Athens Weekend

So, this weekend was also fabulous, since I'm trying to schedule seeing everyone in while I'm still in the proper country/vicinity to see them.

Friday was dinner in Columbus with my two favorite law school students Emily and Jesse. :) No photos, since Jes hasn't posted them, but we had a lovely night eating Italian food, drinking white wine sangria, and catching up on each other's lives since graduation.

Saturday, I took off for Nelsonville to spend the rest of the weekend with Jon and friends. The two highlights of the day were Jay's birthday party (sorry! no photos!) and Jon's and my run around Dow Lake at my favorite Stroud's Run State Park. I left Mr. Garmin in Athens (it's going to be a long few days without him), so no map/details, but we did a 7-mile loop, pictured on the map below:

Lakeview Trail
I was really surprised by how hard the run was for me—I probably drove Jon nuts because I ran really slow and even stopped to walk for around a mile. He's a trooper. He even ran ahead (mostly bc he's faster) and thus was responsible for being the one to find out if there were any muddy spots or spider webs in our way. Here are a few cell phone photos from the run:






The trail wasn't stellar, and that night I started seeing red bumps on my legs and was convinced that I had somehow contracted poison ivy/oak/sumac from the run. But, to my surprise, it kept spreading the whole weekend all over my whole body (with Jon TOTALLY unaffected) so that Monday morning I looked like I had the plague and went to see my doctor. Nope, no poison anything, just a super allergic reaction to the antibiotics I'd been put on last week. Apparently I'm now allergic to Bactrim and other sulfa-based drugs. Now that I know this, I'm learning that it's a pretty common allergy. Now I'm on weight gain-inducing steroids and a different antibiotic.

Sunday, we met Judith, the professor from the France trip, for brunch at the local favorite Jana's—a tiny restaurant in The Plains that serves organic/sustainable/local food. I had the "veggie mash" with homefries:

YUM.
Afterward, Ike came over to the house and the three of us went out to shoot at paper targets in the woods. This was my first time shooting at an actual target so I was inordinately excited that I hit the paper at all... and accidentally hit and broke the top wire line one time as well. Didn't know that could happen!


I don't really smoke pipes, but the photo does have a nice effect, does it not
See! This is one clip (9 bullets). Go me!
That night, Jon and I went on a hot date to see The Switch, which turned out to be a better version of J-Lo's The Back-Up Plan (which we hated). We even stayed around after and played some video games: air hockey, skee ball, basketball, "bowling," zombie-killing... I always enjoy when we get to do "first-date"-y type stuff since we really never did at the beginning of our relationship/getting to know each other phase since we were in separate towns.
Look! From real guns, to fake guns!
All in all, it was a perfect weekend. Got to see a lot of my friends and spend plenty of quality time with the boy. We even got to cook dinner together on Sunday before the movie. I hadn't really realized how much I'd missed doing that together! :) Finally, Monday (after the doctor's appointment), I had the chance to run a few errands in Athens and to send my transcripts to my potential grad schools. Emory's application goes live tomorrow... I can't wait! Then, I got home just in time to take my mama out for dinner for her birthday... and learn, after the fact, that there are 14.5pts (?!?!?!) in a 12oz. frozen margarita. Sad fact of the day.

Happy Birthday, Mama!
Now the week feels like it's really started and I'm off to Shred tonight and potentially Zumba. I'm not too optimistic about tomorrow's weigh-in with my dip in activity this past week and the addition of the steroids, but we'll see!


Oh and in other news, I've started reading Eat, Pray, Love. I (occasionally) am one of the "must-read-book-before-movie" -type people, and in this case, I definitely am. I was really resistant to reading this book for a long time, since I'm apparently a snob and shun huge bestsellers (Remember The DaVinci Code? Never read it.) But, the movie trailer looks really good (I LOVE Julia Roberts) and I've heard that only people who've read the book like the movie... So, here I am, loving every anecdote of this book. Can't wait to get to the other countries!
It's TOTALLY different from the last book I read, The Outlander. Another really good read. One of my student's in Paris was reading a book in this series and I spotted it in Chicago while Jared and I were looking for books for our bus ride home. This one's a mix of time-travel (non-hokey) and historical romance. Almost a fantasy book, only no magic and witches and such. It's about an English woman from 1945 who goes back to Scotland in 1743. I really enjoyed it. I'm a bit behind on my 52 books/year goal, but hopefully that'll pick up once i start taking the bus everyday in France!

On that note, what are you all up to? Reading anything good? Do anything fun this weekend?

Crazy Eye

Woke up this morning with an eye that wouldn't open (well, without a warm washcloth) and ended up skipping my 2h of work and having Jon take me to the doctor instead. Diagnosis: the crazy eye (usually known as pink eye). Obviously, I don't really look like Mad-Eye Moody, but I thought it was an appropriate comparison.

