Friday, August 31, 2007

Not Bad for a Pregnant Chick

I almost feel silly posting my meager accomplishments when the blogosphere is rife this week with tear-jerker race reports from IMLou and eloquent thoughts leading up to IMMoo.

Pregnant though I am, limited though I may be, I'm still a triathlete at heart and can't resist posting about my own training, even though I completely understand that my tiny voice will - and should - be drowned out in all the Iron shouting. I'm moved to post because it reminds me in the midst of the Iron frenzy that in some small way I really am still training, and in some small way I'm bringing myself that much closer to my own Ironman. Someday.

Long story short, here's the week I managed to put together:

Sunday - walk
Monday - off
Tuesday - swim
Wednesday - yoga
Thursday - walk
Friday - yoga

Five workouts in six days. I'm thinkin that's not to shabby for a pregnant chic.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Mocked by The Calorie Nazi

This was going to be a bitch and moan "poor me" kinda post, because the last couple weeks I've been quietly freaking out in a major way about the fact that I gained 3 pounds in August.

But I just have to accept the fact that that's what happens when you're almost 7 months pregnant and let it go. Because I haven't got it that bad - according to my scale (and my doctor's notes) my net gain for the pregnancy as of this week is: Zero.

That's right, I have officially gained back the 12 pounds I lost during the first 4 months of being so gloriously sick. So technically I guess I've gained 12 pounds, but if I think that way y'all will have to visit me in a padded cell so I'm refusing to think that way.

So. Instead of bitching and moaning about weighing exactly the same as I did 7 months ago, I thought I'd share something I find highly amusing. Something that kind of slaps me upside the head at least once a week, and serves as a constant reminder of how totally fast I am NOT....

One of the primary functions of The Calorie Nazi is to record your exercise and figure out the additional calories you're allowed to eat based on what you burned. It's got an impressively robust dictionary of activities, and includes varying levels of intensity for many activities.

Case in point - swimming.

In addition to options for each individual stroke, it gives me options for the intensity of the crawl. Those options are:

Intense (75 yards/minute)
Leisurely (50 yards/minute)

Um. Yeah.

See, when I was at my strongest on the swim, in the middle of getting one-on-one coaching, before my shoulder blew out, doing sprint sets, I could juuuuuust barely pull off 50 yards per minute.

And that's what The Calorie Nazi considers a LEISURELY pace.

This never ceases to amuse me. I'm thinkin the people who came up with these numbers have never talked to a back of the packer : )

Monday, August 27, 2007

IMWI Tri Blogger Meet Ups

This just in from Simply Stu...

IMWI Tri Blogger Meet Ups
Times:
Friday 11am
Friday 4pm
Saturday 11am

Location:
Corner of Wilson St and MLK Blvd. There is usually an Endless Pool in that area. If there IS, meet at the endless pool, if not, meet on the corner of Wilson and MLK.


(Map shamelessly stolen from Simply Stu.)


All reports are that there will be a very large number of people coming, so I assume that more detailed plans, such as people organizing groups to have meals together and setting up Tri Blogger cheering sections along the course, are expected to come from those of us hooking up at the time.

I'm going to try really hard to get to Madison in time (~2 hour trip) for the Friday afternoon meet-up, and I'll definitely be at the Saturday morning one. Would love to hear from anyone else who's going to be at the meetings and/or are looking for dinner plans Friday and/or Saturday.

Please pass this information on to anyone you know will be there!

Sunday, August 26, 2007

I SHOULD Be in Bed

But instead I'm glued to my computer, refreshing IronmanLive.com result screens for bloggy peeps. Good times.

Perfect Morning

After a seemingly endless variety of adventures ranging from local flooding to migraines to tomato canning to my van needing repairs 3 times in 5 days, I managed to string together 9 days where I did precisely nothing resembling exercise.

So when I woke this morning to my version of a perfect day - sunny, low 70s with the mildest of breezes - I decided to drop everything ("everything" being laundry, bathroom cleaning, weed pulling and drywall patching) and carpe diem.

I took Kona for a lovely walk - just shy of 3 miles in just shy of an hour. The icing on the cake was the dog being shockingly well behaved for a teenage puppy monster who's been housebound from weeks of heavy rain.

But really, it just felt so damn good to get out of the house and move my body again.

Kona and I talked about it, and we agreed the only thing that could have made this walk any more perfect would have been a run.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Congratulations are in Order

JBMommy, one of our beloved Tri Bloggers, was just blessed with the arrival of a beautiful baby girl!

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Clearly Not Our People

Last night I read a small piece in Newsweek about a dramatic increase in the number of men seeking plastic surgery for chest hair transplants.

Because they want to look more masculine.

