My new toy

So yesterday I bought a "new to me" bike at the Madison bike swap. It's a Trek 370 road bike like the one shown above. Mine is a little different because it's had some parts replaced (I'd take a picture of mine, but the camera is out of batteries again). I so so so wish I could go out and ride it today, but it's just too snowy and icy for my taste. I guess I need to get a trainer for it so I can ride inside, but the prices I've seen for trainers range widely. I don't want to get a bad trainer that I hate, but I don't want to end up paying more for the trainer than the bike.

About Me

Welcome!

Thanks for taking a moment to read my blog. Hopefully you will be so captivated by the minutiae of my life that you'll keep coming back for more.

And now for an interview I have conducted with myself:

Why is your blog called Early Runner?
Because I like to run and my favorite time to run is in the morning. I'm usually out the door by 6am at the latest.

You complain a lot about the winter, where do you live?
In Madison, WI, which actually has a fairly mild winter compared to Michigan or the Northwest, but I grew up in Florida (Go Gators!) so it has been a big adjustment.

Did you move to Madison for school?
Nope. I graduated from The University of Florida (Go Gators!) back in 2006. We moved here so my husband could start a PhD program.

So then what do you do in Madison?
I'm a statistician at the university for a group that does research on eye disease related to aging. It's pretty cool.

You work, you run, what else?
I do a lot of volunteer work with my church. I'm the leader of my Bible study small group, a high school youth group small group leader, and I lead a group of international students and visiting scholars who are trying to improve their spoken English. I also enjoy reading, college football (Go Gators), gardening, and baking.

Is there anything you don't do?
I'm horrible at all team sports, and I can't play golf, throw a frisbee, or speak a language other than English. I refuse to eat olives, ginger, and breakfast meat. I'm not any good at yoga and can't play the piano, but I would like to be able to do both of those things.

Anything else you feel compelled to share?
I'm married to a wonderful husband I refer to as D on the blog, my Myers-Briggs personality type is ISFJ, and I'm working on a list of 101 things I want to accomplish in the next 1001 days. My favorite TV shows (why don't they ask this on the profile page?) are What Not to Wear, The Office, and 30 Rock.

Building back up

It's snowing out now, but I'm hoping I'll get in a run outside tomorrow morning. Most of the ice is gone, so I don't have to rely on the dreadmill. So much for my run after work plans, right? The thing is, even though there are lots of benefits to going after work, nothing really beats a good early morning run for me. It's easy to get in the mindset that every day is going to be awful, and I'm not going to be able to run outside again until May, but that's really not true. There are only a few scattered days (like last Tuesday) when it really is to treacherous to run outside.

To be honest, I was kind of depressed after my run yesterday. I just didn't feel like there was much gas in the tank, and the whole cramping thing was annoying (and a big part of the reason I wanted to run in the afternoon is so I'd feel more awake and loose). It made me start questioning my ability to improve my running doing a tri-style training program. How can I build a base if I can't stay on the treadmill for more than 6 miles? It also made me question my ability to do well in the Madison Marathon in May. I know it was just one day, and it's way too early to make any calls about what my fitness is going to be like 5 months from now, but it was still a little frustrating. That's a big reason that I want to get back out tomorrow- to "prove" that I can still run.

Otherwise I'm just majorly sore from lifting weights yesterday. But it's a good sore. I'm in an endurance phase with my workout program, which I like much more than a pure strength phase. (Someday I'll write about the time I tried to do serious running and serious power lifting at the same time. The short version is, it doesn't work.)

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Workout:
60min stationary bike
1.5 sets stairs

Flipping things around

Today was the first day of my experiment with moving my Tuesday and Thursday morning runs to the afternoons. I have a few reasons for doing this:

1. I don't have to worry about waking D up with the treadmill

2. I'm more motivated to work out in the morning and much less after work so putting the workout I'm more inclined to skip (lifting) in the morning and the workout I know I won't skip (running) in the afternoon

3. The gym is much less crowded in the morning

4. In theory I'll run better because my muscles are warm

5. I have a compelling reason to watch What Not To Wear every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

It worked about 80% well today. The gym was empty and I felt motivated to lift. Running went pretty quick with What Not to Wear on. The only thing that wasn't great was I had some stomach cramping during the run. I'm still kind of tweaking what I eat during the day so I'm not starving at 3pm and don't eat so much I give myself a stomach ache when I run. Once I get that down, I think this will be a good system. I'm hoping I'll switch back when the weather gets better, and I'm less concerned about coming up with excuses to skip lifting.

