New tricks up our sleeves...

Exciting things are happening chez moi... that means 'at my house' ;-)

Miss C and her new trick.

You've seen her jump off retaining walls and scale safety gates.

You've seen her take stairs three at a time (she did 4 once... got it on camera, click and skip ahead to 2:11 to see it).

You know she is unstoppable.

And last night ...

Fortunately, as soon as I said, "Okay, honey. Come down now." She did. I think she's been watching The Waltons... or maybe she read yesterday's post. In any event, a little obedience was a nice treat for me :)

Now for my new trick.

A friend of mine was reading about my running and biking on Facebook. He asked if I had ever heard of PowerCranks. I said that I hadn't. He 'splained it to me. Then he let me know that if I ever wanted to check it out, to let him know and he'd hook me up. I checked out the testimonials. Go check them out. Go. Sounds pretty awesome, right?

I made the call.

"Hook me up," I said.

This week he dropped this off for me to try...

I know it's hard to make out what it is because of all the awesome collectibles stored in the background. My garage is a veritable treasure trove :) It's a stationary bike with PowerCranks... independent cranks. You have to lift up and not just push down. Both legs must work equally. 

see how both pedals are down at the same time?

I've tried it out a little bit, and it is sooooo cool. I already feel more balanced and like my hip is getting stronger...after just a tiny bit of using this thing!

I am definitely going to work on incorporating this into my cross-training, and I'll be sure to update you all on how it's working out :)

Any new tricks up your sleeve? How about old tricks? Or good jokes?

No nap and how bedtimes worked for the Waltons...

I did not nap today.

I ran.

And I changed the bedsheets.

That nap yesterday really did a number on me. It was even worse than I first thought. My single-parent coping skills were nil. I was tottering around like one of the undead all afternoon. When I finally started to get a little energy back, the kids effective sucked that right outta me during the bedtime routine. Why is bedtime so sucky? It is never like that on The Waltons.

source

Mama:  You children go on up to bed now, y'he-ah? Yo' daddy n' I need to talk some things o-vuh.

All seven of the children, in unison:  Okay, Mama!

There is almost never any backtalk. No one says, "I don't want to!" and runs away like it is some awesome game. Jason never demands to know, "How come I have to go bed at the same time as Jim Bob? I'm 15...and he's SIX!" There is no door-slamming, no screaming, and no 'hmph, hmph, hmph'-ing. They simply go to bed.

And once they are in bed, no one is running around upstairs, opening and closing doors or sneaking playing with legos. They say the good night deal... "good night, mama," "good night, Mary Ellen." "good night, daddy," "good night John Boy." And they are done.

Who here has that? Anyone? C'mon... anyone?

I know why it worked for Mama and Daddy Walton. A woodshed and a belt. They never had to use them or even threaten to use them, but they were there... the looming and omnipresent enforcers. Or maybe kids back then were just more respectful by nature.

Anyway...

By the time my kids were all finally in bed, I was collapsed in a heap again... but this time on the living room floor. No way was I going out to do a tempo run. Instead I did important sedentary things like played on Twitter and Facebook and read some blogs and tried to drum up votes for yet another contest I had entered. After that disastrous nap, sleep was kind of scary to me.

All that led to my run this morning. Since I'm getting ready for this race, running was kind of important. I was set to do a 3-mile tempo run at a little faster than my half-marathon base pace... so looking at about 8:50 per mile. It was hot and sunny. I planned to do the run on a flat, straight road... next to the Bay with no shade and no protection. Water on one side, freeway on the other.

My 2-mile warm-up stunk. I considered just going home after it. But no, I needed to get this run in. Ugh, I was so cranky about it. So I set off... and just could not control my pace. And the heat was really hot so I took off my shirt... which added a whole new voyeuristic element to the run. The volume of vehicles because I was next to the freeway meant a vast number of hecklers/oglers. I am so not used to this! I run at night in my little development. No one sees me. No one says anything to me. I got a lot of "Go, baby! Go!" and truck honks. Okay... a little ego-feeding but I recognized that they were traveling at a high rate of speed and were some distance away, so it was mostly distracting. Whatever.

The tempo pace... not 8:50 at all... 3 miles @ 8:24/8:25/8:22.

At least I was consistent.

And I got it done.