Now if only I looked as good as Kim Novak. I woke up this morning with a brutal case of vertigo. This has never happened to me before, although I am severely prone to all varieties of ear maladies (damn you, small eustachian tubes). When I got up from bed this morning, the whole room was spinning, a sensation I usually associate with drinking an entire bottle of Southern Comfort, and yet I had been respectably sober the night before. I blame allergies and my stupid middle ear. Thank goodness my mom was staying over last night-Brian was out of town on business-otherwise I don’t think I would have made it to the couch without barfing. She was also able to get Ashok out of bed and dressed while I sat in the living room staring at an electrical socket to keep myself from falling over. What a horrible feeling, and I didn’t even get to get drunk first.
Needless to say, I have been stuck on the couch for the remainder of the day. Brian is back now and being a great nurse and I am hopped up on Benadryl and feeling a little better. Standing up, or even moving my head too fast while seated, will send me reeling though, and I’m wondering if I’m going to be calling in sick for work tomorrow.
mmmm…..benadryl kicking in now…night ni……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
May 7th, 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
My name is Shalini, rhyme it with “colony” and you’re pronouncing it pretty much right, although my Indian mother might not agree. I play the violin for a living in the greater Los Angeles area which means I spend a lot of time driving on the epic L.A. freeway system. I play in a couple of orchestras, on some TV shows and movies and in various other places but no more wedding gigs, I left that behind in New York.
Run, Lucy, Run started out as a running blog back when I was just getting started with slow, painful loops around the Rose Bowl. I eventually picked up a little endurance and (very) little speed and completed my first half marathon in April of 2008. Lucy is my faithful brown dog who accompanies me on most of my runs during which we try to burn off some of that puppy energy that is still lingering in her at age 4. I am married to Brian, who is a computer genius/musician/most patient man on earth. Our son, Ashok (I have no rhyme for this one yet, check back later) was born in September of 2006 and now makes fairly regular appearances on this site as well. We have a cat who is named after a lawbreaking TV psychic with a Jamaican accent. I’ll let you guess.
I can be contacted at shaliniatrunlucyrundotcom.
April 29th, 2008
We’re in the midst of our first official wildfire in Southern California. We live about 10 miles away from the Sierra Madre fire and although we are in no danger at all, I can smell the smoke from where I’m sitting inside my house and my eyes have been burning for the last hour. I had planned to run 6-7 miles today but with the air like this, I decided to skip it and stay inside. I’m hoping tomorrow will bring good news, hopefully they can get it contained, but it sounds like it will probably take a couple more days. I know a couple of musicians who live in that community so I’m thinking good thoughts for them and all the other people who had to leave their homes this weekend.
April 27th, 2008
Ah, springtime. Flowers, fresh air, and beautiful sandals I can’t afford.
April 25th, 2008
So, apparently, my one week Hawaiian vacation somehow turned into a 3 week blogging vacation. I have plenty to write about, the vacation recap including posting pictures of a very sandy baby, the baby shower I threw last weekend and how I managed to not only throw a shower but also throw my back out, oh….the shenanigans. But, I’m lacking in inspiration and I can’t seem to get it up for blogging right now, excuse the euphemism. I’m sure I’ll get around to it. In the meantime, I have finally joined Twitter, after months of thinking it might be fun but fearing yet another website I might get addicted to, (Hello, Facebook!, I’m talking to you! I hate you!). The good thing about Twitter, is that I don’t even have to have clearly formed thoughts to put something out there. I think it may work magically for me as I apparently do not have an attention span anymore.
April 24th, 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
March 23rd, 2008
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