*Blink* *Blink*

There are so many jokes to choose from my head might actually explode if I tried, so *insert your favorite scathingly witty comment here*.

All I will say on the matter is: clearly, these guys are not triathletes.

Nor do they, I suspect, have cats.

Monday, August 20, 2007

All Official

I'm officially registered to work T2 Gear Bags on Sunday from 3-6 at IMWI.

I was also going to sign up for the 9-12 Finish Line shift - last year they were openly asking for people to come help that night because they were so short of volunteers - but the website is saying all those jobs are filled. So, I'll either end up drafted at the last minute when people don't show up for their shifts or I'll end up hanging out with the Tri Blogger Cheering Section that rumor has it is in the process of being organized.

Either way, I'm excited that I get to there to greet our beloved bloggy Ironman finishers, and that's all that matters.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Just Another Kind of Junkie

Haven't really done anything in about a week, since the headache that wouldn't die took me out for basically 3 days and threw me all kinds of off. Then I let this week's general life stuff get in my way until along came another headache.

For a while now I've been cranky and clingy and not able to fall asleep, and then not able to wake up. When I do wake up, I'm foggy and groggy and more often than not, headachy.

I woke up with yet another headache today, which nagged the crap out of me all day and sucked dry any motivation I might have had for a real workout.

Around 8 pm my head finally cleared a bit and I was faced with the choice between an evening of Law & Order reruns or catching a quick swim before the pool closed.

To my own great shock I went for the swim.

It was slow and it was only 20 laps (~650 yards), and yeah, I should have gone for 30, but I decided the important thing tonight was that I showed up at all.


And even though it was short and slow and not really enough, it was just enough for a quick fix. Just enough to feed the need I'd almost forgotten about.

Not cranky any more. No longer feel the need to curl up in an incoherent, clingy little sobbing puddle in my husband's lap. And I think I might just be able to sleep tonight.

Because We're Geeks

I know there are people who look forward to doing the whole gift registry thing, but I find shopping an exhausting exercise that takes far more time than it should, and setting up a gift registry for myself is no exception. It's especially irksome to find myself trudging through a store when I could be lounging in the middle of a lake or getting in a nice walk with my dogs or bike ride with Wonderful Husband.

I had been doing really well last week - worked out three days in a row before I got hit with a nagging multi-day migraine that wiped me out into the weekend, so I was being cautious about jumping back into exercise in the 90+ degree heat.

And since I'm physically incapable of sitting still (even lying on the couch with the flu I'll find something to do, like clipping recipes or organizing photos), I figured if I wasn't going to work out it was a good time to get the registry chore out of the way.

Got the practical, primary one at Target done on Sunday and figured I'd tackle the 'Target didn't have it' Babies R Us one next weekend. As fate would have it, my MIL needed a ride to a specialist yesterday, and his office happened to be 5 minutes from the Babies R Us (about an hour from here). So that one's done too, plus I got to make the MIL happy by including her on a big baby thing AND now I'll have my Sunday free to maybe go for a lake swim. YAY!!

But like I said, except for the few minutes when Wonderful Husband discovered he could register for tiny little Bears and Cubs jerseys, we generally regarded the whole thing as a chore. (Although, I might have had to restrain myself from buying teeny tiny little swim goggles.)

The one bright spot was finding this baby-sized MythBusters shirt that, I'm sorry, screw the registry, WE HAD TO BUY IT RIGHT THAT SECOND.



This fabulously geeky find reminded us of some other baby geek things we'd spotted in our jaunts around the interweb. Which, of course, we had to devote some quality Sunday night lounging time to tracking down. Cause shopping online while sitting on eating pizza and watching the latest Tivo'd MythBusters? THAT'S fun!

So, lest anyone ever doubt our Geek cred, I give you what The Geek Collection, soon to be found in a nursery near you...

Wonderful Husband loves this one in particular. He even made it an icon for blog posts about baby stuff.


I'm not a gamer but WH played his fair share back in the day.


If this one ever comes back in stock so we can actually buy it we're hoping to make it the 'coming home from the hospital' outfit.


Matches the sticker on my van!


And for my personal edification (which I'm hoping I can get printed on a onesie).

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Fair Trade

Woke up this morning, looked at the clock, rolled over and told Wonderful Husband "I should be about 10 miles into my half marathon right now."

WEIRD. But I guess I did my crying over this race a couple weeks ago, because I wasn't really anything but amused. And hungry. (That's my new Permanent State of Being - HUNGRY. In a Feed Me Seymour kind of way.)

So we did our Sunday Morning Thing - snuggled and talked about Things We Can't Afford and got in plenty of Cuddly Happy Dog Belly Rubs and made pancakes.

