Posts filed under 'Running'
Today’s post is brought to you by Jet Lag, keeping me awake from 3-6 am for the next few days.
I decided that I probably shouldn’t let an entire month go by between posts, so here I am. I arrived in Germany yesterday for a couple of concerts with Absolute Ensemble. This is a group I have been a part of for over ten years now, but this is my first gig with them since 2006 when we went to Vienna and Sicily and I was pregnant with Ashok. This time around, we are in Bremen for the Bremen Musikfest, a festival we have attended for several years now. The concerts will be great, I’m sure, but the real fun is getting to hang out with all these folks that I haven’t seen in years.
I am here alone, which has been hard. I miss the family like crazy and I considered bringing Ashok, but decided in the end that the stress of the long journey, jet lag and hanging out with a foreign babysitter (that I would have to track down) while I work might not be more fun for him than hanging with his Pops for a week and a half. Thank goodness for Skype-we have been able to video chat twice already since I arrived, which has made a huge difference. Brian will definitely have his hands full, but he has already scored major points by purchasing a talking Elmo doll which Ashok was happy to show me during our chat a few hours ago.
Last night we had a wonderful dinner at a Syrian restaurant in town. Eating Middle Eastern food is really the way to go in Germany. There are so many immigrants from that part of the world here, and they are definitely the salvation when it comes to the German dining experience. I wish I had brought my camera to document all the delightful things that appeared on the table, but chances are I would have been far too engrossed in eating to remember to photograph anything. I had a wonderful lamb dish, served on a plate of hummus that was preceded by an assortment of six vegetarian appetizers in small plates including fresh falafel and stewed eggplant. I managed to make it through the meal without falling asleep in my hummus, an amazing feat considering I had only slept for about two and a half hours since arriving. After dinner, I hung on until midnight before crashing, only to wake up again at 2:30 am. If I continue to sleep in 2.5 hour increments, you can except a lot more blogging than usual.
I am hoping to get some good running in while I am here. Running at home has really sucked this summer, another reason I haven’t been posting much. Lucy isn’t the only one who has slowed down considerably these last few months-my times have been terrible and I have felt like absolute crap on about 90% of my runs. I’m hoping the cooler weather and change of scenery here will give the jumpstart I so desperately need. The beautiful Bürgerpark is right next to our hotel, so I don’t even need to worry about navigating city streets or negotiating car and bicycle traffic (the bikers here will run you down like a dog, seriously).
Now, however, I am counting down the minutes until I can enter into the greatest part of this trip-the German breakfast buffet. German food is definitely not my thing, as I mentioned, but they know how to do a very decent breakfast. I look forward to a heaping plate of smoked salmon, bread, cheese and unidentifiable meat products and surely some very strong coffee to get me through today’s rehearsal.
September 4th, 2008
Lucy has been having a bit of a rough time this summer. First a bladder infection, now it appears she has ringworm and requires medicated baths twice a week AND a medication that will likely make her barf that I can’t even track down yet. But most of all, she has been dragging. Lucy has been running with us for the last two or three years. In fact, if it wasn’t for Lucy I probably wouldn’t even be running at all. Bored with walking her and getting my arm pulled out of the socket at the same time, I wondered what it would be like to run with her and that was that. Since then, she has been our faithful companion on many runs. We were always very careful-never taking her out when it was too hot, and never going more than 4-5 miles.
Lately, however, we cut that back significantly. In April, we started noticing that after her initial crazy burst of energy for the first quarter mile or so, she would ease off quite a bit, and by the last half mile she’d be trailing 2 or 3 feet behind. Since that started, we have only been taking her out for 3 miles maximum and cut down the number of times a week we run with her. Still, she drags. Maybe it’s just the summer heat? Maybe she’s not a spring chicken anymore (she turned 4 this spring)? So, this week we decided to bench her for a little while. No running for Lucy until the middle of September and in the meantime I’m going to try and give her some glucosamine just in case it is her joints bothering her. She had an x-ray at the vet recently and nothing showed up, so hopefully that’s not the case.
