An Egg McMuffin is a terrible thing to waste...

Disaster struck early and it struck hard for me at work this morning. McDonald's was very kind to donate breakfast for all of our phonebank volunteers this morning - and I pass by the McDonald's on my drive in to the studio - so I volunteered to stop and pick up the food.

Imagine this - 15 Egg McMuffins, 15 sausage biscuits, 15 Cinna-melts, 25 hasbrowns, and 15 large (steaming hot) cups of coffee. All packed into one very large cardboard box. The guy at McDonalds loaded the box into my car and off I went. I parked at the front of our building and traversed my way through ice and snow to get to the front doors. There are two sets of doors to get through to get into the building, and I made it through the first set just fine. The second set was a little more tricky, and I carefully balanced the box on my lifted knee as I tried to wrangle with the door. The entire time our security guard was just standing there looking at me...such a gentleman. Just as I thought, you know - I am going to put the box down and prop open the door -kerploosh! The bottom of the box broke loose and so did a torrent of scalding hot, premium roast McDonalds coffee. From the knees down, my precious khakis were now steaming with piping hot coffee. Have I mentioned how hot the coffee was? Yes, I'm pretty sure I have third degree burns on my legs and feet. At this point, the security guard opens the door and says "You know, I was just thinking that I should have opened the door for you."

So, there I was, standing in a steaming, soggy pile of coffee, hash browns, and Egg McMuffins. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. But I ended up laughing hysterically - Megan, if you had only been there it would have made the situation perfect. Luckily, most of the food was salvageable, but the cups of coffee and soaked packs of sugar had to be tossed. The jury is still out on what can be done with the scalded flesh on my legs, and I fear the worst for my khakis and favorite pair of argyle socks.

Getting Back

on the wagon. I've officially fallen off the marathon training wagon, but today I am making the attempt to get back on. March means it's pledge drive time in PBS land, so my schedule always gets really hectic this time of the year. At the station I work at, we pledge live on-air from March 1st-16th. It's a really fun time, but it starts to get crazy juggling all of my normal day to day responsibilites in the office, plus all the work and pre-pledge and post-pledge things that have to get taken care of in the studio. It makes for long days and 7 day, 70 hour work weeks, and I always have a difficult time juggling my work schedule and training. Last year it wasn't so bad because I was training for a half marathon, and it was relatively easy to get back on track with my mileage. With a full marathon training plan, I've found it's not so easy to catch back up. I've only really strayed from the plan this past week, so I hope too much damage hasn't been done.

Luckily, I am off all day today and I am going to get an 18-miler in. It is cold and raining/sleeting, so I am going to head to the gym in about an hour and do the run in three 6 mile segments - just to break up the monotony of being on a treadmill for three hours. I'm really hoping that next week I can get back on track and stick to my schedule - I might modify it slightly since I have been so fatigued from work. I would rather get something in and than do nothing at all. The good news is that starting on the 17th everything will go back to normal.

I think I am really stressing about my training more than usual because I want to do really well in Cincinnati in May. My family is going to be there and I am going to be running with my sister Megan, and I just want to be able to keep up. And I would love to run it in 4:30. This would knock about 35 minutes off of my previous marathon time, which seems crazy, but I really feel like I can do it. I guess we'll see!

Question

I apologize for the lack of posting on here lately. I've had several days at work recently where I simultaneously wanted to pull my hair out and/or bang my head on my desk. But things seem to be looking up! Training has been going really well. I did a 14 miler on Sunday morning that felt good. It was about 50 degrees and breezy - perfect running weather.

I did get a chance try out some new Clif Shot Blok flavors on my Saturday and Sunday morning runs. On Saturday I strayed from my normal Lemon-Lime blok and tried a Margarita flavored blok. Now I generally love most Clif products, but these Margarita flavored bloks are just nasty! I have renamed them Snot Bloks, because that's about what they taste like They are so salty. However, on Sunday morning I struck gold with the Cran Razz flavor - these are great!

I would like to pose a question to any and all runners, nutrition-minded people, or people with good sense that read the blog (that basically means everyone!) Throughout this training regimen, I have been craving sugar like nobody's business. It's all I want, all the time. For the love of my midsection and teeth, I try to keep these cravings at bay with graham crackers and peanut butter, apples, or yogurt - but sometimes they don't do the trick and I go for the fun-pack bag of Skittles (at least I try to keep my portion size small!) or Cookies and Cream ice cream or dark chocolate. I've significantly cut back on my Gatorade intake this training season. During last spring and summer I consumed a lot of sports drinks while training - for one because it was so hot and I was losing so many electrolytes on runs. But during this snowy, icy season - I just can't really stomach the stuff. Is my body trying to tell me something? Or maybe I'm just an emotional eater and it has more to do with the desire to bang my head on my desk while at work...