One TINY $35 bottle of eye drops and a few emails later, I'm home "sick" and working on tomorrow's conference presentation in Columbus. Seriously though, $35 for a measly bottle of this stuff? I used to buy 5 cent candy drops bigger than this! Well, at least it seems to be working and I'm infinitely less grumpy, even if the crazy eye meant that I had to cancel lunch plans at my most favorite restaurant ever. Also, no group Zumba class either. Sad.

That said, I'm tempted to just put on an eye patch and go to WW and weigh in anyways tonight. After such a horrible eating week, I really just need to put it behind me with a definite number. Thoughts?

W8D3, Good News and a Complaint

Well, I'm going to start with my complaint. ALL day long, my right eye has been itching and generally driving me insane like there was something in it. If it were more bloodshot, I'd be convinced that I had pink eye, but since it's not and I've been sneezing all the time (yay Spring!), I'm just trying to get on with it. But, it's really annoying and kind of painful. Ulgh. If this persists, I'll be going to buy non-contact eye drops. This is doubly annoying since it means I have to wear my glasses and thus have no prescription sun glasses to run in.

Okay, aside from that, the run tonight wasn't stellar. Not only did I sweat up a storm and feel like I was plodding along for the entire 35 minutes, but on the walk back home, we almost got run over by some guy. To make it even more fun, when Jonboy blew up at him, the guy actually stopped and turned around. There were words. Random driver actually yelled at us for walking on the side of the road. I stayed uninvolved (I'd be useless in a fight). Now we're home (and random run off the road guy is long gone) and Jon has called the cops who will be arriving shortly to take a statement. Fun!

Sadly, my 35 minute run did not merit all this drama. Jon's been reduced to a 2 mile max while he's seeing Chris (this PT gets a lot of work from us, apparently) and I felt icky from my eye and a general sense of malaise. Instead to keeping up for a longer run, I threw in the towel at 35 minutes and walked home.

Now to end on a good note: I found out yesterday that I've been accepted as a French Teaching Assistant next year to go and teach English in the Aix-Marseille academy (i.e. school district), pictured at the bottom of this post. Here's to spending 7-9 months in the south of France! That'll make for an interesting running blog--plenty of beautiful places to run there! Sadly, boyfriend won't be coming with me, which will be hard, BUT he will come over for a visit/fab vacation while I'm over there. I'm so relieved to finally know I've at least been accepted, since it was already my Plan B (and I don't have a Plan C). Now I just have to wait to find out more specifics (schools, what age I'll be teaching, etc). I know I'm in that district, but as you can see, it's pretty big so I could be anywhere. I do have family down in the Bouches-du-Rhône area, but it's not for certain I'll be near them. Stay tuned!

Week 5, Day 3

So this morning was the big run I'd been semi-dreading: 20 minutes non-stop. I had to run early so that I could go to see Chris (my PT for my knee) at 10am. We both hoped that I'd run and my knee would hurt and then he could get a better idea.

Today I started out in Athens at my apartment. Broke out the nifty jacked I lifted from my sister and got my play list ready. Since there were no intervals, I opted to use my iPod's stopwatch instead of the podcast—good life choice.

After my warm up, I ended up on the bikepath, feeling really good about the run after my first mile yesterday. To my surprise, the 20 minutes went by really fast and at the end of the run, I felt like I could have probably kept going. Instead, I stopped and walked for 5 minutes, trying to decide how I wanted to get home. In the end, I decided to pass by Jon's work and take a tour through campus instead, since I could easily use MMR to figure out distances since I'm good with my campus geography.

Originally, I was going to try and push myself to run 10 more minutes, but after 10 passed, it felt short and I had good music, so I kept myself going for another 20, then 25 before walking my final 5 minutes home. I've been keeping a steady (i.e. feels kind of slow) pace, but it's seems manageable. In the end, I ran 4.71 miles and if I put the 15m of walking with the 45m jog, that translates to a 4.71mph pace (duh, I know). So, not too bad, I think that puts me on track for my goal of a 40 minute 5k at least.

On a bad note, a) the "nifty" jacket chafed my neck really bad so I look like I'm wounded (or have a hicky?), so that stinks and b) when I got to Chris's for my appointment, my knee didn't feel as sore, so I think he thinks I'm making it up, even if it did steadily hurt throughout my run. Regardless, he used ultrasound on it and taped my feet again (that seemed to help last week) and next week if nothing changes, we're going to look into some $20 inserts that he recommends.

All in all though, epic win in the running department. I think this is beginning to grow on me. AND today means that I'm finished with Week 5, which is supposedly a scary week that induces many drop-outs. I've survived, though with a hurt neck. I think I might have to go ahead and invest in some real running gear.

