My weekend was extremely active, though not totally by design. It started Thursday night, when I took JJ to his off-ice practice. It’s basically a chance for the kids to do some conditioning work, similar to how they do it in football and, I suppose, other sports. I didn’t participate, except to take pictures, until the very end. They were doing wall sits, and the coach was offering a five dollar bill to whoever could do it the longest. Here’s JJ, giving it his best shot.
The coach was also offering an extra chance for a kid to win the five dollars if their parent participated. JJ begged and pleaded with me to join in, so I did. There are no pictures of that, of course, since I was the only one with the camera. I don’t know how long I lasted, but it wasn’t very long. Even for someone whose legs get as much of a work out as mine, that shit is hard! I probably could’ve lasted longer than I did, but I realized I had to do a tempo run in the morning, and wall sits were probably not the best way to prep for it. :p
I did my 40-minute tempo run on Friday morning, and I was pleased with my pace.
After I finished, I jumped in the pool, of course, and then went in the house get ready. When I looked out of the bathroom window after taking my shower, I could see that the sunrise was quite amazing. I knew I wouldn’t be able to capture it from my yard because of all the trees in the way, and I spent a good five minutes debating on whether I should hop in the car and drive to the water a few minutes away. Unfortunately, those few minutes cost me the opportunity to get the BEST picture, but I did eventually go get the shot.
It was worth being 15 minutes late to work, I think.
I spent much of Friday debating whether or not I would run the Allen Park 10K, which I’ve done the last two years. It has actually been a good race for me, giving me a PR both times, and also netting me first place in my age group the first year. But this year, they weren’t giving out shirts; they were only giving out to all participants. Well, bleh, I don’t wear ball caps. (OK, yes I wear one once in a great while, but only if I forgot my sunglasses, because I really don’t like them.)
So, I decided instead of spending $35 for a ball cap, I would just get up and run my 6-mile training run a little bit faster than my usual long run. I had hoped that I would be able to get a good sunrise picture, since I was going to go to the Metropark by the water right at sunrise, but it wasn’t spectacular.
Pretty, I suppose, but just not nearly as good as the one the day before!
The run was harder than I expected, maybe because it was a little bit humid, or maybe just because I wasn’t used to running fast for my long runs. But I knew I could do it, considering my last few long runs were right around the 11-minute mile range, and I was running a shorter distance this time. And I did!
No, that’s not actually a 10K record for me, but it’s the fastest one I’ve done since I got this watch. There were days when that would have been a truly “slow” run for me, but I’ll take what I can get.
Later that day, the boys and I decided to go for a nice, long bike ride. We packed up the bikes in my husband’s truck and headed up to Flat Rock, where we joined the Metropark connector trail and biked to Oakwoods Metropark and then all the way up to the top of Willow Metropark and back.
We even saw a surprising animal on the path:
I had to ask around on Facebook to find out that that was a baby coyote–yikes! Not something I want to see when I’m biking around the Metropark with my kids. :/
When we were done, it turned out to be quite a trek!
I really hadn’t planned on biking 14 miles after running 6, but that’s how it ended up. It took us a little over two hours, and I was a little perturbed to discover that a little over two hours’ worth of bike riding only earns you 7 activity points.
Really? As tired as I was, it should’ve been a lot more!
I was so tired in fact, that when dinner was over, I didn’t even have the energy to eat the delightful dessert that Jamie had made.
Doesn’t that look delicious? That is a Mocha Fudge Pudding Parfait. Jamie found it (on Pinterest) and then made it ALL by himself. How impressive is that for a 13-year-old boy? I wanted to try it, but I was so tired, I knew I wouldn’t really appreciate it. So instead, I went to bed right after dinner, and didn’t wake up until 8 o’clock the next morning!
After church, I did my strength work out and ran a mile with JJ (he ran a 10:29, which was great for him!), and then I set out to tackle the project I’ve been dreading for a few weeks: the garden.
Back when the kids were at camp a couple of weeks ago, I spent every night for four nights in a row weeding out the tomatoes, which had gotten incredibly overgrown due to the 7 inches of rain we had in June. We haven’t gotten that much rain in the last three weeks, but somehow, the tomatoes had gotten overgrown again! On top of this, my husband never put the tomato cages up, because for some reason he thinks it’s not necessary but the cages up when you plant tomatoes. Oh no, it’s much better to wait until the plants are fully grown. :/
Although I knew it would take me a lot of time and effort, I was bound and determined to get through all those tomatoes AND put up all the cages by the end of the day. I did, but it took me almost 5 hours. 😮 I will say that it was one of the most accomplished feelings I’ve ever had when I was all done.
You can’t really tell from the picture, because it’s all just green, but I really worked my ass off. It was a lot of bending over and squatting, too. In fact, I was REALLY sore all
day on Monday. At times, I felt like a little old lady walking around the office. 😉
I kept track of my time in the garden. I wanted to see how much time I spent weeding, and how much time I spent placing cages, since I know you can earn activity points for weeding a garden–and dammit, I deserved some activity points for all that hard work! Believe it or not, it was actually FOUR HOURS worth of weeding.
Would you believe that four hours of weeding earns you that many activity points? No, me either. So, although I logged them for posterity’s sake, I did not actually use them, and in fact, I didn’t use quite a few of my other activity points as well.
But I did eat that parfait! 🙂
I was pretty tired after all that work, and unfortunately, I picked the wrong day to forget to set my alarm. 🙁 I woke up about an hour later than I had wanted to on Monday, which meant I either had to skip my run, or be an hour late for work. Happily, I have a great job, and I decided that I would go ahead and be an hour late, because I knew nobody would care. And I also knew that I would feel guilty all day if I didn’t run, whereas I would be a much happier and more productive employee if I got my 4 1/2 miles in. Of course, those thoughts happened before I actually stepped outside into the 98% humidity…but, I got through it, and I REALLY enjoyed my time in the pool afterwards.
I weighed myself, really hoping for a good loss, since I had done so much work over the weekend. And…
Stayed exactly the same. Grrr. I know, I know, it’s better than gaining, and I’m trying to focus on that. I’ve mentioned before that I tend to hold onto water in the summer (I know because my rings get tight), and I’m really hopeful that I’ll be able to lose a few pounds come September. I’m also getting into some longer weekly mileage with my half-marathon training, so maybe that’ll help to.
For now, I feel good, if not great, in my skin, so I’ll go with that. 🙂
Thanks for reading!
