Nobody Puts Emu in the Corner

Now I've had the time of my life...

and I owe it all to you...

I really appreciate the tremendous response on my Garmin bitch-session, I got some great advice about an elusive 'average pace' setting (thanks, Jeff, Tricia, RoadWarrior and Lauren). And was shamed into reading my manual (thanks, Patrick). And was reminded about traveltime to and from outer space (thanks, Jill). I used my Ivy League degrees and your pointers and figured it out. Go, me.

This newly-discovered setting made my speedwork Tuesday so much more enjoyable! (skip ahead if that's all you're interested in) Especially since I did it after walking around the zoo all day long. I spent a split-second getting twisted about the prospect of tired legs, but a quick slap reminded me that these guys are my priority right now...

So I shelved my stress, and we had a blast.

Our closest zoo has rides. I never force my kids to see the animals as a condition of getting to go on the rides...I hear a lot of other parents loudly stating this requirement upon arriving at the gates. For me, whatever the kids want at the zoo is what we do. So it was rides first...most importantly the Outback Express train. Miss C had been seriously screeching for hours about seeing these guys..

Wallaroos...bigger than a wallaby, smaller than a kangaroo.

None of them were moving. 

It is debatable whether or not they were lawn ornaments or living creatures.

Big G and I appreciated how the zoo tried to authenticate the Australian Outback experience...

And I never knew how awesomely an emu's camouflage is suited to the California chaparral landscape...

That hairy-ish, haystack-y grey-brown thing is the emu.

I know... you can't hardly see him even when you click to biggify...

see? camouflage in action :)

Big G insisted I take this exciting picture of a motionless alligator...

But I was more interested in cute things like this...

I swear this is the first-ever zoo visit where one of my kids did not fall in on the Lily Pad Crossing.

For real. A miracle.

And action shots like these fighting bats...

One on the left was just a bully. 

Dude on the right was just hangin' out... and other dude just started going nuts on him... 

all males at this zoo (it's right there in front of you, in case you hadn't noticed)...

And these grooming apes...

I started giggling so hard.

This one ape totally looked like he was sunning his balls. And he was. 

Then the other one started grooming him... picking crap out of his groin area...

that is what you see here :)...clicking will enlarge.

But the highlight of the day had nothing to do with male mammal genitalia. The highlight was feeding time at the otter enclosure!

Check out this movie for all the action and squeals of delight!

I love otters!

At the end of the day, when everyone else was finally in bed, it was time to get my speed on. And I did. Total distance was about 5 miles. After a mile and a half warm-up, it went like this...

2 x 0.25 mi with 0.25 mi rest between.... 1st one @ 7:36 pace, 2nd one @ 7:27 pace

2 x 0.6   mi with 0.25 mi rest between.... 1st one @ 7:39 pace, 2nd one @ 7:33 pace

And I followed that with a mile and a quarter cool-down. The workout didn't destroy me. Don't get me wrong...it was hard! The idea was to hit 5K pace... and this was faster than that for sure.

I must say this increased the level of my awe for some of my Nuun teammates. I already knew them to be fast, stellar athletes, but Dorothy (incredible mom of 3 who pushes a triple stroller while running a 6:05 mile), Emily (super sweaty Ironman), Susan (nurse on the run) and the aforementioned Lauren (relay-running goddess) hold this pace for 26.2 miles! While elite/world-class athletes are waayyyyyy faster, I find myself more impressed, more 'wowed' by what I'll call "ordinary" people who are capable of extraordinary things. And running a seven and a half minute mile for an entire marathon is definitely extraordinary in my book! 

Here's wishing those ladies the very best in the upcoming weeks! A few of them are running the  Marine Corps Marathon or the  NYC Marathon ... and Emily is still being a sweaty animal while rehabbing a freshly-broken foot :( sad face for the broken foot part. Go, ladies! You are amazing and inspiring :)

My Moving Comfort Giveaway ends tomorrow (Friday 10/28) at midnight. Be sure to enter here!

And I've noticed that I am startlingly close to 500 followers. There will definitely be some kind of super weird cool giveaway once that happens! Encourage your irreverent friends to check out Taking It On and follow if they know what's good for them ;-)

Garmin Grief

I know my non-running readers will think this is a typo and that I meant to type "Gremlin Grief", and that perhaps I am experiencing some sort of Gremlin invasion like in that movie...

image source

or that perhaps I drive a Gremlin and, of course, am experiencing grief over that hideous and poorly-constructed vehicle... and they are puzzled as to how such an intelligent person as I could choose to drive such a crime against automotive nature.

image source

No.

It is not a typo.

A Garmin is a little GPS device that I strap to my wrist. It tells me how far I've run and for how long and how fast. It is supposed to be the answer to all my running problems. It is supposed to make me happier, sexier, faster, smarter...

Lies. All lies.

Don't get me wrong... it is a super nifty device, and it does about a billion things that I don't even know about. So far, I can turn it on and off, charge it, and recently I learned how to make it beep at me at every mile. It does tell me how long and how far I've been running. And it is supposed to give me accurate pace. That is a lot of valuable and helpful information. But for some reason, it always gets me tense and screwed up.

Well, not 'for some reason'... I know why.

All that info-sharing... I remember this from my rowing days. Sitting on the rowing machine with the little read-out staring me in the face... showing me my output... speed, elapsed time, distance covered, strokes per minute. Realizing where you were in the workout, knowing that you were not as fast as you should be, watching your stroke rate become erratic as you got tired or for some reason lost focus. But there were other days when those numbers in front of you were exciting and cause for smiles. We used to put electrical tape over the read-out so as to prevent emotional distraction from interfering with the workout.

