Celtic Knot 5k

3.1 miles
20:24
1st place female, 3rd place overall

The McDonough siblings came together for another race, although it was only 2 of us this time.  My goal was not to get beat by much more than a minute or two, and I only got beat by a little more than one minute, but that had something to do with the fact that the course was not well marked and Sean ran a bit further than me...and he had to slow down at some of the less-marked turns to make sure he was going the right way...  But we conquered the race field, taking first for men and women.  Happy to say that second place overall was taken by my former (and hopefully future) running partner.  He passed me on the final uphill and urged me to keep up, but I wasn't about to work my lungs any harder than I already was.  He beat me by 9 seconds.

I ran the race pretty hard, but possibly not as hard as I could have.  My lungs are still not on the same level as my legs, and so I ran as hard as I could without putting too much strain on my lungs.  I didn't want to strain them so much that I would end up sick this week, especially since I have a half marathon to run this coming Saturday!

Here's a picture of Delia and I from the award's ceremony.  She ran the kids 1k race.

We were both first female/3rd overall.

PS : this girl gives the BEST hugs! 

Roasted Brussels Sprouts & Mushrooms

Snow Day #8.  I'm so over digging my car out of the snow, scraping ice off my windshield, freezing half to death in polar vortexes, etc.  I know I've been spoiled by mild winters over the last few years, but this is getting ridiculous.  It was 60 degrees yesterday, and then last night it poured freezing rain, and then snowed 6 inches.  So of course we couldn't go to school.  I ended up inside all day long (until this evening when I ventured out to unearth my car).  I had a productive morning, and then felt tired so I took a pre-lunch nap.  I was awakened from my nap by the sound of wet boots squeaking all over the apartment.  I fail to understand why it is so hard to take them off at the door...but apparently it isn't as simple as I think it is?  So I had to get out of bed and grab a towel to dry off the floor before those puddles turned to salt stains.  Because I am also tired of cleaning the salt stains off the floor.  Roommate.  Can't live with one, can't live without one.

I was about to spend the rest of the afternoon being angry about once again cleaning up someone else's mess, but I realize that that is not a productive use of my time or energy.  So I decided to indulge in some kitchen therapy.  First, I made a big pot of my favorite Creamy Carrot-Ginger Soup.  When that was done, it was time to start thinking about dinner, and I decided to try making roasted brussels sprouts.  I had a bunch of mushrooms in the fridge as well, so I decided to roast them too.


1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2) Cut the stem ends off of about 8 or 9 sprouts.  Cut each sprout in half lengthwise.
3) Thoroughly rinse the sprouts and 5 mushrooms (whole).
4) Dry the sprouts/mushrooms as best you can with a towel.
5) Put them in a bowl and sprinkle with sea salt.
6) Coat with a mixture of olive oil/mustard/pesto/oregano.
7) Spread evenly on a baking pan and bake for 30 minutes.
8) Eat them.  They are good to munch on straight off the pan.  Or you can be civilized and eat them for dinner using plates and forks and stuff.

Pre-bake

Post-bake

On top of my soup

Blacksburg 10 miler

Happy to say that I have completed another successful race.  I was a bit worried going into it, having no idea how much my food was going to hurt, or how weak my lungs were going to be.  Turns out my race shoes are a lot nicer to my tendonitis than my training shoes are.  So that was a plus.  And at some point during the race, I realized that I don't actually breathe all the way in when I'm running.  So I started focusing on breathing in as far as I possibly good before exhaling.  And I imagine that helped my lungs not quit on me like they did at Beckley back in October.  So that was another plus.

I wasn't sure how many people were in front of me for much of the race, but there was an out and back portion with the turn-around at mile 7, so that gave me a chance to count the females ahead of me.  I was 7th place female for almost the entire race, but 6th place started walking around mile 8 so I decided to pick up the pace and fly by her.  Around that time, the wind was really picking up, pushing against me.  So I put my head down and pushed back.  For some reason, I find it easier to push the pace when I am pushing into the wind.  It was weird, but that wind actually did help me finish the last 2 miles a lot stronger than I would have without it.

