Marathon Gear Check

Since in two days I'll be running the marathon, and since I'm not supposed to run for the next two days, I spent today getting my gear together for the race.  Here you see the things I'm taking; the things over which I have control.  Of course, the weather is not under my control, but I sure would like to pack some of that for the race too.  In lieu of that, I'll be praying for good weather, or good-enough weather, or not-too-bad weather, because although we've trained in all types of weather, I really, really would like to run the marathon during a nice, sunny, cool, non-rainy day. Here's the gear that I will be taking with me.

• Running shirt with my name on the front.

• Shorts, compression running tights, and compression socks

• My GPS watch with heart rate monitor

• My mp3 player with an awesome playlist, and an arm sleeve to hold it while I run

• Running belt with my energy gels, tissues, a camera (this one is waterproof and shock proof), asthma inhaler, other emergency items, and a plastic trash bag; our coaches tell us we need to carry a trash bag to use for keeping warm, dry, or as a port-o-potty (I'm not so sure about this last use, but who am I to question this.)

•  Throw-aways: clothes that I can wear before the race and then throw away after I warm up.  The race volunteers will pick these garments up, wash them, and donate them to a homeless shelter.

• Body Glide; very important to avoid chaffing.

• A very lightweight jacket, in case I get cold after I've already thrown away my throw-aways.  This jacket even folds up into a small pouch, and is water resistant.

• Other optional items. I'll probably wear the cap, but I'm not sure about the gloves or the sunglasses.  Maybe if I wear the sunglasses, it might actually be nice and sunny during the run.  I'm thinking I might even wear sunscreen.

Oh, did I forget something? Oh, yes the most important item: my running shoes!

Tomorrow, I'll be checking in at the hotel.  I'll also be picking up the race packet at the expo and will get my race bib, timing chip, marathon shirt and other goodies.  It will be a good opportunity to shop and take a look at all the cool running stuff.  I'm so excited! The coaches tell us that we won't get much sleep the night before the race, so I plan to sleep well tonight at home.  Wish me luck.

Counting Down to the Marathon

That time has arrived.  The marathon is only six days away, and it’s all I can think about, it's all I can talk about, it's all I can dream about.  If any conversation starts, if any topic is brought up, if anyone tries to talk to me about anything other than running, then he better be ready to hear me talk about running because that’s what we’ll be conversing about.  No other topic will do.

Do I really want to hear my husband talk about work or politics?  Do I want to hear my friends talk about the royal wedding or American Idol?  Do I really want to argue with my children about whether our sun is a yellow dwarf or a yellow giant?  I think not!  If it’s not related to running, I know nothing, I see nothing.

Look on the bright side, this also means that in six days, this will all be over.  That's right, because after six days I won't be talking about running, right?

Six Mile Run, Not!

Today, for our last Saturday training run before the marathon, we were scheduled to run six miles.  Figuring that running six miles was not a big deal, expecting a lot of rain during our run, and certain that the run would be over quickly, I came prepared for a quick, easy six-mile run wearing my old, beat-up shoes, the ones that died during the twenty-mile run two weeks ago (Note to self: when a pair of running shoes dies, don’t ever wear them to run again).

Hello! Coach announced the route to us. “What? That’s over eight miles,” I exclaimed.

“Oh, it’s not over eight, you can do it,” replied our coach with a smirk.

But I had my Garmin GPS watch, and I remembered running that route on a day when we were supposed to run eight miles, and I remembered that the route was actually longer than that.

Not only was the route longer than six miles, it was longer than eight miles—by one and a half miles (thank you very much).  And if that wasn’t enough, we had to run a loop with super, steep hills, and there was no water or Gatorade at the water stop, and we didn’t come prepared for a long run, and none of us brought our gel packs for the run. (Yes, I can hear the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song.)

When we got back, I considered dumping Gatorade on our wickedly insane coach for psyching us out like that, but I didn’t.  He’s lucky that I’m so nice.

By the way, the run was actually 9.45 miles. Does that sound like six miles to you?

It's Good Friday Already?

www.auroraclipart.com.

Easter is sneaky. It just sneaks up on you.  Of course I actually knew Easter was coming; I have a calendar (duh!), and I’ve been observing Lent.  Spiritually, I’ve been preparing for Easter, but I forgot about the Easter baskets (the materialistic part of the whole thing).

