roll of thunder

The very first thing I saw when I got up this morning was lightning so that told me I would be inside on the treadmill today.

I was 10-15 minutes into it, iPod keeping me company, when I heard something like someone had fallen off a bunk bed - only problem is we don’t have any bunk beds in our house. I stopped the treadmill to go have a look and that’s when I saw it.

Rain! It was likely the thunder I heard. Not something I have heard a lot of this year.

The news is estimating that Dolly will hit around noon our time today. I wonder how much rain we’ll get out of this.

35 minutes come and gone on the treadmill today.

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permission

Summertime means lots of evening conference calls for work because of the difference in time zones. Since it works well for our schedule to have Monday and Thursday night conference calls, I am considering moving my Tuesday morning runs to Wednesday.

Or at least give myself permission to make that call each week for Tuesday.

This much I know; tonight’s call ended past my bedtime so if you don’t hear from me in the morning….

;)

half hour

I need to start writing down the weekly schedule again on my blog like I’ve done in years past; that’s my best way of remembering what I’m supposed to run each day.

I ran 30 minutes this morning; I’m pretty sure that was the plan. I’m working via email with Garmin support; I had an error message when I tried to download my data from Saturday and still don’t have it working yet.

SBC changed something in their servers over the weekend; I just got up and running again over lunch today which means I’ve long since forgotten any interesting tidbits from this morning’s run.

1st long run

I had a post started yesterday then something got hung up in the system (my server, WordPress, I have no idea) and I couldn’t get it to post. It wasn’t anything too relevant anyway so I just erased it and started over.

So! Today was the first organized long run I’ve been to in quite a while. They’re still working out some of the kinks but overall I give it a solid B+. One of our coaches was on a bike, circling up and back and that really helped.

I was near the back of the pack for red with just a few behind me so I stayed with them to make sure they knew the route since the last one up was brand new to the group. While the route will get easier starting as early as next week, the first week is a bit of a learning curve because to get “out there”, we start right off by winding our way through a neighborhood.

On the way back in, I was running a bit by myself and caught up with one of the coaches for another group (I’m not sure I ever did remember which group) so I ran in with her. I’d never really talked to her before but it sure made the time go by quickly and we had a lot in common so it was nice to meet someone new.

After the run, I caught up with as many people as I could find to snap their picture for our log-in sheet since I don’t have all of them yet. I think I got another 20-30 of them so that project is coming along nicely. I got all the grief I deserved that I have a picture of myself where I look nice and neat, in street clothes and makeup, while I also was going to be taking photos of everyone who just ran 4 miles in Houston heat.

;)

I tried to explain to them that the purpose of the picture is that if they collapse on the road and we’re trying to identify them, then they’ll probably be hot and sweaty and looking like their photo anyway.

Afterwards, I updated the list and also dropped an email to the head coach of the red group with an offer to host a red group running party at our house. The red group is the largest - I think it’s easily 60-70 people (although yellow isn’t far behind that) and it also has the most newcomers. So we’ll see if anything comes of that.

It’s well documented that I hate to drive, so this solves 2 things at once - getting to know the group a bit better, and I don’t have to go anywhere!

mid-week run done

Oh good. I met my goal for the week, which was all the mid-week runs. That was going to be more of a challenge than the one on Saturday because of the schedule in the family this week.

Late nights and early mornings. But it all worked!

8 months

It only took us 8 months, but finally tonight we found everything we need, except for curtains which I plan on sewing myself anyway, to make The Ultimate Houston Astros Baseball Bedroom.

For the 4-year old.

Not me. But if I end up liking it a lot, I might see if he’ll switch us rooms.

I’ll probably bore all of you with pictures once everything comes in (about 3 weeks).

The girl is already set with a totally tricked out Harry Potter room so I had to find a project.

Pony, I hope we see you tomorrow night at 7pm at the Berry Center! I forgot to mention that it ran until 10:30pm or so last year.

watch your shoes

I just realized I never did write anything yesterday. Oops.

Another 25 minutes this morning in my new shoes. Very comfy! 76 degrees out this morning; I’m pretty sure there was no wind to speak of in our fair city.

I was busy playing chauffeur at 6:30 yesterday evening - raining cats and dogs where I was driving to. Thunder and lightning at home. Did we get more than 2 drops at our house? Of course not.

Mr. Boone must like the running watch I bought him; it was stolen on our vacation (sad tale) and he mentioned last night he was planning on replacing it.

the answers

Wow. I haven’t even read a post yet, but I’m behind by just answering comments. Here goes.

1. Am I going to the drum & bugle corps competition this Thursday at the Berry Center? YOU BETCHA! To me, it is totally worth the price of the ticket (they aren’t cheap, that’s certain) but then again, I played trumpet in the marching band not only in high school, but also in the Marching 100 at IU for 4 years so that kind of thing is right up my alley.

I don’t think it’s so loud that it will bother your ears though. Part of that is because they are marching in formation some of the time, so on occasion they’ll be facing the opposite side (everyone sits on the “home” side). I don’t think there’s such a thing as a brass instrument that plays too loudly though, so take my comments for what they’re worth.

Off topic, our church very rarely has brass instruments during the service but when they do, it’s behind plexiglass, which is just a crying shame in my opinion. I always comment that the poor things look like they’re in prison.

I think you should definitely go! When’s the last time you went to something like that? It’s summer, it’s fun, I’m pretty sure they have frozen lemonade there, does it get any better? When I question spending money on something like that, I just remind myself that my oldest brother was 44 when he died suddenly, and that reminds me life is short - take it all in while you can, be all that you can be.

2. Yellow vs. Red. Sadly, I am definitely not running yellow pace these days for any number of reasons. Oh wait - just one reason. I’ve done a lousy job of staying up on my running (but I did indeed run this morning with no walk breaks in that fabulous hot Houston weather). So I’m quite slow these days. I also had an issue with plantar fasciitis earlier this spring though, and I sure don’t want to aggravate it by signing up for more mileage/time and so forth so I’m definitely trying to play it easy and not stress myself out over moving back.

Actually, there is a 75-90% chance I will move to the half before the season is over. I know of someone who’s running the half this year for the first time and I’d really like to run it with them. Provided they stay up on their training, and I fully expect that to happen, then I will switch. That’s on the TBD list.

3. Coaching a Fit group. Well, they actually have a gazillion Red coaches. Actually, I’ve unofficially helped out in that capacity the past couple of years, at least part of the time. Last year there was a new runner in the yellow group who wasn’t from the area. I ran with her a number of times until she got comfortable with the route as the season progressed.

The year before that, I ran with 3 other people that we generally were at the front of the pack for the Red group. Because we knew all the routes for the various mileage, we’d lead the pack out.

Right now I’m helping on the side; today I’m working on the sign-in sheet; I have the names of all the members, and pictures for most of them so I’m creating a template where they’ll check in before each Saturday run, and check out afterwards.

I’ve been asked to step up to a different capacity in the next couple of seasons which I’m giving some thought to. That’s also a TBD.

The thing about officially being a coach is you need to be CPR certified so we always need plenty of those around. But anyone can take on the role of leading when the opportunity presents itself.

on paper

Back home from vacation (which was great!) and it’s officially Houston marathon training season. Actually, it started while we were gone.

The first few weeks are pretty easy; this morning was 25 minutes. I had lots to think about while I was out there so the time passed by quickly.

I’ll check with the red coach later on, but this week I think is something like 20-25-20 minutes (M/T/Th) then 4 miles on Saturday.

I am a gazillion miles behind in reading everyone’s blog. I will probably spend the next month catching up with everyone!

happy birthday!