For now we’re back to walking which, quite frankly, she’s perfectly happy with and since we’re scheduling it around our running days, Brian and I will get a little bit of mild cross training that we usually don’t get. Hopefully, her spirits will pick up soon and maybe we can go back to running someday. All I know is, I love that dog like crazy, so whatever makes her feel better, that’s what we’ll do.
Hiding from the vet at one of many recent visits.
Feel better, pups!
August 14th, 2008
Since we are going to be spending buckets of money on our house in the next few months (see category: Remodel Hell), we decide to pack Brian’s birthday (7/18), our 5th wedding anniversary (7/26) and my birthday (9/10-I’m going to be out of the country, so why not live it up now?) into one day of celebrating. No gifts, which makes life so much easier, just dinner and a movie.
I started this celebration off with a 5 mile run in the morning, which felt less like celebrating and more like drilling a hole in my head with a dull pencil. A truly miserable run, I’m hoping it was just the muggy weather.
After that, I assumed we would just hang out with Ashok until Brian’s mom arrived to babysit, but no, there was one more home improvement task to be tackled. We are planning to put a few large trees in pots out in the backyard, since we have nowhere to plant (swimming pool=concrete) but have been struggling to find the perrrrfect large pots to put them.
Immediately after we took him out he said, “again!” even though he appeared to be completely confused as to why he was in there to begin with. Anyway, that pot isn’t the one we bought but without providing too many boring details, we did finally settle on something.
Our real celebration began at 3:00 when we high-tailed it to a showing of The Dark Knight. I liked the movie, it was definitely entertaining and intense but I have to say, the amount of violence was a little over the top. It was particularly disturbing considering that the lady one row in front of us brought her young kids with her, they looked like they were about 10 and 7. Nice.
Then, the part I was really excited about: dinner at Osteria Mozza. We came here for my sister’s 40th and had an incredible meal, so I was thrilled to go back. This time around was no disappointment, we had an incredible meal and a fantastic server who recommended great wines. (If food talk bores you, you may want to stop reading here as I am about to give a grueling play by play of our whole meal, mostly so I can relive it and drool.)
Beverages: one thing I really enjoyed about their wine list was being able to order 250ml. servings of some of the wines, so we were able to try 3 different ones. My favorite was the Sangiovese we had last-of course I was drunk by then, so who really knows. Because I was a drunken idiot, I didn’t take note of any the names of the wines, so I can’t recount them here.
From the antipasti menu we had the Little Gem Lettuces with green beans, noci & pecorino. The noci were actually just walnuts, but they were probably the most perfect walnuts I have ever seen. And salty, which maked them even more perfect. Then we ordered a few small plates from the Mozzarella Bar. They were:
Bufala mozzarella with pesto, salsa romesco, tapenade & caperberry relish - a nice, big dollop of cheese with four spreads to choose from with crostini. I don’t know what a caperberry is but that relish was incredible.
Sheep’s milk ricotta, radicchio, spiced walnuts, honey & fried rosemary - probably my favorite part of the whole evening, the honey was unbelievably fresh and the combination of that with the spicy walnuts (more perfect walnuts!) was incredible.
Burrata with leeks vinaigrette & mustard breadcrumbs - Burrata is a super-soft mozzarella made with cream. The cheese was amazing, but the leeks were only ok. Probably our least favorite thing of the night.
We are both great lovers of cheese, as you can tell. But really, what’s not to like?
After that, I had the Maltagliati (a pappardelle type pasta) with wild boar ragu and Brian had the fresh gnocchi with tomato and basil. They were both fantastic, the gnocchi were of the melt-in-your-mouth variety. For dessert, we shared the Torta del Nonna with honey and pine nuts-more fresh honey and this time on cheescake!!- and a strawberry extravaganza that involved a berry sauce, crepes, gelato and sorbet, but honestly who knows? I was pretty much delirious by this point.
Today, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck (probably a truck carrying cheese). It was worth it, but I think I may just look at pictures of food for lunch today. Oh, who am I kidding? I need a sandwich.