Week 4, Day 1

I can't believe it's only Tuesday... somehow Monday managed to feel like a whole week in itself. Anyways, the weekend was good, if not very productive in the working out category, but after a 5-day workout week, I needed some time to stay home in pajamas.

Yesterday's workout wasn't stellar due to me forgetting what time Spinning actually started, but today promises to be better. This'll be Day 1 of Week 4 of the C25K podcast, so we'll see how that goes. After the run last week on the real track at the gym, I'm feeling pretty optimistic. I know that I ran a lot slower up there, but it didn't seem to hurt my knees quite so badly or leave me quite so starved for oxygen each time I'd go from the 6.1-6.2 runs to a 4.1 walk break. Today I stumbled upon this article on the C25K site, and it really got my excited for my run today/this week/the next 5 weeks because I KNOW I can do this. It's not pretty and it's not easy, but I know I am capable of doing this.

I remember back in the day when there were certain Pilates moves I couldn't do because my thighs were too big and I was too inflexible... I can do those now, and I remember that the day I realized that, I felt like I'd really made a difference in my daily routine. I also remember the day I decided to try Spinning. Old me would have never tried Spinning regardless of whether or not I would have been able to complete the class because I would have been too embarrassed in a class with that many "in-shape" people. Now, Spinning is still really hard and is always a challenge, but I've been going twice a week and I know that every week I can push myself just a little bit harder and keep up with the rest of the class. I'm sure if I stick to it, running this 5k will be the same, only with a tangible goal at the end.

Speaking of exercise, I had an early morning appt. with the doctor today to go over my blood test results. As anticipated, my cholesterol is higher at 226. Instead of medicine (and because my diet and exercise are already good), she's having me start taking fish oil every day for 6 months and then come back and see her/retest to see if that helped. My good cholesterol is apparently 61, which is good and is what is keeping my heart attack risk at an acceptable 3.7 (where 4.5 is the high number for the acceptable range). She said this is thanks to my exercise habits and to "not stop exercising no matter what" and that I'm "doing really great" and have healthy habits. For someone who's always been overweight and rather out of shape, this kudos for my exercise routine and my diet really felt good. It's good to know that even if I have this hereditary high cholesterol, I'm still on the right track.

She also has me going to physical therapy for my knee next week... it's been kind of bothering me, so I want to check it out before anything bad happens.

Want some motivation for your week? I also stumbled upon this on the C25K site. I know it's especially pertinent for me with finals approaching, my busy schedule, and the crummy weather outside:



Anyways, have a great Tuesday! More later, I'm sure :)

Running on the track, etc.

Hey friends! Happy weekend! I don't know about you, but I definitely needed it. Plenty of work to do. This week was pretty hectic with school and going to the gym and everything. Week 3 of training for the May 1st 5k was successfully completed, so I'm feeling pretty upbeat about that. I moved from the treadmill to the indoor track at the gym yesterday, which was kind of disappointing since instead of hitting a 37m 5k on the treadmill, it took me more like 45-50 minutes, assuming I counted the laps correctly. Oh well, just leaves room for improvement! Though, on the upside, my knee didn't hurt as bad while running this time since I was able to adjust my pace and focus on how my foot was striking the ground.

I'm really enjoying my new shoes:



Jon and I went last weekend to Bob Roncker's Running Spot in Cincinnati last weekend so that I could figure out what kind of shoes I needed. Lo and behold, they were having their huge once-a-year sale on shoes and I found these. I'm still trying to break them in and my right knee is still bothering me a bit, but we'll see. I'm hoping it's not the new shoes, because I'm a fan. There's just something about getting run gear to work out in that helps motivate me to actually work out, is that weird?

Anyways, I'm going to the doctor's at the crack of dawn on Tuesday to go over the blood work she had me do, so I can ask her about the knee/to recommend someone to look at it if necessary. Mostly, I'm concerned about my cholesterol. When I gave blood a few months ago, I called the little number they give you so that you can check you cholesterol and it told me I was a 240... This was kind of a surprise, though I realize that I hadn't fasted or anything in order to get a proper reading, but still. So, I scheduled an appointment with a nice doctor here in Athens, and we ordered the test. We'll see.

In other news, Jon and I are going to check out a gym closer to home this afternoon. While we're enjoying the Athens Rec Center, it would be nice to be able to pop over to the gym in the morning and then come back to our own shower to get ready. Either way, it's gym-joining crunch time, since we're down to our last 2 punches on our freebie try-the-rec-center punch card that Jon got from his work. All of this working out is really keeping me positive. I'm feeling really optimistic about weigh-in on Tuesday, if I can just keep from going too crazy tonight when I go out with the girls. I'm so close to hitting that -25lbs. mark that I can hardly stand it. On that note, I'm going to go be productive for a bit today, gotta get plenty of homework done so I can have a relaxing evening out. Have a great weekend!