Funny, for Christmas it seems to go the other way: shopping, parties, eating, baking, gifts, and forgetting the spiritual aspect; however, Easter is more focused for me, maybe that’s why I like it so much more, but guess how I spent most of my Holy Thursday, that’s right, shopping for Easter basket stuff. And, yes, I did end up getting sidetracked and bought a pair of sandals for myself, then I realized that Goggie needs a haircut, and what about Easter dinner? 

Now it’s Good Friday, and I will need to (oh, no!) go shopping some more.  And fasting, I’m such a spaz, not only did I spend most of Holy Thursday shopping for Easter stuff, I also spent it eating like it was Mardi Gras.  

This fasting today will be hard because of the marathon training.  Maybe this Good Friday fasting doesn’t apply to someone if they are in the middle of training for a marathon. Ha! I just have to keep telling myself that if I can give up tortilla chips, I can fast on Good Friday.  I’m just glad that the run tomorrow is only six miles: no need to carbo-load.

Oh, and have a Happy Easter!

It Was Just a Ten Mile Run

A week ago, our Team in Training group ran twenty miles. Yes, I mean every individual person training for the full marathon ran twenty miles each (I didn’t want you to think that I meant that our individual miles added up to twenty overall). So when we showed up last Saturday for our weekly long run, we were excited to be running only ten miles. Having run ten miles before; having experienced running in the rain, cold, and heavy wind; feeling like running pros; we were all laughing at each other because it was just a ten mile run. We didn’t even need maps or directions to find our way. This would be a piece of cake!

A few months ago I would have considered a ten mile run to be a long run, the type of run that would make me tired, sore and unable to move for days; however, Saturday’s run felt like a regular short run. As is typical for me, I overdressed for the run because it was supposed to be really cold and rainy and I don’t like being cold or wet, but something funny happened.

(No, I don't mean the person in the picture above.) After half a mile, I realized that it was too hot to be wearing a jacket, so I took off my jacket while running and carried it for three miles until the first water stop, and then I left my jacket there. You heard that right, even though I'm the type of person who doesn't wear shorts during the summer unless it's above 80 degrees, sunny, and humid, I felt warm and I wasn’t even sick (that is if you don't think that running ten miles is sick).

At the halfway point (or mile five, whichever sounds shorter) I ate a gel pack. Well, it was more like I drank a gel pack, or did I eat it? Can you really eat something that isn’t exactly solid? Can you drink something that isn’t really a liquid? These are the types of mind-numbing things I was pondering during this run. I was also picturing how, if I didnt' wear so many layers of clothing or carry so many water bottles with me during the race, I could end up running really fast, so fast that I would pass everyone and end up winning the race.

The underdog wins the race!

Anyway, nothing exciting happened during this run, it was only ten miles what could happen? Unless you count that it started to get windy and cold with four miles left to run. That’s when I sped up to pick up the jacket I so carelessly discarded at the beginning of the run. Boy! Was I glad to have that jacket then. I quickly fetched the jacket, put it on, and was able to stay warm and dry for the remainder of the run. All in all, it was a rather uneventful run.

This was the last long run before the marathon. Now we start to taper our miles with our longest run between now and the marathon being a whopping six miles. We even have a mere three mile run next Monday—I’m not sure I would even call a three mile run, a run anymore. That’s what training for a marathon does to you; you lose any sense of what is normal.

In about two weeks, sometime after the marathon, I will start to regain my sense of normalcy. That's when I start training for my first triathlon, just kidding, I think.

Salmon Patties

Here's a great recipe for Lent.  It uses canned salmon which is frequently on sale during Lent and it's a nice change from tuna casserole.  We like to eat them on buns like burgers.  This recipe makes about 8-12 patties.  I based it on a recipe from the Food Network, but made a few changes.

Ingredients

• 3, 6oz cans of salmon
• 1 1/2 cups of crushed saltine crackers (about 1 row of crackers)
• 1/2 red bell pepper chopped, stem, seeds and membrane removed
• 3 green onions sliced, whites removed
• 2 tablespoons of fresh or freeze dried dill (or 2 teaspoons of dried dill weed)
• 1-2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce (more or less to taste)
• zest of 1 lemon (juice reserved)
• 2 teaspoons of Old Bay seasoning 
• 2 large eggs
• oil for frying

Start by getting all your ingredients ready.  First, crush about one row of saltine crackers.  You can use a food processor like I did here or you can put the crackers in a closed plastic bag with all the air removed and crush them with your hands or a rolling pin.

The crushed crackers will look something like this.  You should end up with about 1 1/2 cups of cracker crumbs.

Next, wash the red pepper and cut it in half.  You will be using one of the halves so you can save the other half in the refrigerator for later use.

