRs....oooh Danger

Last night Lisa and Evin came over to our place and we went to The Blind Robin to celebrate Lisa completing her first year of teaching. YAY! Congrats!

The Blind Robin as I mentioned yesterday has $2 PBR drafts...so when you have 4 of them...it's only 8 bucks. nice. well thus goes my running early in the morning plan.

We have a 4 mile recovery today which I plan on taking nice and slow. Then I think we are planning on seeing Knocked Up later on in the afternoon.

Happy Saturday to all!

It's Even BETTER!!!

So the vibration of the laptop ended up being really annoying. After working for a few hours our hands would be tingling....which isn't right. So I talked to my dad online about it and told him I was going to take it back....and talked to him about the idea of the MacBook Pro.

So we went back to the Apple store on Michigan Ave and I got my Grandma W (she apparently could return *anything*) on, and was like, here's what I need to happen. The computer I bought isn't good, there is something wrong with it. So I want to return it and upgrade to the MacBook Pro. So they sent me upstairs to the Mac Genius Bar where a nice guy helped us and said it seemed normal. I told him that tingling hands is not normal. So he checked some stuff and compared the machine with the other MacBooks on the floor and said he agreed that it was vibrating more than it should so he wouldn't charge us for a restocking fee.

Then to make matters more complicated, I wanted to get the money back for the computer that I had bought...and buy the new one with a joint card my dad and I share. So after going through all the business we headed home with our new MacBook Pro!!!!! Big kudos to the Mac people for making it such a nice experience. Thanks again to my dad and stepmom for the very early graduation present. You are the best a kid could ask for.

After getting home from the Apple store, we had to go run immediately because we were meeting people for dinner at 6:30. 10 miles was on the schedule for the day....at 4pm it was like 90 degrees outside. The heat made for a very up and down run. We forgot cash so there was no stopping for Gatorade along the way, however we did stop once about halfway through and go into a Subway for some water. I stopped the watch at this point because it was going to be a longer than just stop and quick drink and move on. We ended up finishing in 1:27:55, which is an average of 8:47 miles. To our surprise our last two miles were 8:26 and 8:13. We both felt like complete crap and so those times were shocking to us. We were very dehydrated after the run and noted that running at 4pm is probably a bad idea, but there was no other option for the run that day.

We met up with my cousins at this place called Rio's D'Sudamerica. It's a south american place on Armitage, just west of Damen on the North side of the street. It's SO good and the place was like empty. The dishes were reasonably priced and the chicken thing I got was delicious. I recommend this place for dinner...oh and try the raspberry mojito...it was just as delicious!

After dinner we took the bus home and decided to stop into a new bar that opened across the alley from our apartment, The Blind Robin. And another great deal as it's awesome. They have $2 PBR drafts and I seriously don't remember the last time I found two dollar beers since I was an undergrad. I am thinking there will be some stumbling home on Thursday nights this summer (Friday's are usually off running days :-) ).

Thus ended my Thursday and now it's Friday and I have to find my advisor and go over some stuff for my analysis. Happy weekend all.

How about this for Elitist?

There are some new Pearl Izumi ads out there. I might have caught one while reading Runner's World, but I didn't pay that much attention to it.

Click here for the ad.

Now then.

I guess I'm not a runner. While I rarely run on a treadmill (count once in the last year), and I don't usually wear and MP3 player...but I have no problem with those people that do use those things. My favorite was the line, "if you have ever been at the helm of a jogging stroller then you are a jogger". I mean I don't care what my label is, but you can bet your life that the second I can after having a baby I'll be out there RUNNING.

It just seems a bit elitist to me. I never understood why the fast runners care how many people are in a race or what pace they are going and now apparently why they feel that they can even get a different label. They usually have a preferred start, they are not mingling with the "joggers". But those joggers have worked very hard to be where they are and I just wish they got all the respect that they deserved. Just because someone isn't running a 3 hour marathon doesn't mean that it's any easier for them.

I'm glad I don't wear that brand of shoes as I would probably buy something else since I'm not a runner.

alright.

rant over.

I'm off to play with MacBook. People who have one of these....when it's on a hard surface do you feel a slight (Jason says...very very slight) vibration where the heel of you hand sits? When I put the laptop on a placemat on my table I don't feel much, but if it's just on the hard table there is a slight vibration. I have read that other people have had this problem and so just wondering how common it is. Other than that though...like all macs...working like a charm!

THANKS TO MY DAD!!!

JASON AND I GOT AN EARLY GRADUATION PRESENT!
THANKS DADDY!!!

So you....

go to the Apple Store....and get a new one....90 days same as cash....sure thing I can figure that out somehow.

We are proud new owders of a MacBook.....woooot.

(although I have still lost all the presentations I have done which makes me do this :-( )

It's Dead

My laptop.

It died.

Along with all the presentations I have ever done (Yes yes yes...I should have backed them up).

I need to give a presentation next week....impartive that I have a laptop.

And I thought I was starting to have extra money this month.

DAMMIT.

(Someone hire my husband. He's coming out with a PhD in high energy physics in a few months and would be an asset to any company out there. And he's pretty.)

Back in the Saddle

Yesterday we headed to our favorite Jayhawk's condo to head out for an 8 miler w/ 10x100m strides. You could say that the running attitude by all 4 superstars was lower than usual when we started. I think everyone is still recovering from lack of sleep and lots of running over the weekend. But we do what we do, and changed into the running gear and headed out.

Jason and I didn't have our Garmin with us so guesstimated where 3.5 miles out would be. We knew we probably went a bit too far, but wanted to make it to the next water fountain since I was thirsty. Legs felt ok, not perfect but nice to shake them out and get them moving. We totaled 7.25 miles for this run in exactly 64 minutes, bringing us to an 8:50min/mile. Not too shabby since Jason and I were both pretty sore for the weekend.

After the run we headed to the track to do our strides. I definitely did the first few of these slower than normal, but was back up to speed by the end. I defiantly notice that my form starts to go during the last few. I really tried to concentrate on running clean which I think once I was thinking about it I was able to do.

After the running we headed back to the Jayhawk pad where the superstar duo served us a tasty salad and some pasta (thanks you guys). We also found out that the apartment above us is available...according to our rental agency's website. We did see lights on up there though when we came home so we are thinking that they just didn't update. But you never know.

Today is an off day. Then 10 on Thursday, 5 on Saturday and 13 on Sunday. Next week we have everyone's favorite...LT run. blech.