Wedding and Biking and Triathlons...oh my!

The weeks have been busy as always and when I do finally make my way home, I just can't pull myself up to the computer to write up a blog entry.   I find more and more lately that staring at my computer all day makes me uninterested in looking at it in the evening, especially when we have so little time to sit still as it is.  But I really do think about catching my blog up just about every day.  Maybe sometime soon I'll find a pattern that will make me more consistent :)

Mark and I have been back in the pool a few times and have promised ourselves to get our butts back to Masters in April.  He's been working on bilateral breathing and I'm trying to concentrate on technique.   Still not done any biking but I'll touch on that more here in a minute.  Running has been the bulk of our exercising and it's been great since the weather is finally getting nice.  We are in the base week of a 5k training plan aimed at the Irvin 5k on June 18th.  Unfortunately due to our crazy schedules we've missed the sunny early evening and get stuck running near sunset but I just try to breathe and remember that hopefully somewhere in the next year our housing situation will be resolved.

This weekend is ALARC core class Saturday morning, a MNOC orienteering event at Hyland park in the afternoon, Wizard of Oz at the Orpheum that night THEN Sunday morning an LTF Indoor Triathlon again in Maple Grove, the big wedding expo in the afternoon and possibly a bike ride on our new bikes after that.  More about the "new" bikes in a minute.....

Quick note on that, Mark has landed a new job that he will start in a few weeks and will becoming an employee of the contract house so we should be able to start looking at qualifying for loans in another month of two.  I think I mentioned this before but we want to stay somewhere on the west side of the cities and need a two level house.  Cat level and dog level :)

This last weekend we volunteered for the Team Ortho Get Lucky 7k which was fun.  We did packet pickup at Kieran's new location in Block E on Friday evening and stuck around for a drink and dessert.  Saturday morning we course marshalled on the west river pkwy and thought we could take off for a run right after that.  Unfortunately we got roped into a few other volunteer jobs and didn't get out of there until noon.   Due to needing to get ready for evening plans we didn't get in our run.   Mark went gaming with the boys and I was out for Girls Night with Joni and Deb.  Always a fun time to catch up with them and we tried out the new JJ's Coffee and Wine Bar in EP.  Great place to hang out for a simple dinner and glass of wine and great service.

Sunday we slept in ( yay!! :D) and headed over to a small wedding fair in Chanhassen.   I think we came out with a few good ideas and even won a 50% discount on DJ services which we think we are going to take advantage of.   It's always fun to walk around those expos sampling too many pieces of cake and telling people about our destination wedding and waiting to see if you get a "wow fun!" reaction or a deer-in-the-headlights "what the hell would you do that for?" look and a "oh, wow, that's nice" reaction.  I personally like getting a mix of both to keep things fun :-P 
We do have the big Twin Cities Wedding Fair coming up next weekend and after that we are going to start making some decisions and probably putting down the depositn on our reception site.  I think the Garden Room is still coming in first place due to the great space and price but we'll see if we find anything else.   Still struggling with that to do for the wedding party for the reception in terms of their attire....

Diet has been going ok although we have been letting ourselves slide quite often here and there but still feeling like progress is being made.  Maybe just a little slower than I would like.   One thing I taught myself again (for about the 20th time) is NOT to go running on an empty stomach.  We tried to go for a 3 mile tempo run last week around Lake of the Isles after work and I hadn't eaten anything since lunch.  Horrible stomach pain and thought I was going to puke a few times.  Argh....  hopefully I've learned THIS time.
I have come to what has been a barrier for me in the past.   Last week I weighed in at 145.5.  145 has been a sticking point I have gone down to and back up again a few times now over the past years so it will help me physically and mentally to get below that number.  Yesterday....still 145.5 (sigh...)   I think my body naturally wants to stay at 145 and getting below that is going to be hard to do and maintain.  And maintain enough strong muscle for racing so we'll see if I get much below it in these last few weeks.

And Mark and I made the decision to buy mountain bikes and start adding that to our repertoire.  Since we've gotten into trail running, this will now also get us into off road triathlons and adventure racing as well.  I am a complete novice at real mountain biking so this is going to be a learning experience for me.  Hopefully one that doesn't include any broken anything on my body!

And i'm looking at buying a tri bike.   I just CAN'T tolerate the idea of ever getting back on my road bike.  It's a mental thing but I think I would break into tears if I had to use that for another season.  So I found a barely used 2008 Felt S32 for sale and long story short, I'm picking it up tonight and putting down a deposit to try it out for a week.  I want to try it out and get some opinions on the price he's asking.  I've been told from two sources already that I shouldn't pay more than around $700 for it but he's asking $925.   But I'll work negotiations once I decide it will work.
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And to finish off, my random little story of the week:
I had gotten another betta fish a few weeks ago and one day we were sitting near the tank and I looked at it....looked at Mark and said "uh...where's my fish?"  He had no idea.  I thought maybe it died and he was nice enough to flush it for me before I saw it but that wasn't the case.  After much confusion and a little investigation, I figured out that I left the tank lid open and he jumped out, falling to his death in my recycling bag.   The bag was all crumpled up too since the cats were trying to get at him but they failed.   We found the poor little thing dead in the bottom of my paper recycling.   I was truly bummed but learned never to underestimate a normally docile betta.