Remove the green stem, the seeds and the white membrane from the inside of the pepper.  I usually just tear out the stem, seeds and white membrane with my hands.  It seems to work fine.  If you like, you can always use a small knife to carefully cut out the stem, seeds and white membrane.  Your pepper should look something like this.

To chop the pepper I like to first slice it long ways and then chop it by cutting the slices into smaller pieces.

Thoroughly wash the green onions. Since you will only be using the green parts of the green onions, cut the white part of the green onions like shown here and discard.

Then, thinly slice the green onion like this.

Scrub the lemon well with running water and a scrub brush. To zest a lemon, I like to use a microplane like the one shown here.  A microplane is a type of grater that works great for zesting because it only grates the peel without getting into the bitter white part of the lemon.

After the lemon is zested, you can juice it.  Save the juice to use on the patties after they're cooked or you can use it in the recipe to adjust the moisture level of the mixture.

Open the cans of salmon and drain the juice well.  Put the salmon into a bowl and flake it with a fork.

 

Beat the eggs.

Now that all the ingredients are ready, you can start to assemble the patties.

Add the red pepper, cracker crumbs, green onions, dill, lemon zest (not the juice), Old Bay seasoning and Tabasco to the bowl in which you have the canned salmon.

Mix everything up really well with your hands and then add the beaten eggs. Mix everything really well again with a fork or with your hands so the mixture holds together.  It it's too wet, you can add more crushed crackers and if it's too dry, you can add some of the lemon juice.

Now, using your hands, you can start to make your patties. Press the mixture into balls and then flatten into patties.  These are about 1/2 inch thick and 3 inches in diameter.

Now it's time to fry them.  Heat about 1/2 inch of oil in a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat.  When the oil is hot and bubbly, turn the heat down to medium and place some of the patties in the skillet.  Make sure not to crowd the patties.  The skillet I used here is a 12 inch cast iron skillet and I was able to fry three patties at a time.  If you use a smaller skillet or frying pan, you might not be able to fit three patties at the same time.  Fry the patties for about 3 minutes per side or until they are nicely browned.

When the patties are cooked, remove them from the skillet and place them in a plate lined with paper towels.  Continue to fry the patties until they are all cooked.  To keep the first batches of patties warm as you continue to fry the rest, you can put the plate with the already cooked patties in a warm oven set to about 150-200 degrees.

Serve them on buns like burgers.  They're really good with a thousand island type sauce, lettuce and tomato.  

Where’s Your Pencil?

We homeschool.  We buy pencils. We buy lots and lots of pencils. We buy pencils by the case, big cases of fancy, Ticonderoga pencils, the ones that sharpen nicely, have nice strong leads that don’t break, pencils that last a long time—well theoretically they would last a long time, but I will never find out if that’s true, because once I sharpen one of these pencils, they get sucked into the black hole that I’m convinced we have in our house.  

Yes, I can always find a brand-spankin’, new pencil in the top drawer of my desk, an everlasting supply of pencils.  And all would be well if I didn’t give them to the children. 

“Googie, here is your phonics assignment for the day, and a pencil.  Go work on this in the other room.  I’ll check with you in about fifteen minutes to see how you’re doing, okay?” I say to my son as I hand him a freshly sharpened pencil and his phonics page.

“Uh, huh,” he says and quickly scampers away.  Fifteen minutes later, I go searching for him all over the house.  Surprisingly, he’s not in the other room.  Pencil, phonics page, and child have all gone AWOL.  And, no, I really didn’t expect to find him in the room, but a mom can dream, a mom can believe, a mom can hope, that her child will actually listen to her.  After another fifteen minutes of searching, I find the child hiding in the bathroom, under a blanket, in the bathtub (no, he didn’t fill the tub with water), reading a book about (his current obsession) astronomy.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Nothing”

“Where’s your phonics page?”

“I don’t know,” he says, still under the blanket.  Realizing that asking him to try to find the phonics page and the pencil would waste a few hours, I decide to go looking for them myself. Fifteen minutes later I find the phonics page under a pile of books in the family room, but the pencil is nowhere to be seen. 

 

“Fine,” I say.  “Here is your phonics page and here is another pencil.  Let’s go over to the other room to work on the page together.”  I follow him to the other room. Ha! I drag him to the other room. 

  

He decides that he wants to sit on the floor to work on his phonics page; I sit on a chair right next to him and pretend to read a book in order to make sure that he’s focused on his work.  Five minutes later I look down to check on him.  “So, how much have you gotten done?”