I had absolutely no idea what kind of a pace I was running.  I wasn't wearing a watch, and there were no clocks on the course.  Since I was in the top 10, I assumed I was doing pretty well pace-wise, but I knew I wasn't running my normal top-shape pace.  I was quite pleased to come around the final turn towards the finish and see that the race clock had just turned 1:10.  I finished 14 seconds later.  I am super happy with my finish time.  I would have loved to be under 7 min/mile, but I was not expecting it.  I was expecting to be closer to 7:15, considering how little I've been able to run lately, and how few miles I've gotten.

After the race, I picked up some insoles at the running store, so hopefully they will help my foot hurt less on training runs.

The day in pictures:

Pre-race "selfie."

Sporting my Irish Pub gear...so glad to have a sponsor this year!

I ended up ditching the long sleeve shirt before the race, it was in the high 50s!

Post-race photo.

Super grateful to these girls for doing all the driving on this trip, I don't think I would have made it home alive if I had had to drive home alone. I was beyond exhausted. 

Needed a post-race bacon cheeseburger, and Trish sent me to The Cellar while she and Bethany got Chipotle.  They had such a fabulous selection of beers that are unavailable in WV, I had to pick out a selection while I was waiting for my burger.  The one on the far right is a "Chocolate Peanut Butter Porter." I can't wait to find out what that tastes like...it sounds intriguing. 

20 days til my next half marathon. After today's success, I'm not so worried about it!

Chia Seeds

Chia seeds are a "super food,"  one of those foods that is ridiculously healthy for you.  1/4 c of these tiny little seeds provides 25% DV calcium, and they are a better source of Omega-3 than salmon.  They can be easily added to all sorts of dishes.  Since they are so small, you can mix them into things and not even notice them there.  

I tried them for the first time tonight, and just mixed them into my salad.  It was rather too much chia seed and not enough salad, but I believe I can make them more appealing if I find something else to mix them into, or simply add less seeds to a salad of that size.  They absorb 10 times their weight in water, so they get rather gelatinous when you chew them up.  It's quite an odd feeling.  I think they would be better off getting mixed into yogurt or a smoothie.  

I had some delicious pasta and meatballs with my chia salad.  

Race postponed

I was supposed to run a 10 mile race yesterday, but due to all the snow that got dumped on this part of the country, the race was pushed back to next Saturday.  Convenient for me, because I haven't run since Monday.  My foot started hurting again, and I caught a head cold on Monday evening.  It seems that my immune system was so busy fighting off the constant barrage of flu and pink eye germs flying around, the cold snuck in under the radar.  Luckily I was able to fight it off in just a few days with dayquil, green tea, and lots of sleep.  The snow days on Thursday and Friday helped with the extra sleep part.

The foot pain however has been quite annoying.  Yesterday, I finally got around to asking a doctor friend to look at it.  The verdict is metatarsalgia.  I'm glad it's not a stress-fracture or anything worse, but the annoying part about this diagnosis is that it may mean I need to throw out my stockpile of running shoes and find a new model to run in.  I'm currently rotating three pairs of the same shoe, and I have a 4th pair that I haven't even taken out of the box yet.  It turns out they might be too flexible for my feet.  I'm going to try insoles first, and hope that they will enable me to keep the same shoes at least until I get good use out of the ones I have already bought.  But, if I have to buy new shoes, so be it.

In the meantime, I got lots of exercise shoveling snow on Thursday and Friday.  Here's before and after photos from Thursday's shoveling adventure.  On Friday, I shoveled the snow from around the front and side of my car so that I could actually get out of the parking spot.  I will be parallel parking between 2 snow banks for the foreseeable future.

On Friday, I hiked up the hill to a friends house to hang out for awhile, and then took pictures of her kids sledding.  