Update on Emma

I'm pleased to report that Emma is doing fine - she is back to her peppy little self and shows no sign of distress.

We had a big snow/ice/freezing rain storm move through Kentucky last night. I was able to make it to the gym this morning (after about 15 minutes of trying to get the ice off of my car!) and I was the only one there. It was very eerie. I wasn't able to get a really good workout in because the power kept going out...which can be very tricky when running on a treadmill. But I was able to get 2 miles in at an 8:30 pace, so at least I got a good sweat going.

Here's wishing for an early spring!

A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

To borrow from my little friend, Alexander, today has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. We found out that instead of getting a large tax refund like we did last year, we actually owe the government money. Then I found out that one of my favorite weekly running podcasts, Phedipiddations, is going to be scaling way back and cutting back on the number of shows produced. This is actually quite understandable - I know that the host, Steve, puts in a lot of time and effort into the show each week.

But the worst thing that happened today...our precious miniature dachshund fell down a flight of stairs! She's fine, but it was SO scary. We were upstairs working on a shelving system that Chad built, and we saw Emma heading for the stairs. Our upstairs is basically a finished attic, and the staircase is really steep and narrow. Emma never goes up there by herself, and when we do take her up there with us, she always lets us carry her down. But this afternoon Chad was screwing some shelves together and she got scared and started to go down the stairs. By the time we got to the staircase she had already made it to the bottom. I just knew she would be laying there with her little legs broken and her spleen or another internal organ laying beside her. But she was fine - she was walking around and jumped onto the couch like nothing happened. I was sobbing - I saw her little life flash before my eyes as I heard her body tumble down the stairs. I'm always worried about her slipping a disk in her back, and I just knew that this was going to be the end of her. But now she's resting peacefully on my lap as I type this. We'll take it easy the rest of the day and see how she is, but if she shows any sign of distress I'm going to take her to the vet tomorrow.














Emma in recovery mode.

10 Miler

I completed the first 10 mile run of my training plan yesterday in 1:23:26. I was really happy with this time - I was hoping to finish in 1:30:00 or less. I was really surprised to see my split times, considering that I stopped to pet a three-legged collie twice along the route.

Megan...I'm not sure if you've seen this, but hopefully it will help get you motivated in your training!

A New Love

I'm in love with Lemon-Lime Clif Shot Blocks. I had a brief flirtation in the past with them, but the timing wasn't right. After hearing a tip from a fellow runner on the podcast, Phedippidations, I decided to give them another shot...no pun intended.

The tip was to put a shot block over in the side of your mouth and just leave it there. You don't have to worry about chewing it or swallowing it whole (my mistake in the past) - you just let it do its thing. (Adam...no "that's what she said" jokes please!!) So if over the course of 26.2 miles I want to consume 8 shot blocks, I will pop one in every 3 miles. I tested this out on an 8 mile run last Sunday and it was great-my stomach handled them well, and I found that I wasn't as thirsty as I usually get on runs when I use GU. I am going to continue training with the shot blocks and see how things turn out. Plus, wrapped in saran wrap, the blocks are pretty easy to carry on runs.

On another exciting note, I was able to keep a consistent 9:30 pace for the entire 8 mile run. In the past, I've been able to keep this pace for a little while on the treadmill, but as the miles would add up, my pace would climb up to around 9:45 or 9:50. Then, when I would get out on the roads on the weekends I could not manage to get past a 10:00/mile pace. I recently scrapped my original Flying Pig training plan (sorry Dean!) altogether because it just wasn't working. I finally gave in to using the Runner's World Smart Coach training plan calculator, and it has changed my life. I credit my 8 miler at a 9:30 pace completely to the speed work that the Smart Coach plan has me doing. I've always wanted to incorporate speed work into my training, but I just never did. But now I am, and it makes an incredible difference. I feel confident that this is going to help me keep up with my sister and get me to a 4:30 finish at the Flying Pig in May. I'm also hoping that during the upcoming spring 5k season I will be able to complete a 5k in 24:00 minutes. In the past four 5ks that I've run I've come in 2nd in my age group - I'm thirsty for a first place finish!