“I’m almost done,” he says.  I check his page and notice that he has barely started the assignment.

“Where’s your pencil?” I ask.

“What pencil?”

“The one I just gave you.”

Surviving a Twenty Mile Run

I survived a twenty mile run, I can’t say the same about my running shoes, but it looks like I’m still here; well physically anyway.   My legs and feet were pretty sore yesterday, but I feel fine one day after the run (please don’t tell my family  because then I won’t be able to lay in the family room, laptop on my lap, feet elevated, and whine that I can’t cook, clean, or do laundry because I just ran twenty miles).

Yesterday, when I left the house at 5:15 a.m., I was worried about the weather because the forecast was calling for scattered thunderstorms.  Thankfully, when I arrived at the Team in Training’s starting area at 6:45 a.m. the weather was perfect.  It was clear and the temperature was in the 50s. First, we gathered for some motivational speeches, then we warmed up, we stretched, and we were off.   

A big pack of us took off into the streets holding our little pieces of paper with our route directions written on them.  Since this was a training run and not a race, we had to run on the sidewalk for most of the time, and we had to figure our way through the course.   Obviously, since I’ve already had experience going the wrong way during a long run, I was particularly careful to make sure to go the right way.

The run went well.  The Team in Training coaches had done a great job preparing us for this.  And thank goodness for all the hill training we did because this run was all hills.  We had long, winding hills.  We had long, winding, steep hills.  At one point, we had to run to the top of a hill, turn around a circle road, and then come back the way we had come.  The whole time I was running up this hill I was able to keep going because I knew that it would be all downhill on the way back.  Ha! Have you ever heard someone say that it was uphill both ways?  Guess what?  It was uphill both ways.

In spite of all the hills, it was a great run. The scenery was amazing.  We went past so many interesting neighborhoods with beautiful gardens, friendly people, sidewalk cafes, amazing houses, and the trees were in full bloom.  At one point, the view just took my breath away and I had to stop to take some pictures.

In the past I was reluctant to run with music because I thought it would be too distracting; however, I was very glad to have music this time.  The music gave me that extra bit of motivation to get going.  For example, at mile thirteen, when we were actually running downhill, the song We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister started to play on my mp3 player.  I started to laugh.  How appropriate was that?  And how about when at mile sixteen I was starting to get really hungry and the song Hungry Like a Wolf came on.  Yes, the music made the run that much more fun.

About two miles from the end of the run, the weather started to turn a bit iffy.  I was worried that those thunderstorms I had read about in the morning were actually blowing in so I stared to pick up the pace so I could get to the end before the storm hit.  Fortunately, I got to the end ahead of the storm.  Unfortunately, some of the Team members were still on the course when the thunderstorm arrived.

Finally, four hours and 2,221 calories later, I got to the end.  I finished.  Now I know that I can run twenty miles, but will I make it all the way to 26.2?  Incidentally, it looks like I won’t be able to wear the same pair of shoes to the actual marathon.  Time to go shopping!

It’s 1:00 p.m., Time to Start School

When someone asks me what a normal homeschool day is like for us, I answer, “I wish I knew.” Today, for instance, I wake up early before anyone else in the house is stirring.  I make my way into the kitchen and put the tea kettle on the stove. Waiting for the tea water to heat up, I revel in the quiet that surrounds me while the dog, curled in bed, is giving me a look that says, “You have to be kidding, I’m not moving.”

I have great hopes for this day, a day with no appointments, no long lists of things-to-do, a normal day. I sit down at the kitchen table not realizing that it would be the last time I would be sitting down for quite some time, pick up my copy of My Daily Catholic Bible, read today’s reading, check e-mail, and log into Facebook as the eight-year old pads into the kitchen and demands breakfast.  Not liking what I have to offer him for breakfast, wanting something else to eat, the eight-year old is crying, stomping, and thrashing about.  I send him back to his room, as the dog deciding to take part in the action, gets up from bed and starts to bark, demanding attention.  I coax the dog outside, the eight-year old to his room, and the whole while the teenager is still in bed blissfully unaware that morning has come.  A minute hasn’t passed before the dog is scratching at the patio door.  I let the dog back into the house just so he can follow me to the teenager’s room to help me do the impossible; wake up a teenage boy.  “Wake up, Bubba. It’s morning,” I calmly say.  

