I’ve been a bad blogger! I was lazy the first half of the week, and the reason is embarrassing, really.
On Sunday, I did the elliptical for about 45 minutes for my cross training day, and it wasn’t worth blogging about. What a terribly boring machine. I listened to Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! so at least I learned something.
On Monday, I slept in instead of going to the gym, and then had a really tragic situation where I realized halfway to work that I had forgotten my work laptop at home. Since I can’t work without it, I got off at the next bus stop and took a bus back to the park & ride, drove home, got my laptop, drove back to the park & ride, and THERE WERE NO PARKING SPACES LEFT. So I took that as a sign that I should just work from home.
So I did. And I probably could have gone for a run at lunch, but I didn’t. It was rainy and I was lazy.
That night was The Bachelor premiere, so of course I watched all three hours of it and consumed as many glasses of wine while also filling out a bracket of which women I think are going to make it far and which woman will win. You know, classy shit.
Longtime readers will know my obsession with The Bachelor/ette extends way back before I started this blog. In fact, one of my bridesmaids (who also used to be my roommate) in her speech at our wedding reception praised Aaron for his many years of service as a co-watcher of this fine program with us, when the other roommates’ boyfriends conveniently bailed on Monday nights.
She described how Aaron would come over to our house, bring a can of Progresso soup to heat up for his dinner, sit by me and side-eye/roll his eyes at the TV for two hours while we girls analyzed every scene. It was in recognition of this begrudging loyalty that my roommate-turned-bridesmaid bestowed upon him a surprise “final rose” — literally, a long-stemmed red rose that she had hidden under her napkin — to the delight of all of us. It was awesome.
Anyway, I was obviously too exhausted to run Tuesday morning, so that’s my excuse. But here is a lovely picture taken from my office on Tuesday to make up for it:
Creepy fog situation. This was in the middle of the day.
I finally ran Wednesday evening, right after I got my hair cut. Just a boring three miles on the treadmill.
Did I mention that I chopped all my hair off in October after the wedding? I did. It was Aaron’s idea!
I’m aware that is an obnoxious shirt. The photo on the left is the morning after our wedding, when we ate breakfast at our hotel, hence my bleary, makeup-free appearance. I only wore the shirt then, on our honeymoon, and now at home with my sweatpants and fuzzy slippers. I’m not THAT embarrassing of a person in public.
Anyway, short hair is bomb! I get ready so much faster, and my ponytail is just a nub, so it never gets tangled when I run. I’m on board with it for the foreseeable future. Now it’s even a little shorter than the photo above.
Thursday brought another boring three miles on the treadmill. But here’s another unrelated photo from that day:
#spoiled
This morning, I woke up at 4:45 and ran five miles of hill repeats on a steep-ass hill near my house.
I also made the exciting discovery that my Garmin didn’t pick up a signal until I was one mile into the run. Add another hill at the beginning in your mind.
The base of the hill is 83 feet above sea level and the tippy-top is 356 feet, so it’s a 273-foot climb in a little over a half-mile. The biggest climb in the Big Sur Marathon is Hurricane Point, which starts at mile 9.4 at 40 feet and reaches 560 feet at mile 12 — so, a 524-foot climb over 2.6 miles. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot to you, but it’s a bit intimidating to this hill-a-phobe.
Aaron just told me about another route I could run nearby that would give me 750 feet of climbing over 3.1 miles. So… that’s exciting.
Anyway. Now I’m tired. I’ll take Saturday off, then do my long run on Sunday.
As always, you can check out my marathon training plan here.
Dev on Running 