July 28th, 2008
In order to jump-start my running again, I’ve signed up for the Nike Human Race on August 31st. The race is taking place in 25 cities all over the world and benefits your choice of 3 different charities. I chose to donate to the World Wildlife Fund because I love me some animals. I desperately need something to train for to get me motivated and a 10K 6 weeks from now is a reasonable goal. I’m trying to get Brian to do it with me, but he reminded me last night that Labor Day weekend last year was the hottest, most miserable weekend of the whole summer, over 100 degrees and humid. That couldn’t happen two years in a row, could it? Nah.
July 17th, 2008
No, not a baby, or another dog….
Brian’s car was on its last legs (wheels?) so we traded it in for something that sucks down a little less gas. Brian is totally in love, I think I’ve dropped to #3 on his list.
Speaking of gas, we’ve been trying to offset the cost of gas by walking as much as we can these days. It’s a tough thing to do in a city like L.A. where things are so spread out and public transportation isn’t terribly efficient. We took a nice 30 minute walk with Ashok in the stroller and Lucy pulling away on the leash to our favorite breakfast spot the other morning-I don’t feel nearly as guilty about inhaling sausage, eggs and cheese when I know I’m going to be walking a mile and a half home right afterwards. Tonight, we walked a slightly shorter distance with the same gang to a little Italian place, but the food pretty much sucked. Oh well, we tried.
I’m trying to get back into a regular running schedule this week. I’ve been in a pretty serious slump over the last few months and I need to shake myself out of it somehow. I also decided to do the One Hundred Push Ups program. I started last week, but don’t think I was doing my push-ups quite as well as I could, so I’m going to repeat week 1 this week and Brian’s going to start it as well. It will be much easier to stay on the schedule if we’re both doing it. We just have to stop laughing at each other while we’re doing them.
July 14th, 2008
Thanks for all the well wishes in comments on the last post. It took a few days of clutching onto the walls every time I moved around, but the vertigo finally subsided. Once I was finally feeling better, I managed to get sick again so now I’m recovering from a cold which may be developing into a sinus infection. But, at least I can walk and drive and don’t need an escort every time I get up to go to the bathroom. That vertigo, she was a bitch.
Hopefully, this will be the last of the sickness for a while-I haven’t been able to run much at all in the last couple of weeks. I had plans to do a 10K on Memorial Day but I’ll have to see what kind of shape I’m in once this cold passes. It is starting to get hot here, which means I’m going to have to start dragging my ass out of bed at an obscene hour to be able to run at all, something I’m not looking forward to. Today though, I’m going to use sinus pain as an excuse to skip the run and eat a chocolate pop-tart instead. I hear they have healing properties.
May 15th, 2008
Sometime in the last year, WordPress swallowed my About Me and Archives pages whole and ate them with a side of bacon. I have made a feeble attempt to construct a new About Me page with my limited computer skills. The link is over there to the right. Oh, and the post that link takes you to? Is right below this. Whatever, I’m not exactly in this to win awards for blog design.
April 29th, 2008
Indian Barbie modeling my medal
I did it! Yesterday was a great day and I actually ended up having a lot of fun which was kind of surprising to me.
The day started early, since the race was at 7am-I was out the door by 5:15 and was thankfully at the race early enough to get decent parking and not have to stress. Just as I was getting ready to get out of my car, I grabbed my fuel belt and realized that it felt a little light. This was not due to my superhuman strength at 6 in the morning, as I would like to think, but had more to do with the fact that I had forgotten the water bottles that go ON the fuel belt. Oh well, thankfully they had water on the course. I walked up to the start, and I mean UP a serious hill, just in time to hear the announcer describing the course and saying, “If you’re looking for a PR, you picked the wrong race!” How encouraging. He went on to detail all the many hills we would be climbing and I started to wonder if it was to late to switch to the 10K. How exactly did I pick this as my first half marathon?