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Workout:
Lift 45min
2 sets stairs
Run 6mi

Looking forward, looking back

2008 was a big year for me. I'm in a place- both literally and figuratively- I never imagined I would be this time last year. The two biggest changes for me were a move across the country and a new job. As I said yesterday, both are exciting and unsettling at the same time.

But today I wanted to focus on a lighter topic- running and fitness.

2008 was a great year for me, running-wise. I had a major jump in fitness in early April and then again in September. I improved my marathon time by about 40min and my 1/2 marathon time by 10min. I've finally gotten it through my head that a little hard work (rather than a lot of easy work) goes a long way. And I have high hopes for next year.

In 2009, I want to:
Break 23:00 in 5k
Break 49:00 in 10k
Break 1:45 in 1/2 marathon
Qualify for Boston
Weight train an average of 2x per week
Improve swim endurance to 3000m/workout
Complete a triathlon
Get a bike and start riding outside
Run in 9 races

Another thing I'd like to do this year is work on my own fitness and life vision statements and create a motivational vision board. This is a great idea I gleaned from over at Mizfit's Place. The idea is to come up with a mission/vision statement for your life (and you can come up with different ones for different aspects of your life) that guide the overarching principles of what you do from day to day. Whenever you make a choice to do something, you check to see if it is inline with your vision. Say you are tempted to go home and plop on the couch for a rerun of What Not To Wear. If your fitness vision statement includes something about developing well-rounded fitness, you see the swim workout as more than a boring swim workout, but as a means to an end. On the other hand, if you are considering going out for a run when you have an injury, and your vision statement includes something about giving your body appropriate rest to recover, then it's easier to see that running- rather than not running- is detrimental to your goals. The vision board is sort of a collage-y motivational board that can flesh out your vision statement with other words and pictures. I'd like to come up with a vision statement for my whole life and do the vision board thing, but for right now, I'm just sticking with fitness.

So here it goes, my fitness vision statement for 2009:

To be a well-rounded athlete I must swim, run, cycle, lift weights, and get enough rest. I must view every workout as an opportunity and complete it with focus and a goal. I must eat enough healthy food during the day to fuel afternoon workouts and long runs. I must not berate myself or feel bad if things do not go according to plan. I must reassess, and continue striving toward my goals.

I'm Baaaaaack!

Whew. It has been a busy two weeks. A wonderful, enjoyable, family- and- friend-filled two weeks, but busy all the same. D and I drove down to his parents' house the Saturday before Christmas, stayed there until the Tuesday before Christmas, spent a week with my family that included side trips to Gainesville and Tarpon Springs, went back to Tennessee to visit both D's sets of grandparents and extended family, and drove back to Madison yesterday. I'm so happy we had the time and opportunity to make the trip and see so many people we love, but I'm also glad to be back to the quietness of my normal life.

I have mixed emotions about where I am in life right now. There are so many positives: I have the job I went to college to do. D is following his dream and going back to school. Neither one of us, nor anyone we know well, has been hit too hard by the economic downturn. We have a nice home with an easy commute to both work and recreation. Running has been going well... But I can't help but feel out of place.

Through all our travels over the last two weeks, not one of the places we visited could I call "home". Gainesville and Orlando are full of good memories for me, but they are not "my place" anymore. Unfortunately neither is Albuquerque or Madison. I know Madison will feel like home after awhile, but it just hasn't clicked with me that this is where we are going to be for the next 3.5 or 4 years. I feel like I'm at summer camp. That everything... my work, my living space, the friendships I make... are all temporary. That they will all be gone when I go home to the real place I belong. But that's not true. This is home. This apartment is our apartment. The church we find will be our church. The job I have is my job. Maybe this time next year thinking those things won't seem so strange, but it does now.

Maybe it's the winter or the loneliness of being in a new city or that the new year is a ready-made time of reflection that is making me melancholy. I long for something that isn't... that doesn't exist... that can't be. I feel like I'm walking on a tightrope across a canyon. I want to look down and see a safety net under me, but there isn't one there. And the key to making it across isn't a net; the key is to keep looking forward, concentrating on the goal of getting to the other side. If I look down for that safety net, I'll fall. And so I start another day of work tomorrow, putting one foot in front of the other, walking steadily toward the goal of making this place home.

Comments fixed

I fully intend to "go public" with this to friends and family in the new year so I finally spent some time figuring out how to let everybody- not just people registered with Blogger- be able to post comments. I truly hate having to register for stuff on the internet, and I would not want to try to force that on anyone, so I'm hoping it's fixed now.