Since today was supposed to be a Major Event in my life and all we're doing something directly related to the whole reason I'm missing my race to kind of make up for it.

I'm armed with a dizzying array of Corporate Sponsored Baby Checklists and am off to the Extra Big Honkin Giganto Target to register for my shower. (Next weekend I'll suck it up, drive the 45 minutes and do the Babies R Spoiled Rotten With All This Crap registry.)

I guess it's a trade-off I can live with. Especially since the race people gave me the deferral to next year. I didn't so much as lose my race as postpone it 52 weeks or so.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Calling All Parents

Thanks to a lottery-winning garage sale find by my mom-in-law of a nearly pristine $350 stroller travel system (for all of $25, AND it's the #1 rated model by Consumer Reports, AND it's the one I was going to register for anyway), I now have the luxury of seriously shopping for a jogging stroller because she decided she should get me something else of equal value.

So. I'm looking for advice. I can read reviews at joggingstroller.com all day long, but I don't feel like I'm getting the whole story, especially with the whole fake review phenomenon that is an unfortunate reality on the interweb. I'll feel more confident dropping several hundred bucks on something that will (hopefully!) become an integral part of my existence if I hear some words of wisdom from my triathlon peeps.

So.... what kind of jogging strollers do y'all have? And how do you feel about them?

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Tagged

I've been tagged by the awesome Duane over at Couch Potato to Ironman...

Jobs I’ve Held
McDonald's Grill Cook
Photographer's Assistant
Professor's Office Assistant
Olive Garden Hostess
Executive Assistant
Quality Assurance Analyst
Veterinary Technician
Veterinary Client Educator
Distribution Quality Supervisor
Freelance Copywriter

Movies I Can Watch Over & Over
Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail
The Princess Bride
Moulin Rouge
The Color Purple
Star Wars (The REAL Trilogy, not the latter Lucas Has Lost His Mind works)

My Guilty Pleasures
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or anything by Joss Whedon)
Ben & Jerry's
Deep dish pizza
A dry martini with as many olives as the glass will hold
Oprah
Cheetos (possibly the guiltiest of all)

Places I Have Lived (in order)
Canton, IL
Champaign, IL
Urbana, IL (yeah, I know, it's lame I've been so few places I split up Chambana)
Prospect Heights, IL
Round Lake Beach, IL
McHenry, IL

Shows I Enjoy (AKA What's on my DVR?)
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
MythBusters
Doctor Who
Law & Order (regular and SVU)
Dog Whisperer
Modern Marvels
What Not to Wear

Places I Have Been on Vacation
Missouri (Six Flags/Arch/Mark Twain Caves)
Rocky Mountains
Orlando
Memphis (kinda vacation, mostly Marching Illini performance)
San Diego (kinda vacation, mostly Marching Illini performance)
Ireland (kinda vacation, mostly Marching Illini performance)
Door County, WI
Niagara Falls
Ocho Rios, Jamaica

Favorite Foods
Filet Mignon (but not while I'm pregnant, apparently the kid's a vegetarian)
Deep dish pizza
Pretty much anything in the 'pasta with sauce on it' genre
Pretty much anything in the 'ooey gooey and features chocolate' genre
Sushi
Fancy cheeses (brie en croute is a particular favorite, also bleu cheese)

Websites I Visit Daily
Tri Bloggers
Dooce
Google
Weather
Yahoo News

Body Parts I Have Injured
Right ankle
Right shin (only stitches ever!)
Right calf (lesson learned: never wear shorts on a motorcycle)
Both knees
Right shoulder

Awards You’ve Won
Patriotic essay contest (Runner up, 7th grade, picture in the paper and had to read it at a 4th of July thing in the town square)
13 Blue medals (ranked "1") for music solo competition (12 on clarinet, one on sax, 6th-12th grade)
1 Red medal (ranked "2") for music solo competition (clarinet, high school)
Trophy for the Math Team winning some regional competition (junior high)
A handful of trophies for placing in oratory competitions (high school)
National Merit Scholar
Runner up in a beauty pageant (award was college scholarship money)
Miscellaneous awards at my old job
I'm sure there's a few more, but you get the picture.

Nicknames You’ve Been Called
Boomus (something about when I was learning to walk)
Shelley (It's so not me. I won't answer to it now.)
Pacorn Bat/My Little Bat (Don't ask. It's a married thing.)
Martha (yeah, as in Stewart)

Pick 5 Other Bloggers
TriDi
TriTeacher
Wylee
TriGirl (yes Teri, I mean you!)
Carrie

Monday, August 06, 2007

Blech

Temperature: 84 degrees
Humidity: 82%
Ride time: 20 minutes
Distance: 3.7 miles
HR: through the roof

I feel like I just took my bike for a swim.