 I got a few snowballs thrown at me!

I came out of retirement and it was awesome.

So, I used to sing.  A lot.  And then I moved to Lewisburg, where my only singing options involved a cappella opera/classical music.  Which I was told sounded quite lovely, but I absolutely hated doing it.  Eventually, I decided I wasn't going to sing unless I had someone to accompany me, and since I didn't have anyone to sing with, I quit.  Last spring, I helped out with a Glee club, and there was a guy in the club who played guitar and had a voice that I was pretty sure would blend perfectly with mine.  So after the final glee club performance, I told him to let me know if he ever wanted to get together to sing stuff, cause I thought it would be fun.  

It took us about 6 months, but we finally managed to work our schedules so that we could get together and sing.  And it was awesome.  Around that time, I got asked to sing a few songs at a fundraiser at the Pub.  It was expected that I would get up and sing Danny Boy and a few Italian songs.  

I had a better idea.  Blair and I got together for a few late night practices (the inconvenient part of us having very different schedules) and we ended up with 6 songs to perform. The performance went great, we got lots of compliments (and I think only a few people were disappointed by the lack of a cappella opera).  Some friends came with their kids, who I babysit, and their daughter brought a pom pom and waved it around while I was singing.  It was super cute. 

I set up my camera to record the whole show, but somewhere near the end of the 4th song, it apparently got bored and stopped recording.  So that was a bummer.  But at least we have the recordings of the first few songs.  The buzz of crowd noise on the videos is a bit annoying, but you can still hear the singing. 

Day is Done

Falling Slowly

Rangers / Stay

We have been invited to come back and do a concert at the Pub  sometime, when we have enough songs to do two 45 minute sets.  So, we will be working towards that!

Getting back in shape

After 12 days off, I began running again on January 31.  We had a break in the nasty frozen weather, and the temperature rose into the 40s.  There was still a lot of ice on the roads, but they were clear enough to making running not look like a death sentence.  I didn't get home from school until 4, and I had to babysit at 5, so I didn't have a whole lot of time, but I missed running and wanted to enjoy the "warm" weather, even if only for 20 minutes.  So I went for a short & fast run.  2.76 miles in 19:26.  My legs felt pretty good.  My lungs were completely shot.  12 days off seems to have weakened them quite a bit.

Yesterday, I didn't even try to run fast.  I stuck to a jog, wanting to give my legs some exercise without straining my lungs.  Half a mile in, my left knee started hurting.  A mile or two later, my right knee started hurting.  The pain in both knees was persistent, but not progressive, so I didn't stop.  The knee pains I had in high school were progressive; the longer I ran, the worse they got.  Since this pain was mostly just annoying, I figured I'd ignore it.  I did 4.7 miles.  The knee pain was wearing off by the end of the run.

Today, I did 5.2 miles.  My right knee hurt a bit worse than yesterday, but still wasn't a progressive pain.  I suspect that the culprit (besides too much time off) is that I worked out a few times during my time off from running.  Not to say that working out is a bad thing, but I think the working out while not running caused my muscles to strengthen differently, so they are now pulling on my knees.  Just a theory.  But it makes sense.

So after 12 days with 0 miles, I just got 12.66 miles for this week.  Not a bad start.  My next race is in 13 days.  It will be my first 10 mile race.  I'm curious to see if I can run much faster than I do for a half marathon.  I am imagining that my pace for the majority of the race will be about the same, but I get to kick sooner, so perhaps my final overall pace will be a bit faster.  Of course, that all depends on my lungs getting back into shape in the next two weeks...so we shall see.

In other news, I'm doing a photo-a-day for 2014.  On Friday, I couldn't choose just one, so I made a collage. I love the over-all goofiness of these pictures...

And here is me loving the 50 degree weather on Saturday.

If you want to check out my other photos-of-the-day, head over to my website!

2014 Photo-a-Day