One of the hardest things about my Garmin is that the pace seems super erratic. There is no way I jump from 11:14 to 8:48 to 9:44 all in about 50 yards distance while maintaining an even effort and gait. But this happens all the time. I really never can trust the pace part... which for me is the whole point. Pre-Garmin, I had no problem piecing together routes with Googlemaps, and I have a watch that works just fine. I really wanted something to help me keep track of my pace between the miles and made it so I didn't have to do lengthy mathematical calculations while running to keep track of how things were going.

On Tuesday I did speedwork. Please explain to me how running a quarter-mile (0.25 mile) in 1:57 is 7:55 pace. That is what skeevin', lyin', cheatin' Mr. Garmin tried to tell me. By my calculations, it is 7:48. Kind of important when I was shooting for 1:45. And more than a little frustrating.

Last night I did a 5-mile progression run. After the first two miles, I realized that Mr. Garmin was all over the pace-map like a cheap suit. My per-mile paces when the lap beeped were right on, but the in-between readings were bouncing all over the place. I forsook Mr. Garmin and went by feel for the next two miles. Paces were right on and there was no stress associated with seeing numbers significantly too fast and significantly too slow. I was toast at that point, mentally and physically, and backed off for my last mile. Listening to my body ;-)

I know my lesson here is to not rely on the Garmin. But since I even do my speedwork at home on my loops, having that on-going pacing feature would be super helpful.

Does anyone suffer from similar Garmin Grief? Does anyone know how to remedy this glitch?... I would need step-by-step, 'for dummies' directions.

Has anyone ever owned or even ridden in an AMC Gremlin for real? My dad had a Pinto, which is almost as bad but not nearly as ugly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Remember:  a Moving Comfort sports bra giveaway is going on. You can enter here. You can enter to win until this Friday, October 28.

The forecast calls for...SNOW!

It almost never snows here.  In fact, I can count on two fingers the number of times in my life it has snowed here.  that means it has snowed here twice in the past 47+ years, for those of you who are number-challenged ;-)

It does snow nearby in the higher hills every couple of years or so, but you have to drive 40 minutes to the "mountain" to the west or one hour to the "mountain" to the east to see any sort of accumulation (a few inches or so).  Actually snowing here... in the flatlands... super rare.  Even in the lower hills it's rare.  I remember it happening when I was about 10 years old.  It was the cooooooolest thing ever.  I know those of you in more wintry climates are thinking, "get over it, woman."

My kids have never seen snow.  They are sitting by the window right now.... waiting.  It isn't supposed to even be a possibility until Saturday morning.  I told them that.  They want to wait.  And watch.  They are crazy.  Snow crazy :)

I hope we get snow.  Of course, it might make this weekend's run a little more treacherous... especially since I am out of practice when it comes to dealing with the elements ;-)  Last night it was in the 40's when I went out for my run.  My husband was worried about me being too cold.  So sweet.  I was fine.

The run was supposed to be a speed workout.  I didn't have the patience for all that stopping and starting and warming up and rest-in-between pieces jazz.  I just wanted to go out and run for a bit... so that's what I did :)  I stepped outside, clicked my 'start' button and off I went.  I decided a few minutes into it to try what someone called a "progressive" run... I think it was Mamarunsbarefoot.  I did three miles... 9:49 for the first 3/4, 8:46 for the middle mile and a half, and 8:23 for the final 3/4... followed by 1.2 miles of cooling down at about 11 min/mile.  I loved that the whole thing was over in 40 minutes!

I don't think I could have waited much longer for dinner.  It was already 9:30 p.m.!

Do you like snow?  Did you when you were a kid?
–I love snow.  Glad I don't have to deal with it every day ... especially with kids... extra especially with little kids and babies.  I loved it when I was a kid because it was such a novelty.

Would you like to live where it snows or where the weather is nice all the time?
–I think getting it a little more often than we do would be nice...or I'd like to live a little closer to some place that gets a little accumulations.  But I really do like our weather :)

Reining it in...

I've been running faster than my body can handle :(

Yesterday I got to visit my PT.  I *heart* her.  She gets me.  She understands my mentality... how hard it is for me to just 'play' at a sport.  She doesn't bat an eyelash when I start talking about running stadiums or doing quarter- or half-mile hill repeats.  And she didn't laugh out loud when I mentioned running in the Bay to Breakers... even when I told her I wanted to run it in an hour.

I *heart* her big time.

I also trust her.

She said to stop running so fast on the fast days and that I was right to only do speedwork every other week.  My hip cannot recover properly if I do so much so soon.  My mind, heart and lungs are ahead of my hip.  She reminded me that a year ago I was still limping around in my slippers.  Yes, I could not wear real shoes for awhile there, folks.  "Be smart," is what she said.  "You know how to listen to your body."


So now I need to hunker down and slow down... and hit those target splits/times put forth by my Automated Training Program... even though I am chomping at the bit to haul ass when I see the word "speedwork" at the top of the page :)

Tonight I did a pretty good job:

2x400 @ 2:14 became 2:09 and 2:12
2x400 @ 2:09 became 2:12 and 2:06
2x400 @ 2:04 became 2:02 twice!
2x400 @ 1:57 became 1:59 and 1:56

So I'm getting the hang of it...

Now I get to stretch and roll and eat my dinner!

And then collapse into bed.