Officially Ready for IMMoo


NOW I'm ready to hit the streets of Madison with the epic Tri Blogger cheering section!

(and for a little comic relief, I give you Kona the Confused Puppy Monster modeling mommy's new race toy...)


It kind of freaked him out and he just sat perfectly still trying to keep it from making noise : D

Friday, August 03, 2007

A Conversation with The Calorie Nazi

TCN: We have to talk.

Me: Oooookay.

TCN: You've been eating hundreds of calories a day more than I think you should.

Me: But my weight's stayed the same. You're the fancy schmancy program that's supposed to figure that out - do the damn math already and catch up with reality.

TCN: ACTUALLY, your weight hasn't stayed the same. You've gained 3 pounds. You just reset the goal weight to where you're at now. As if I wouldn't notice.

Me: I plead the fifth. And oh yeah, I plead 6 months pregnant. 3 pounds ain't so bad.

TCN: Fine. I'll give you another 150 calories for now and agree we'll try to work with the new goal. But we still have to talk about where those extra calories are coming from.

Me: *guilty silence*

TCN: Such as.... ice cream. Three times in a row last week alone. And chocolate syrup? Why do you even have those things in the house?

Me: But it's light ice cream! And I measured it only ate half of what I wanted! I even got out stupid measuring spoons and did stupidly exact tiny little portions of chocolate syrup! And it made me gag for the last six months - I was just making up for lost time! And it's like, SUMMER! And did you notice I had like, 5 salads last week?! With actual vegetables!

TCN: Well, I suppose you have a point. Maybe. But I'm not letting you off about ice cream three times in one week. That has to stop. And I get you're tired and have no problem with ordering out, but how about less pizza and more steamed veggies from the Chinese place? And hey, I noticed the quadruple helping of sour cream on that baked potato last week - you completely ruined the fact that the rest of the dinner consisted of brown rice and raw veggies. And when was the last time you worked out? Oh, and what about THIS?



TCN: Peach Blueberry Crisp, I believe?

TCN: And you can't lie to me now, you already logged it for dessert last night.

Me: Wylee made me do it. On account of the fruit flies.

TCN: Wylee. MADE you. From 300 miles away.

Me: Well. Um, ok, perhaps it might be overstating it a BIT to say that Wylee was actually aware I even had peaches. Or blueberries. Or fruit flies. But it's her fault - she went and made it first and the baby totally got a taste for it. So when I GOT peaches and blueberries and fruit flies, it was the obvious solution.

TCN: Uh-huh. Well, I suppose it could be worse. Just don't do something even more calorically stupid, like eat it over ice cream?

Me: I'm not makin any promises I can't keep.

So, OK, been sorta good and sorta bad, but at least I'm still reporting all my sins to the Calorie Nazi and neither I nor my doctor have any complaints about my 24 week weight. But... it has been creeping up so I suppose it's time to put a damper on the recent no-holds-barred ice cream extravaganza.

Just as soon as I finish that last pint of Ben & Jerry's...

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Excuses, Excuses

Dear Training Log,

I know it's been a few days since you've heard from me. And I swear I was going to work out today. And yes, I realize it's dinnertime and nothing in my plans for the rest of the evening resembles exercise.

But today I had actual reasons for blowing off my Wednesday workout for the umpteenth week in a row. Not like all the other Wednesdays, when I was just being lazy.

You don't believe me? OK, here goes...

1) It's hot. Like, REALLY hot. So hot the dogs don't even want to go outside.

2) I had blogs to catch up on.

3) I had actual work to do.

4) Not to mention dishes to wash and laundry to put away.

5) And don't forget how much time it took to get mad at the maternity program health insurance website that refused to let me log in so I could finish their stupid assessment.

6) I had to go to the bank to make a deposit.

7) Then I had to get mad at the broken ATM and go stand in line to make the damn deposit.

8) I had to go to the grocery store to get milk.

9) Then I had to say a lot of really bad words loud enough for the neighbors to hear when the bag split open and the glass milk bottle shattered in the garage.

10) Then I had to pick broken glass out from between my toes. That's right - Bewteen. My. TOES!!

11) Then I had to call my husband and bitch about the stupid kid who failed to double bag the milk.

12) Then I had to clean the shattered glass and dirty milk off the garage floor.

13) Then I had to clean the milky watery ick off the driveway before it turned into a dried rotten smelly milky ick.

14) Now I've got to feed all the animals and make dinner for Wonderful Husband.

15) And I think I might need to rewash that load of clean laundry the cat's been sleeping on all day.

See, before I knew it the day was gone. I could technically get in a walk before dinner, but see #1. It's still 91 freakin degrees out there!

I promise I'll do better tomorrow.