View of the mountains from the starting line
Once we got started, I managed to stop worrying. After a nice downhill start, we meandered on city streets for about 2 miles before entering the Santa Monica Mountains National Park. The next 4 miles climbed slowly and steadily along trails. I took it really, really slowly in fear of what was yet to come. The scenery was gorgeous but the trail was pretty narrow in places which made passing people, or being passed, kind of tricky but people were pretty good-natured in general.
The view from the trail
After mile 6 the climbing started to get pretty serious but I managed to trudge along at my snail-like pace. At about 7.75, I noticed that everyone in front of me had started walking and was starting to wonder what was going on when I turned a corner and saw the trail head up a switchback along the side of a fucking MOUNTAIN. At that point, I walked too-I probably could have made it at least halfway up the switchback but since i didn’t know how close we were to the end of the hills, I didn’t want to push it. After that horrific hill, the trail cruised downhill for a couple of miles, which felt great. Around mile 9 or so, they had some guy spraying some sort of muscle relief gel on people’s legs which I have to say, felt awesome. Feeling awesome didn’t last too long though, as mile 10 was another crazy hill that had to be walked.
After that last hill, the trail went mostly down out of the park and back into the city where the streets rolled up and down before heading into Chumash Park for the finish. At mile 13 I saw my core fan base:
Some were more interested than others…
Apparently, I looked like this:
A little crazed, if you ask me. And don’t ask me why that fuel belt is riding quite so high, I have no answer other than General Dorkiness.
That last stretch did feel great, and I had enough left in me to haul ass to the finish as fast as I could. My chip time was 2:32:00. Not as fast as I would have liked, but for my first half, I’m just glad I finished and ran probably 90% of it. I’ll definitely pick a flatter course for my next half and hope for a better time, but the scenery on this course definitely made it worth slogging up all those hills.
Afterwards, there was some celebrating:
All pictures courtesy of my wonderful husband and our fancy new camera-thanks, Brian!
And then we went to my sister’s house for waffles and bacon. Pretty much a great morning. We leave for Hawaii in a few hours…hope to post from there if I can fit it into my busy schedule.
April 6th, 2008
I’ve had no time to post this last week, too much work and a little boy with a mysterious rash (not to worry, we went to the doctor and he is fine) have been keeping me busy. Tomorrow morning, I run my first half marathon. My clothes are laid out, Garmin charged, and Brian was nice enough to set up the air mattress for me downstairs in the event Ashok has a rough night tonight and I need somewhere quiet to sleep. I’ll try to post my race report before we take off for Hawaii on Sunday, but if not, expect it a few days later, gritty with sand and smelling of pina coladas…..
April 4th, 2008
I’ve been meaning to write about my 12 miler for a few days now, but work, this website going down, and lots of Easter chocolate have kept getting in the way. Now that dinner is in the oven, Ashok is asleep and Brian is watching the Lakers, I have a chance to post.
Happily, I can report that the run went great! So, so, so much better than my 10 miler two weeks before. I drank a crapload of water the day before, made sure to get out early and beat the heat and took it slooow. Aside from a couple of quick walk breaks to drink water and eat my Clif Blocks, and one quickie right around mile 10 going uphill, I ran everything else. It was such a relief to knwo I could get through it. Time was 2:10:36. I would love to go faster, of course, but I’m trying to focus on just getting through it at this point. This weekend I do 8 and then the Great Race of Agoura Hills is the week after! I am still trying to decide if I am going to stay out there the night before. The race is about 45 minutes from where I live and starts at 7am so I would have to get up pretty effing early to get there on time but then again, there is something to be said for sleeping in your own bed. I’ll continue to ponder. I’m starting to get excited!
Of course, I’m also excited because the day after my race, we are getting on a plane and going to Maui for a week! We haven’t had a real vacation like this in a loooong time, not since we went to the Big Island which was a year before Ashok was born. I can’t wait. Naturally, this Hawaiian vacation will not be quite as relaxing since we will have a toddler along with us, but I am really excited to do all sorts of fun stuff with him. As long as he sleeps (please!), I think we will survive.
March 26th, 2008
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