“Yes, I’m up,” he says while still in bed, under the covers, with his eyes closed.  The dog, knowing that this will not work, jumps up on the side of the bed, short, front legs up on the edge of the bed, long body stretched, hind legs still on the floor as if on tiptoe, his face reaching to lick the boy’s face.  The boy laughs and gets out of bed to pet the dog.  With his mission accomplished, the dog, tired and hungry, herds the teenager to the kitchen.  I feed the dog.  The teenager feeds himself.  The eight-year old, deciding that he’s hungry enough to eat the sugar-coated bits of sugar-bits that we actually have and not the peanut-butter-flavored bits of sugar-bits that we don’t have, sneaks back into the kitchen and politely asks for breakfast.  I help him with his breakfast.

The phone rings.  It’s the college-age son whining that he’s starving, has nothing to eat, can’t finish his homework, and has a class later in the day, in other words, I have to drive him to the grocery store.  I quickly shower, throw some clothes on, clean out the back of the minivan to make room for the groceries, and drive to his apartment. “Hi, Junior, ready to go?” I ask.

“Huh? Uh?” he answers as he follows me out to the minivan.  Groggy, slow-moving, shuffling his feet while dragging a shopping cart behind him, he slowly makes his way through the store.  Trying to be patient, I calmly follow him through the store offering useful tid-bits like, “No, you don’t have to buy 10 of those items to get the 10 for $10 price,” and “yes, half of $5.00 is $2.50.”  

Having been in the store for over one hour, my patience wearing thin, I proclaim, “Son, are we done yet?”  Did I actually just say that?  And I wonder where the kids get these witty remarks.  He gives me this look that says You talkin’ to me?  and slowly continues to pull his cart through the aisles.  Finally, after what seems like two hours, he stops with a lost look on his face and proclaims (ta da!) that he’s done.

Not having gone on a run this morning and full of energy, I make a beeline to checkout lane 21 where there is no waiting, unless you count waiting for Junior to slowly drag his grocery cart over to the lane.  He gets to the lane and watches me, uninterested, as I start to unload his groceries.  The cashier is bagging the groceries, the cart is empty, and he just stands there.  “Push the cart over here to the front so we can load the bags into the cart,” I say.

“Huh?” is his reply.  I grab the cart, pull it over to the front, and load his bagged groceries back into the cart.  I pay.  We leave the store with the newly purchased groceries and go back to his apartment, where we grab the grocery bags (thanks goodness for bags with handles), open the door to the apartment building with our feet since our hands are loaded with bags of groceries, and in one trip up the stairs we get all those groceries in the apartment.  Mission accomplished.

Back at home I realize that it’s lunch time.  We eat lunch. We pray our morning rosary and afterwards I announce, "Kids, it's 1:00 p.m., time to start school today!"

It's now 4:15 p.m. and we're diligently working on our homeschool. The phone rings.  It's Junior.  "Now what?" I think hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. Apparently, he's finally awake.  He just wanted to thank me for having taken him to the store today.

It's Day 23, How is Lent Going?

This Lent I thought that I would give up something meaningful, so I gave up tortilla chips.  As a normal person, you may think that giving up tortilla chips is a crazy thing to do.  Who gives up tortilla chips?  Yes, I know that most normal people give up things like candy, chocolate, soda pop, T.V. or Facebook, but I’m not normal so I gave up tortilla chips because I was eating them all the time. I would eat them with my meals, I would eat them between meals, I would eat them in a house, I would eat them with a mouse, I would eat them here or there, I would eat them everywhere. And, I couldn’t figure out why I was never hungry.  I just thought that I had a small stomach, but apparently I hadn’t realized how many tortilla chips I was eating.

The first week without tortilla chips was really hard.  I stopped eating them, and all of a sudden I was always hungry.  It was an unbearable hunger that I couldn’t figure out what to do about. What was I going to eat now that I wasn’t eating tortilla chips?  It wasn’t until the second week of Lent that I realized that I probably should eat something else instead of continuing to obsess over how I couldn’t eat tortilla chips. I tried eating apples (yum), and carrots (yum!), and pears (yum! Yum!), and even grapefruit—I never thought that I would see the day that, instead of eating tortilla chips, I would be eating a grapefruit and like it.  Last Sunday I decided to eat a few tortilla chips, since Sundays are not officially part of the 40 days of Lent, but the chips just didn’t taste as good as I remembered them tasting.

Now it’s day 23 of Lent and I’m beginning to think that I wasn’t hard enough on myself.  Maybe I should give up something else; on the other hand, getting over the obsession I was having with tortilla chips by fasting from them has given me more time to focus on the other aspects of Lent, such as prayer and almsgiving.  For me, giving up tortilla chips has been actually good for the soul.

Now, how is Lent going for you?